An Introduction to the Study of Comparative Religion

Prayer

The physician, if he is to do his work, must know both a healthy and a diseased body, or organ, when he sees it. He must know the difference between the two and the symptoms both of health and disease. Otherwise he is in danger of trying to cure an organ which is healthy already—in which case his remedies will simply aggravate the disease. That is obviously true of the physician who seeks to heal the body, and it is equally, if not so obviously, true of the physician who seeks to minister to a mind, or a soul, diseased. Now, the missionary will find that the heathen, to whom he is to minister, have the habit of prayer; and the question arises, What is to be his attitude towards it? He cannot take up the position that prayer is in itself a habit to be condemned; he is not there to eradicate the habit, or to uproot the tendency. Neither is he there to create the habit; it already exists, and the wise missionary will acknowledge its existence with thankfulness. His business is not to teach his flock to pray, but how to pray, that is to say, for what and to whom. But even if he thus wisely recognises that prayer is a habit not to be created, but to be trained by him, it is still possible for him to assume rashly that it is simply impossible for a heathen ever to pray for anything that is right, and therefore, that it is a missionary’s duty first to insist that everything for which a savage or barbarian prays must be condemned as essentially irreligious and wicked. In that case, what will such a missionary, if sent to the Khonds of Orissa, say, when he finds them praying thus: “We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it to us!”? Can he possibly say to his flock, “All your prayers, all the things that you pray for now, are wicked; and your only hope of salvation lies in ceasing to pray for them”? If not, then he must recognise the fact that it is possible for the heathen to pray, and to pray for some things that it is right to pray for. And he must not only recognise the fact, but he must utilise it. Nay! more, he must not only recognise the fact if it chances to force itself upon him, he must go out of his way with the deliberate purpose of finding out what things are prayed for. He will then find himself in more intimate contact with the soul of the man than he can ever attain to in any other way; and he may then find that there are other things for which petitions are put up which could not be prayed for save by a man who had a defective or erroneous conception of Him who alone can answer prayer.

But it is a blundering, unbusinesslike way of managing things if the missionary has to go out to his work unprepared in this essential matter, and has to find out these things for himself—and perhaps not find them out at all. The applied science of religion should equip him in this respect; it should be able to take the facts and truths established by the science of religion and apply them to the purposes of the missionary. But it is a striking example of the youth and immaturity of the science of religion that no attempt has yet been made by it to collect the facts, much less to coördinate and state them scientifically. If a thing is clear, when we come to think of it, in the history of religion, it is that the gods are there to be prayed to: man worships them because it is on their knees that all things lie. It is from them that man hopes all things; it is in prayer that man expresses his hopes and desires. It is from his prayers that we should be able to find out what the gods really are to whom man prays. What is said about them in mythology—or even in theology—is the product of reflection, and is in many cases demonstrably different from what is given in consciousness at the moment when man is striving after communion with the Highest. Yet it is from mythology, or from the still more reflective and deliberative expression of ritual, of rites and ceremonies, that the science of religion has sought to infer the nature of the gods man worships. The whole apparatus of religion, rites and ceremonies, sacrifice and altars, nature-worship and polytheism, has been investigated; the one thing overlooked has been the one thing for the sake of which all the others exist, the prayer in which man’s soul rises, or seeks to rise, to God.

The reason given by Professor Tylor (Primitive Culture, II, 364) for this is not that the subject is unimportant, but that it is so simple; “so simple and familiar,” he says, “is the nature of prayer that its study does not demand that detail of fact and argument which must be given to rites in comparison practically insignificant.” Now, it is indeed the case that things which are familiar may appear to be simple; but it is also the case that sometimes things are considered simple merely because they are familiar, and not because they are simple. The fact that they are not so simple as every one has assumed comes to be suspected when it is discovered that people take slightly different views of them. Such slightly different views may be detected in this case.

Professor Höffding holds that, in the lowest form in which religion manifests itself, “religion appears under the guise of desire,” thus ranging himself on the side of an opinion mentioned by Professor Tylor (op. cit., II, 464) that, as regards the religion of the lower culture, in prayer “the accomplishment of desire is asked for, but desire is as yet limited to personal advantage.” Now, starting from this position that prayer is the expression of desire, we have only to ask, whose desire? that of the individual or that of the community? and we shall see that under the simple and familiar phrase of “the accomplishment of desire” there lurks a difference of view which may possibly widen out into a very wide difference of opinion. If we appeal to the facts, we may take as an instance a prayer uttered “in loud uncouth voice of plaintive, piteous tone” by one of the Osages to Wohkonda, the Master of Life: “Wohkonda, pity me, I am very poor; give me what I need; give me success against mine enemies, that I may avenge the death of my friends. May I be able to take scalps, to take horses!” etc. (Tylor, II, 365). So on the Gold Coast a negro in the morning will pray, “Heaven! grant that I may have something to eat this day” (ib., 368), not “give us this day our daily bread”; or, raising his eyes to heaven, he will thus address the god of heaven: “God, give me to-day rice and yams, gold and agries, give me slaves, riches and health, and that I may be brisk and swift!” (ib.). On the other hand, John Tanner (Narrative, p. 46) relates that when Algonquin Indians were setting out in a fleet of frail bark canoes across Lake Superior, the chief addressed a prayer to the Great Spirit: “You have made this lake; and you have made us, your children; you can now cause that the water shall remain smooth while we pass over in safety.” The chief, it will be observed, did not expressly call the Great Spirit “our Father,” but he did speak of himself and his men as “your children.” If we cross over to Africa, again, we find the Masai women praying thus; and be it observed that though the first person singular is used, it is used by the chorus of women, and is plural in effect:—

I

“My God, to thee alone I pray
That offspring may to me be given.
Thee only I invoke each day,
O morning star in highest heaven.
God of the thunder and the rain,
Give ear unto my suppliant strain.
Lord of the powers of the air,
To thee I raise my daily prayer.

II

“My God, to thee alone I pray,
Whose savour is as passing sweet
As only choicest herbs display,
Thy blessing daily I entreat.
Thou hearest when I pray to thee,
And listenest in thy clemency.
Lord of the powers of the air,
To thee I raise my daily prayer.”
—HOLLIS, The Masai, p. 346.

When Professor Tylor says that by the savage “the accomplishment of desire is asked for, but desire is as yet limited to personal advantage,” we must be careful not to infer that the only advantage a savage is capable of praying for is his own selfish advantage. Professor Tylor himself quotes (II, 366) the following prayer from the war-song of a Delaware:—

“O Great Spirit there above,
Have pity on my children
And my wife!
Prevent that they shall mourn for me!
Let me succeed in this undertaking,
That I may slay my enemy
And bring home the tokens of victory
To my dear family and my friends
That we may rejoice together....
Have pity on me and protect my life,
And I will bring thee an offering.”

Nor is it exclusively for their own personal advantage that the Masai women are concerned when they pray for the safe return of their sons from the wars:—

“O thou who gavest, thou to whom we pray
For offspring, take not now thy gift away.
O morning star, that shinest from afar,
Bring back our sons in safety from the war.”
—HOLLIS, p. 351.

Nor is it in a purely selfish spirit that the Masai women pray that their warriors may have the advantage over all their enemies:—

I

“O God of battles, break
The power of the foe.
Their cattle may we take,
Their mightiest lay low.

II

“Sing, O ye maidens fair,
For triumph o’er the foe.
This is the time for prayer
Success our arms may know.

III

“Morning and evening stars
That in the heavens glow,
Break, as in other wars,
The power of the foe.

IV

“O dweller, where on high
Flushes at dawn the snow,
O Cloud God, break, we cry,
The power of the foe.”
—Ib., p. 352.

Again, the rain that is prayed for by the Manganja of Lake Nyassa is an advantage indeed, but one enjoyed by the community and prayed for by the community. They made offerings to the Supreme Deity that he might give them rain, and “the priestess dropped the meal handful by handful on the ground, each time calling in a high-pitched voice, ‘Hear thou, O God, and send rain!’ and the assembled people responded, clapping their hands softly and intoning (they always intone their prayers), ‘Hear thou, O God’” (Tylor, p. 368).

The appeal then to facts shows that it is with the desires of the community that the god of the community is concerned, and that it is by a representative of the community that those desires are offered up in prayer, and that the community may join in. The appeal to facts shows, also, that an individual may put up individual petitions, as when a Yebu will pray: “God in heaven protect me from sickness and death. God give me happiness and wisdom.” But we may safely infer that the only prayers that the god of the community is expected to harken to are prayers that are consistent with the interests and welfare of the community.

From that point of view we must refuse to give more than a guarded assent to the “opinion that prayer appeared in the religion of the lower culture, but that in this its earlier stage it was unethical” (Tylor, 364). Prayer obviously does appear in the religion of the lower culture, but to say that it there is unethical is to make a statement which requires defining. The statement means what Professor Tylor expresses later on in the words: “It scarcely appears as though any savage prayer, authentically native in its origin, were ever directed to obtain moral goodness or to ask pardon for moral sin” (p. 373). But it might be misunderstood to mean that among savages it was customary or possible to pray for things recognised by the savage himself as wrong, and condemned by the community at large. In the first place, however, the god of the community simply as being the god of the community would not tolerate such prayers. Next, the range and extent of savage morality is less extensive than it is—or at any rate than it ought to be—in our day; and though we must recognise and at the right time insist upon the difference, that ought not to make us close our eyes to the fact that the savage does pray to do the things which savage morality holds it incumbent on him to do, for instance to fight bravely for the good of his wife, his children, and his tribe, to carry out the duty of avenging murder. And if he prays for wealth he also prays for wisdom; if he prays that his god may deliver him from sickness, that shows he is human rather than that he is a low type of humanity.

It would seem, then, that though in religions of low culture we meet religion under the guise of desire, we also find that religion makes a distinction between desires; there are desires which may be expressed to the god of the community, and desires which may not. Further, though it is in the heart of a person and an individual that desire must originate, it does not follow that prayer originates in individual desire. To say so, we must assume that the same desire cannot possibly originate simultaneously in different persons. But that is a patently erroneous assumption: in time of war, the desire for victory will spring up simultaneously in the hearts of all the tribe; in time of drought, the prayer for rain will ascend from the hearts of all the people; at the time of the sowing of seed a prayer for “the kindly fruits of the earth” may be uttered by every member of the community. Now it is precisely these desires, which being desires must originate in individual souls, yet being desires of every individual in the community are the desires of the community, that are the desires which take the form of prayer offered by the community or its representative to the god of the community. Anti-social desires cannot be expressed by the community or sanctioned by religion. Prayer is the essential expression of true socialism; and the spirit which prompts it is and has always been the moving spirit of social progress.

Professor Tylor, noticing the “extreme development of mechanical religion, the prayer-mill of the Tibetan Buddhists,” suggests that it “may perhaps lead us to form an opinion of large application in the study of religion and superstition; namely, that the theory of prayers may explain the origin of charms. Charm-formulæ,” he says, “are in very many cases actual prayers, and as such are intelligible. Where they are mere verbal forms, producing their effect on nature and man by some unexplained process, may not they or the types they have been modelled on have been originally prayers, since dwindled into mystic sentences?” (P. C. II, 372-373). Now, if this suggestion of Professor Tylor’s be correct, it will follow that as charms and spells are degraded survivals of prayer, so magic generally—of which charms and spells are but one department—is a degradation of religion. That in many cases charms and spells are survivals of prayer—formulæ from which all spirit of religion has entirely evaporated—all students of the science of religion would now admit. That prayers may stiffen into traditional formulæ, and then become vain repetitions which may actually be unintelligible to those who utter them, and so be conceived to have a force which is purely magical and a “nature practically assimilated more or less to that of charms” (l.c.), is a fact which cannot be denied. But when once the truth has been admitted that prayers may pass into spells, the possibility is suggested that it is out of spells that prayer has originated. Mercury raised to a high temperature becomes red precipitate; and red precipitate exposed to a still greater heat becomes mercury again. Spells may be the origin of prayers, if prayers show a tendency to relapse into spells. That possibility fits in either with the theory that magic preceded religion or still more exactly with the theory that religion simply is magic raised, so to speak, to a higher moral temperature. We have therefore to consider the possibility that the process of evolution has been from spell to prayer (R. R. Marett, Folk-Lore XV, 2, pp. 132-166); and let us begin the consideration by observing that the reverse passage—from prayer to spell—is only possible on the condition that religion evaporates entirely in the process. The prayer does not become a charm until the religion has disappeared entirely from it: a charm therefore is that in which no religion is, and out of which consequently no religion can be extracted. If then, per impossibile, it could be demonstrated that there was a period in the history of mankind, when charms and magic existed, and religion was utterly unknown; if it be argued that the spirit of religion, when at length it breathed upon mankind, transformed spells into prayers—still all that would then be maintained is that spoken formulæ which were spells were followed by other formulæ which are the very opposite of spells. Must we not, however, go one step further and admit that one and the same form of words may be prayer and religion when breathed in one spirit, and vain repetition and mere magic when uttered in another? Let us admit that the difference between prayer and spell lies in the difference of the spirit inspiring them; and then we shall see that the difference is essential, fundamental, as little to be ignored as it is impossible to bridge.

The formula used by the person employing it to express his desire may or may not in itself suffice to show whether it is religious in intent and value. Thus in West Africa the women of Framin dance and sing, “Our husbands have gone to Ashantee land; may they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth” (Frazer, Golden Bough,^2 I, 34). We may compare the song sung in time of war by the Masai women: “O God, to whom I pray for offspring, may our children return hither” (Hollis, p. 351); and there seems no reason why, since the Masai song is religious, the Framin song may not be regarded as religious also. But we have to remember that both prayers and spells have a setting of their own: the desires which they express manifest themselves not only in what is said but in what is done; and, when we enquire what the Framin women do whilst they sing the words quoted above, we find that they dance with brushes in their hands. The brushes are quite as essential as the words. It is therefore suggested that the whole ceremony is magical, that the sweeping is sympathetic magic and the song is a spell. The words explain what the action is intended to effect, just as in New Caledonia when a man has kindled a smoky fire and has performed certain acts, he “invokes his ancestors and says, ‘Sun! I do this that you may be burning hot, and eat up all the clouds in the sky’” (Frazer, ib., 116). Again, amongst the Masai in time of drought a charm called ol-kora is thrown into a fire; the old men encircle the fire and sing:—

“God of the rain-cloud, slake our thirst,
We know thy far-extending powers,
As herdsmen lead their kine to drink,
Refresh us with thy cooling showers.”
—HOLLIS, p. 348.

If the ol-kora which is thrown into the fire makes it rise in clouds of smoke, resembling the rain-clouds which are desired, then here too the ceremony taken as a whole presents the appearance of a magical rite accompanied by a spoken spell. It is true that in this case the ceremony is reënforced by an appeal to a god, just as in the New Caledonian case it is reënforced by an appeal to ancestor worship. But this may be explained as showing that here we have magic and charms being gradually superseded by religion and prayer; the old formula and the old rite are in process of being suffused by a new spirit, the spirit of religion, which is the very negation and ultimately the destruction of the old spirit of magic. Before accepting this interpretation, however, which is intended to show the priority of magic to religion, we may notice that it is not the only interpretation of which the facts are susceptible. It is based on the assumption that the words uttered are intended as an explanation of the meaning of the acts performed. If that assumption is correct, then the performer of the ceremony is explaining its meaning and intention to somebody. To whom? In the case of the New Caledonian ceremony, to the ancestral spirits; in the case of the Masai old men, to the god. Thus, the religious aspect of the ceremony appears after all to be an essential part of the ceremony, and not a new element in an old rite. And, then, we may consistently argue that the Framin women who sing, “Our husbands have gone to Ashantee land; may they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth,” are either still conscious that they are addressing a prayer to their native god; or that, if they are no longer conscious of the fact, they once were, and what was originally prayer has become by vain repetition a mere spell. All this is on the assumption that in these ceremonies, the words are intended to explain the meaning of the acts performed, and therefore to explain it to somebody, peradventure he will understand and grant the performer of the ceremony his heart’s desire. But, as the consequences of the assumption do not favour the theory that prayer must be preceded by spell, let us discard the assumption that the words explain the meaning of the acts performed. Let us consider the possibility that perhaps the actions which are gone through are meant to explain the words and make them more forcible. It is undeniable that in moments of emotion we express ourselves by gesture and the play of our features as well as by our words; indeed, in reading a play we are apt to miss the full meaning of the words simply because they are not assisted and interpreted by the actor’s gestures and features. If we take up this position, that the things done are explanatory of the words uttered and reënforce them, then the sweeping which is acted by the Framin women again is not magical; it simply emphasises the words, “may they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth,” and shows to the power appealed to what it is that is desired. The smoke sent up by the New Caledonian ancestor worshipper or the Masai old men is a way of indicating the clouds which they wish to attract or avert respectively. An equally clear case comes from the Kei Islands: “When the warriors have departed, the women return indoors and bring out certain baskets containing fruits and stones. These fruits and stones they anoint and place on a board, murmuring as they do so, ‘O lord sun, moon, let the bullets rebound from our husbands, brothers, betrothed, and other relations, just as raindrops rebound from these objects which are smeared with oil’” (Frazer, op. cit., p. 33). It is, I think, perfectly reasonable to regard the act performed as explanatory of the words uttered and of the thing desired; the women themselves explain to their lords, the sun and moon,—with the precision natural to women when explaining what they want,—exactly how they want the bullets to bounce off, just like raindrops. Dr. Frazer, however, from whom I have quoted this illustration, not having perhaps considered the possibility that the acts performed may be explanatory of the words, is compelled to explain the action as magical: “in this custom the ceremony of anointing stones in order that the bullets may recoil from the men like raindrops from the stones is a piece of pure sympathetic or imitative magic.” He is therefore compelled to suggest that the prayer to the sun is a prayer that he will give effect to the charm, and is perhaps a later addition. But independently of the possibility that the actions performed are explanatory of the words, or rather that words and actions both are intended to make clear to the sun precisely what the petition is, what tells against Dr. Frazer’s suggestion is that the women want the bullets to bounce off, and it is the power of the god to which they appeal and on which they rely for the fulfilment of their prayer.

There is, however, a further consideration which we should perhaps take into account. Man, when he has a desire which he wishes to realise,—and the whole of our life is spent in trying to realise what we wish,—takes all the steps which experience shows to be necessary or reason suggests; and, when he has done everything that he can do, he may still feel that nothing is certain in this life, and the thing may not come off. Under those circumstances he may, and often does, pray that success may attend his efforts. Now Dr. Frazer, in the second edition of his Golden Bough, wishing to show that the period of religion was preceded by a non-religious period in the history of mankind, suggests that at first man had no idea that his attempts to realise his desires could fail, and that it was his “tardy recognition” of the fact that led him to religion. This tardy recognition, he says, probably “proceeded very slowly, and required long ages for its more or less perfect accomplishment. For the recognition of man’s powerlessness to influence the course of nature on a grand scale must have been gradual” (I, 78). I would suggest, however, that it cannot have taken “long ages” for savage man to discover that his wishes and his plans did not always come off. It is, I think, going too far to imagine that for long ages man had no idea that his attempts to realise his desires could fail. If religion arises, as Dr. Frazer suggests, when man recognises his own weakness and his own powerlessness, often, to effect what he most desires, then man in his most primitive and most helpless condition must have been most ready to recognise that there were powers other than himself, and to desire, that is to pray for, their assistance. Doubtless it would be at the greater crises, times of pestilence, drought, famine and war, that his prayers would be most insistent; but it is in the period of savagery that famine is most frequent and drought most to be feared. Against them he takes all the measures known to him, all the practical steps which natural science, as understood by him, can suggest. Now his theory and practice include many things which, though they are in later days regarded as uncanny and magical, are to him the ordinary natural means of producing the effects which he desires. But when he has taken all the steps which practical reason suggests, and experience of the past approves, savage man, harassed by the dread of approaching drought or famine, may still breathe out the Manganja prayer, “Hear thou, O God, and send rain.” When, however, he does so, it is, I suggest, doubly erroneous to infer that this prayer takes the place of a spell or that apart from the prayer the acts performed are, and originally were, magical. These acts may be based on the principle that like produces like and may be performed as the ordinary, natural means for producing the effect, which have nothing magical about them. And they are accompanied by a prayer which is not a mere explanation or statement of the purpose with which the acts are performed, but is the expression of the heart’s desire.

No à priori proofs of any cogency, therefore, have been adduced by Dr. Frazer, and none therefore are likely to be produced by any one else, to show that there was ever a period in the history of man when prayers and religion were unknown to him. The question remains whether any actual instances are known to the science of religion. Unfortunately, as I pointed out at the beginning of this lecture, so neglected by the science of religion has been the subject of prayer that even now we are scarcely able to go beyond the statement made more than a quarter of a century ago by Professor Tylor that, “at low levels of civilisation there are many races who distinctly admit the existence of spirits, but are not certainly known to pray to them even in thought” (P. C. II, 364). Professor Tylor’s statement is properly guarded: there are races not certainly known to pray. The possibility that they may yet be discovered to make prayers is not excluded.

Now, if we turn to one of the lowest levels of culture, that of the Australian black fellows, we shall find that there is much doubt amongst students whether the “aborigines have consciously any form of religion whatever” (Howitt, Native Tribes of S. E. Australia), and in southeast Australia Mr. Howitt thinks it cannot be alleged that they have, though their beliefs are such that they might easily have developed into an actual religion (p. 507). Now one of the tribes of southeast Australia is that of the Dieri. With them rain is very important, for periods of drought are frequent; and “rain-making ceremonies are considered of much consequence” (p. 394). The ceremonies are symbolic: there is “blood to symbolise the rain” and two large stones “representing gathering clouds presaging rain,” just as the New Caledonian sends up clouds of smoke to symbolise rain-clouds, and the Masai, we have conjectured, throw ol-kora into the fire for the same purpose. But the New Caledonian not only performs the actions prescribed for the rite, he also invokes the spirits of his ancestors; and the Masai not only go through the proper dance, but call upon the god of the rain-cloud. The Dieri, however, ought to be content with their symbolic or sympathetic magic and not offer up any prayer. But, being unaware of this fact, they do pray: they call “upon the rain-making Mura-muras to give them power to make a heavy rainfall, crying out in loud voices the impoverished state of the country, and the half-starved condition of the tribe, in consequence of the difficulty in procuring food in sufficient quantity to preserve life” (p. 394). The Mura-muras seem to be ancestral spirits, like those invoked by the New Caledonian. If we turn to the Euahlayi tribe of northwestern New South Wales, we find that at the Boorah rites a prayer is offered to Byamee, “asking him to let the blacks live long, for they have been faithful to his charge as shown by the observance of the Boorah ceremony” (L. Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe, p. 79). That is the prayer of the community to Byamee, and is in conformity with what we have noted before, viz. that it is with the desires of the community that the god of the community is concerned. Another prayer, the nature of which is not stated by Mrs. Parker, by whom the information is given us, is put up at funerals, presumably to Byamee by the community or its representative. Mrs. Parker adds: “Though we say that actually these people have but two attempts at prayers, one at the grave and one at the inner Boorah ring, I think perhaps we are wrong. When a man invokes aid on the eve of battle, or in his hour of danger and need; when a woman croons over her baby an incantation to keep him honest and true, and that he shall be spared in danger,—surely these croonings are of the nature of prayers born of the same elementary frame of mind as our more elaborate litanies.” As an instance of the croonings Mrs. Parker gives the mother’s song over her baby as soon as it begins to crawl:—-

“Kind be,
Do not steal,
Do not touch what to another belongs,
Leave all such alone,
Kind be.”

These instances may suffice to show that it would not have been safe to infer, a year or two ago, from the fact that the Australians were not known to pray, that therefore prayer was unknown to them. Indeed, we may safely go farther and surmise that other instances besides those noted really exist, though they have not been observed or if observed have not been understood. Among the northern tribes of central Australia rites are performed to secure food, just as they are performed by the Dieri to avert drought. The Dieri rites are accompanied by a prayer, as we have seen. The Kaitish rites to promote the growth of grass are accompanied by the singing of words, which “have no meaning known to the natives of the present day” (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 292). Amongst the Mara tribe the rain-making rite consists simply in “singing” the water, drinking it and spitting it out in all directions. In the Anula tribe “dugongs are a favourite article of food,” and if the natives desire to bring them out from the rocks, they “can do so by ‘singing’ and throwing sticks at the rocks” (ib., pp. 313, 314). It is reasonable to suppose that in all these cases the “singing” is now merely a charm. But if we remember that prayers, when their meaning is forgotten, pass by vain repetitions into mere charms, we may also reasonably suppose that these Australian charms are degraded prayers; and we shall be confirmed in this supposition to some extent by the fact that in the Kaitish tribes the words sung “have no meaning known to the natives of the present day.” If the meaning has evaporated, the religion may have evaporated with it. That the rites, of which the “singing” is an essential part, have now become magical and are used and understood to be practised purely to promote the supply of dugongs and other articles of food, may be freely admitted; but it is unsafe to infer that the purpose with which the rites continue to be practised is the whole of the purpose with which they were originally performed. If the meaning of the “singing” has passed entirely away, the meaning of the rites may have suffered a change. At the present day the rite is understood to increase the supply of dugongs or other articles of food. But it may have been used originally for other purposes. Presumably rites of a similar kind, certainly of some kind, are practised by the Australians who have for their totem the blow-fly, the water-beetle, or the evening star. But they do not eat flies or beetles. Their original purpose in choosing the evening star cannot have been to increase its number. Nor can that have been the object of choosing the mosquito for a totem. But if the object of the rites is not to increase the number of mosquitoes, flies, and beetles, it need not in the first instance have been the object with which the rites were celebrated in the case of other totems.

Let us now return to Professor Tylor’s statement that “at low levels of civilisation there are many races who distinctly admit the existence of spirits, but are not certainly known to pray to them even in thought.” The number of those races who are not known to pray is being reduced, as we have seen. And I think we may go even farther than that and say that where the existence of spirits is not merely believed in, but is utilised for the purpose of establishing permanent relations between a community and a spirit, we may safely infer that the community offers prayer to the spirit, even though the fact may have escaped the notice of travellers. The reason why we may infer it is that at the lower levels of civilisation we meet with religion, in Höffding’s words, “in the guise of desire.” We may put the same truth in other words and say that religion is from the beginning practical. Such prayers as are known to us to be put up by the lowest races are always practical: they may be definite petitions for definite goods such as harvest or rain or victory in time of war; or they may be general petitions such as that of the Khonds: “We are ignorant of what it is good for us to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it us.” But in any case what the god of a community is there for is to promote the good of the community. It is because the savage has petitions to put up that he believes there are powers who can grant his petitions. Prayer is the very root of religion. When the savage has taken every measure he knows of to produce the result he desires, he then goes on to pray for the rainfall he desires, crying out in a loud voice “the impoverished state of the country and the half-starved condition of the tribe.” It is true that it is in moments of stress particularly, if not solely, that the savage turns to his god—and the same may be said of many of us—but it is with confidence and hope that he turns to him. If he had no confidence and no hope, he would offer no prayers. But he has hope, he has faith; and every time he prays his heart says, if his words do not, “in Thee, Lord, do we put our trust.”

That prayer is the essence, the very breath, of religion, without which it dies, is shown by the fact that amongst the very lowest races of mankind we find frequent traditions of the existence of a high god or supreme being, the creator of the world and the father of mankind. The numerous traces of this dying tradition have been collected by the untiring energy and the unrivalled knowledge of Mr. Andrew Lang in his book, The Making of Religion. In West Africa Dr. Nassau (Fetichism in West Africa, pp. 36 ff.) “hundreds of times” (p. 37) has found that “they know of a Being superior to themselves, of whom they themselves,” he says, “inform me that he is the Maker and the Father.” What is characteristic of the belief of the savages in this god is that, in Dr. Nassau’s words, “it is an accepted belief, but it does not often influence their life. ‘God is not in all their thought.’ In practice they give Him no worship.” The belief is in fact a dying tradition; and it is dying because prayer is not offered to this remote and traditional god. I say that the belief is a dying tradition, and I say so because its elements, which are all found present and active where a community believes in, prays to, and worships the god of the community, are found partially, but only partially, present where the belief survives but as a tradition. Thus, for instance, where the belief is fully operative, the god of the community sanctions the morality of the community; but sometimes where the belief has become merely traditional, this traditional god is supposed to take no interest in the community and exercises no ethical influence over the community. Thus, in West Africa, Nyankupon is “ignored rather than worshipped.” In the Andaman Islands, on the other hand, where the god Puluga is still angered by sin or wrong-doing, he is pitiful to those in pain or distress and “sometimes deigns to afford relief” (Lang p. 212 quoting Man, J. A. I., XII, 158). Again, where the belief in the god of the community is fully operative, the occasions on which the prayers of the community are offered are also the occasions on which sacrifice is made. Where sacrifice and prayers are not offered, the belief may still for a time survive, at it does among the Fuegians. They make no sacrifice and, as far as is known, offer no prayers; but to kill a man brings down the wrath of their god, the big man in the woods: “Rain come down, snow come down, hail come down, wind blow, blow, very much blow. Very bad to kill man. Big man in woods no like it, he very angry” (Lang, p. 188, quoting Fitzroy, II, 180). But when sacrifice and prayer cease, the ultimate outcome is that which is found amongst the West African natives, who, as Dr. Nassau tells us (p. 38), say with regard to Anzam, whom they admit to be their Creator and Father, “Why should we care for him? He does not help nor harm us. It is the spirits who can harm us whom we fear and worship, and for whom we care.” Who the spirits are Dr. Nassau does not say, but they must be either the other gods of the place or the fetich spirits. And the reason why Anzam is no longer believed to help or harm the natives is obviously that, from some cause or other, there is now no longer any established form of worship of him. The community of which he was originally the god may have broken up, or more probably may have been broken up, with the result that the congregation which met to offer prayer and sacrifice to Anzam was scattered; and the memory of him alone survives. Nothing would be more natural, then, than that the natives, when asked by Dr. Nassau, “Why do you not worship him?” (p. 38), should invent a reason, viz. that it is no use worshipping him now—the truth being that the form of worship has perished for reasons now no longer present to the natives’ mind. In any case, when prayers cease to be offered—whether because the community is broken up or because some new quarter is discovered to which prayers can be offered with greater hope of success—when prayers, for any reason, do cease to be offered to a god, the worship of him begins to cease also, for the breath of life has departed from it.

In this lecture, as my subject is primitive religion, I have made no attempt to trace the history of prayer farther than the highest point which it reaches in the lower levels of religion. That is the point reached by the Khond prayer: “We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it us.” That is also the highest point reached by the most religious mind amongst the ancient Greeks: Socrates prayed the gods simply for things good, because the gods knew best what is good (Xen., Mem., I, iii, 2). The general impression left on one’s mind by the prayers offered in this stage of religious development is that man is here and the gods are—there. But “there” is such a long way off. And yet, far off as it is, man never came to think it was so far off that the gods could not hear. The possibility of man’s entering into some sort of communication with them was always present. Nay! more, a community of interests between him and them was postulated: the gods were to promote the interests of the community, and man was to serve the gods. On occasions when sacrifice was made and prayer was offered, the worshippers entered into the presence of God, and communion with Him was sought; but stress was laid rather on the sacrifice offered than on the prayers sent up. The communion at which animal sacrifice aimed may have been gross at times, and at others mystic; but it was the sacrifice rather than the prayer which accompanied it that was regarded as essential to the communion desired, as the means of bridging the gap between man here and the gods there. If, however, the gap was to be bridged, a new revelation was necessary, one revealing the real nature of the sacrifice required by God, and of the communion desired by man. And that revelation is made in Our Lord’s Prayer. With the most earnest and unfeigned desire to use the theory of evolution as a means of ordering the facts of the history of religion and of enabling us—so far as it can enable us—to understand them, one is bound to notice as a fact that the theory of evolution is unable to account for or explain the revelation, made in Our Lord’s Prayer, of the spirit which is both human and divine. It is the beam of light which, when turned on the darkness of the past, enables us to see whither man with his prayers and his sacrifices had been blindly striving, the place where he fain would be. It is the surest beacon the missionary can hold out to those who are still in darkness and who show by the fact that they pray—if only for rain, for harvest, and victory over all their enemies—that they are battling with the darkness and that they have not turned entirely away from the light of His countenance who is never at any time far from any one of us. Their heart within them is ready to bear witness. Religion is present in them, if only under “the guise of desire”; but it is “the desire of all nations” for which they yearn.

There are, Höffding says, “two tendencies in the nature of religious feeling: on the one hand there is the need to collect and concentrate ourselves, to resign ourselves, to feel ourselves supported and carried by a power raised above all struggle and opposition and beyond all change. But within the religious consciousness another need makes itself felt, the need of feeling that in the midst of the struggle we have a fellow-struggler at our side, a fellow-struggler who knows from his own experience what it is to suffer and meet resistance” (The Philosophy of Religion, § 54). Between these two tendencies Höffding discovers an opposition or contradiction, an “antinomy of religious feeling.” But it is precisely because Christianity alone of all religions recognises both needs that it transcends the antinomy. The antinomy is indeed purely intellectual. Höffding himself says, “only when recollection, collation, and comparison are possible do we discover the opposition or the contradiction between the two tendencies.” And in saying that, inasmuch as recollection, collation, and comparison are intellectual processes, he admits that the antinomy is intellectual. That it is not an antinomy of religious feeling is shown by the fact that the two needs exist, that is to say, are both felt. To say à priori that both cannot be satisfied is useless in face of the fact that those who feel them find that Christianity satisfies them.