Lecture IV The Evolution of Prayer From Lower to Higher Forms
There is no part of the religious service of mankind that so clearly reveals the various views of the divine nature held by the different races at the different stages of their development as the formulæ of prayer, or reflects so vividly the material and psychologic history of man. The historic material at our disposal is unfortunately modern, not reaching back, that is to say, to a period earlier than some four thousand years before Christ; but this can be supplemented, as usually happens, by the evidence gathered from the lower societies, as well as by the observation of practices that frequently accompany and are very closely blended with prayer even in the higher religions, and that we may with confidence believe to have descended from an immemorial antiquity. The question as to the origin of prayer is one of great difficulty and of the deepest significance for the history and philosophy of religion; for it inevitably involves the questions concerning the origin of the belief in a personal divinity, concerning the relation of magic to religion, of the spell-ritual which commands or constrains to a prayer-ritual of humiliation and entreaty. Even if I had an original and matured judgment to put before you on questions of such importance, a single lecture would be a very inadequate space for its exposition.164.1 Therefore, though I may indicate, I will not attempt in this lecture to decide on, the question of origin. I will content myself with arranging the phenomena according as they appear from our point of view to belong to a lower stratum of religion or a higher; such an arrangement begs no question, and agrees with our experience that in all religions, whether savage or civilised, lower and higher elements are able to coexist. I will first give a general sketch of the facts, with some interpretation of them, and will follow this with an illustrative selection of the prayers of primitive and advanced communities.
According to the modern definition of prayer, man addresses uttered or inaudible speech to a divine power conceived as Spirit or God, but always as personal, in order to obtain material, moral, or spiritual blessings: that part of the address that contains the actual prayer will be often accompanied by words of homage, adoration, confession of sin, expressions of doctrinal faith, statements concerning the beneficent operations of the divinity in time past, self-assuring utterances of confidence in divine protection or the divine promise. Though the formulæ contain much positive statement and are by no means confined to the optative mood, the attitude of the supplicator is always reverential and self-abased; modern religion reprobates any idea of compelling the divinity; only it generally seals its petitions with the mystic signature of a powerful name. If this may pass as a fairly comprehensive and adequate account of modern or advanced prayer, it will still be found to contain elements that may descend from a very ancient mould of religious thought not easy to reconcile with our higher religious consciousness; and it is no adequate account of the various modes which less advanced societies have used and are still using to express their desires to the supernatural power. It has indeed been recently asserted, with some plausibility,166.1 that no savage community yet explored lacks the conception of a high god making for righteousness; and certainly many of the lower races have spontaneously developed genuine prayer in the modern sense. Still it is sometimes reported by scientific observers that some backward peoples do not pray at all;167.1 and it appears not to be uncommon for the savage to regard his high god as too remote to be addressed for any practical purpose.
But the savage, though he may pray as we do, has other ways of addressing himself to the unseen personal agencies that he believes to surround him; and these are the ways of magic and the magic-spell. Having learned from human experience that he can project his will-power by an occult process so as to subdue the mind of his fellow-man, he experiments with this method upon the world of nature and spirits: he deals with ghosts chiefly in this way, though he may pray to them also; and he has no reluctance in applying his magic even to the higher divinities. As magic-worker he stands on a different footing altogether from the petitioner: his attitude towards the supernatural power is self-confident and imperious, his speech is no prayer but a command. He may project his will by dumb show, by action suggestive of his desire: but in most cases he will probably prefer to accompany it with potent speech, so as to drive his will home to the mark, so to speak: and the psychology of such magic practices has been ably investigated by recent writers. The technical name for such exercise of will upon another person is suggestion; a modern application of it sometimes appears in the extreme form that we call mesmerism or hypnotism. For the successful application of the charm, it is often an essential condition that one should possess oneself of the name of the person against whom it is directed, and at times of his picture or effigy, for both the name and the picture are regarded as vital parts of the whole individuality that one seeks to control. The same ideas transferred into the world of supernatural personalities account for the potency and deep significance that attaches to the divine name, and for the prominence of the picture and the effigy in the religious magic. But the savage has also learned from experience that he can work upon his fellows by entreaty, flattery, soothing and endearing address: and it was obviously natural for him to approach the divine powers in the same fashion, and to use humble and prayerful petitions. Nor does there seem any reason why he should not employ the methods of magic and prayer simultaneously or in close conjunction on the same occasion. We may often in fact be in doubt whether to interpret a certain primitive religious act from one point of view or the other. Thus we are told that when the Khonds of Orissa are about to enter on a campaign, “the priest cuts a branch and dresses it and arms it, so as to personate one of the foe: thereupon it is thrown down at the shrine of the war-god”:169.1 This formal appeal to the god is speechless, and may be thought to be a speechless prayer; but it is of the same colour as a multifarious mass of practices which are mimetic and which are intended to work by means of suggestion. A singular ritual is recorded of the rain societies of North America:170.1 emblems or picture-writing representing clouds, with vertical drops symbolising rain, are placed on an altar, ears of maize are placed by the side of them with other objects, and the corn-ears are sprinkled with water, while at the same time prayers are proffered to the ghosts that control the rain-supply. We would wish to know what the manner of the praying is; but it seems clear that we here have the ritual of prayer combined with magic-suggestion, which consists in pretending to do the thing which it is desired to bring about. Again, the primitive formulæ devised to drive out the demons of disease and poverty are usually imperious commands and not prayers: such as the Chinese “Let the devil of poverty depart”;170.2 the Greek, “Go out, hunger,”170.3 and “To the door, you ghosts.”170.4
But when, as in Buro, the bidding takes such a form as “Grandfather small-pox, go away,”171.1 the reverential and soothing address allows us to approximate this to prayer, for in the liturgies of the earlier as well as the advanced religions the divinity is commonly addressed in terms of kinship. We shall note instances of real prayers proffered by the uncultured races to a high god, yet retaining something of the magic character and tone: we detect it in the mystic employment of the name, in the reiteration of the same short phrase, in the droning sing-song in which, according to Professor Tylor,171.2 savage prayers are usually intoned, the tone of a mesmeric incantation. But gradually, as the concept of divinity deepens in the progressive race, and the mind becomes penetrated with the consciousness of the littleness of man and of the incomparable greatness of God, the worshipper tends to become the humble petitioner and prayer comes to predominate over spell. And it has happened in the legislation of the higher religions that magic at last becomes “suspect” and tabooed: yet the most austere and purified religion often unconsciously retains certain elements of spell-ritual, and even legitimatises the spell by virtue of the distinction between white magic and black. The distinction is morphologically unsound, and arises generally from ex-parte prejudice. We do not find, in fact, if we broadly compare the phenomena of all religions, that cleavage and irreconcilable antagonism between magic and religion which has often been supposed. Even in religions that we must class as high, the deity himself is often imagined to work by means of magic, and the Christian Church itself has given its patronage and consecration to practices of magical significance, such as the ordeal, purification, certain forms of healing, exorcisms of evil spirits: all these will be accompanied by prayers to God, but the prayers are so impregnated with the ideas of animistic magic that we can hardly regard them as pure forms. Nevertheless, though the lower elements are so difficult to eradicate, yet the experience of some few of the higher communities may reassure us that as a religion progresses in spirituality it can purge itself more and more thoroughly of these, and the progress is from spell to prayer.
Again, we may compare the phenomena from the point of view of the progress in aspiration. In the primitive period, when the struggle is to live at all rather than to live well, the objects of prayer must be material blessings, and these are still prominent in the liturgies of the civilised societies. There is a sameness in all these, and the chief distinction to note is between the prayers that look to the individual alone and those that look to the good of the community. A higher stage is reached when moral and spiritual qualities become the object of prayer; and when this is attained, the principle of prayer is likely to become more and more spiritual, and the petitioner more and more diffident in the expression of his material wants, and with a growing consciousness that the Deity knows best what is good for man, may rise to the height of the formula, “Thy will be done.” It is interesting to note in how many races some such utterance has been heard; and at times men may have been helped to it by the consciousness which scientific advance had awakened, that the laws of the material universe cannot be capriciously altered to suit the temporary needs of the individual: a formula of acquiescence appears then to be the deepest and truest prayer. Finally, in the evolution of prayer we may consider that the consummation is marked by the theory, maintained by later Greek philosophy and early Christian fathers alike, that the true intention of prayer is not the mere petition for some special blessing, but rather the communion with God, to whom it is a spiritual approach. Here as often elsewhere, the highest spiritual product of human thought reveals its affinity with some dimly remote primeval concept; for much of the spell-ritual at which we have been glancing implies an idea of such communion, the human agent endeavouring to charge himself with a potency drawn from a quasi-divine source.
It remains now to take concrete examples from the record of prayer illustrative of these phases of development. Looking first at the savage races, we have already observed that some of their formulæ seem to belong to the borderland between spell and prayer. When the New Caledonian says over the fire that he kindles to increase the heat of the sun, “Sun, I do this that you may be burning hot,” it is obviously not a prayer that he utters to the sun-god but a formula expressing the suggestion of his magic.175.1 And when the Karens of Burma at the threshing of the rice call out to the corn-mother, “Shake thyself, grandmother, shake thyself. Let the paddy ascend till it equals a hill, equals a mountain; shake thyself, grandmother, shake thyself,”176.1 we have surely a command rather than a pure prayer; for primitive vegetation-ritual works by compulsion rather than entreaty. On the other hand, we have record of a genuine Karen prayer addressed to “the God of heaven and earth, God of the mountains and hills,” on the occasion when a sin of unchastity was supposed to have sterilised the earth: “Do not be angry with me, do not hate me, but have mercy on me and compassionate me.… Now I repair the mountains, now I heal the hills.… Make thy paddy fruitful, thy rice abundant.… If we cultivate but little, still grant that we may obtain a little.” But the prayer is accompanied with rites that are purely magical and aiming at the restoration of the earth.176.2
The buffalo clan among the Sioux Indians decorate themselves with emblems of their totem animal before going on the war-path, and express the purpose of the dressing with a sententious phrase: “My little grandfather is always dangerous when he makes an attempt.”177.1 Such an utterance, considered formally, is not a prayer but a statement about the power of the buffalo, “the little grandfather”; for it is an article of faith in the magic creed that the supernatural force, which the spell aims at setting in operation, can be made to work by definite statements that it is working; these are suggestive assurances that increase one’s own confidence; and the Sioux formula is of such a nature; only the coaxing and endearing phrase of kinship seems to imply a half entreaty as well. We discern more clearly the rudiments of a prayer in the words addressed by the Santee Indians to the buffalo when they have offered him a feast: “Grandfather, venerable man, thy children have made this feast for you: may the food thus taken cause them to live and bring them good fortune.”178.1 The account of the Sioux religion preserves a quaint form of words which are used for the riddance of the ghost, to despatch the soul of the deceased to the home of the dead: “You are going to the animals, you are going to your ancestors, you came hither from the animals and you are going back thither: do not face this way again: when you go, continue walking.”178.2 The tone of the words is kind and considerate, but authoritative rather than supplicatory, and unlike the formula which the same Indians are reported to use when praying to their ancestors for good weather or good hunting, “Spirits of the dead, have mercy on us.”178.3 Certain prayers used habitually by the Todas of the Nalgiri hills for the thriving of the dairy and the buffalo herd have recently been published,178.4 and as the formulæ are all in the optative mood—“May it be well for the buffaloes, may there be no destroyer, etc.,” and there is an appeal to divine personages or powers—“for the sake of such or such a god may this happen”—we may class them as prayers; but the appeal is very faint and the formulæ seem to be used as if they possessed a self-dependent efficacy. More interesting and fervent is the address to the sun, proffered by a solitary hunter of the half-christianised Kekchi tribe of Indians:179.1 his object is to secure game and food in the wilderness both for himself and as an oblation to the god; but in the very long and impassioned utterance, with its many repetitions, there is very little direct entreaty: the Indian contents himself with definite and reassuring statements concerning the omnipresence of the deity and the ease with which the latter can execute his will: “It will give you no trouble to give me all kind of game”; and a moving appeal is made on the ground of kinship: “Thou art my father: who is my mother, who is my father? Only thou, O God.”
We may regard these utterances of the hunter not indeed as spells, for his attitude is most reverent and loving, but as potent statement effecting the purpose of prayer. Nor need we see Christian influence in the striking phrase last quoted, though of course this is possible; such endearing address is common both in the lower and higher liturgies: the Egyptian appealed to Isis in similar terms180.1—“Oh my father, my brother, my mother Isis,” the Babylonian addressed Bel as father and mother,180.2 and a Vedic hymn contains the phrase, “Thou, oh Agni, art our father, we are thy kinsmen.”180.3 Such appeals, suggested by the affection between kinsmen and the idea of the kinship of man with God, belong to the alphabet of pure prayer.
Of still more value for the light it throws on the attitude of the Indian’s mind to the powers of the unseen world, is the so-called prayer of a Navajo Shaman belonging to the district of Arizona, recently published in the American Anthropologist;181.1 and to understand it the circumstances must be briefly stated. The Shaman had been telling the American inquirer the story of his tribe’s descent through the lower world and their re-emergence: after the narrative he fears that speaking about the lower regions may have caused his own spiritual or astral part to have left his body and departed thither; and he therefore proceeds to recite a long so-called prayer intended to deliver his soul from the witchcraft that may be detaining it below. We should not strictly call it a prayer at all, but a narrative in the indicative mood stating that the war-gods of the tribe are actually doing what he specially wants them to do, namely, to go down and rescue his soul from the woman-chieftain, “the underground witch.” Every step of their way there and back is carefully recounted several times over, so that they cannot go wrong; and when they are supposed to have brought back his soul, the recital ends with the joyful refrain, “The world before me is restored in beauty: my voice is restored in beauty,” each phrase repeated five times. It is really a spell-narrative about the gods, having the same effect as prayer, and is a twofold illustration of the primitive idea that talking about a thing makes it happen; an idea not wholly extinct among ourselves, and possibly underlying some of the liturgies of higher religions.
For the rest, savages often pray very much as the civilised man, and accompany some of their purifications and medicine-magic with real prayers to higher gods to give them efficacy: for instance, the African doctor administering the medicine shown him by the fetich holds it first up to heaven and prays, “Father Heaven, bless this medicine that I now give.”183.1 But I have not been able to find any example of a savage prayer for moral or spiritual blessings. An interesting feature is, however, observable in a verbose and very exacting prayer made by the Khonds of Orissa to the earth-goddess; after particularising very carefully their material wants, they conclude with the words, “We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us, give it us.”183.2 This appears to be a unique savage version of the great phrase, “Thy will be done.”
Turning now to the liturgies of the more advanced peoples,183.3 we may note briefly at the outset one feature that is found in most of them if not common to all; namely, the idea that the prayer gains potency from the solemn utterance of the true divine name. The phenomenon has been examined by recent writers on comparative religion, especially by Giesebrecht in his treatise on Die Alt-testamentliche Schätzung des Gottesnamens.184.1 In primitive psychology, the name is part of the personality, and the soul or power of the individual inheres in it: therefore he who has the name of the person, whether human, superhuman, or divine, can exercise a certain control over him by means of its magical application. Thus in the appeal to the god Ukko in the Kalevala, “Ukko, oh thou god in heaven, Ukko come, we call upon thee, Ukko come, we need thee sorely,” there is virtue in the threefold repetition of the name, and the passage is part of an address which is called “magic words.” Evidence from Teutonic paganism, so far as I know, is lacking, although the idea has left its clear imprint on the human saga. Its influence is strongest and its operation most interesting in the liturgies of the Mediterranean and of India. In old Latium, it seems, the pontifices endeavoured to conceal the true names of the gods, lest they might be wrongly used by unauthorised persons185.1 or lest the enemy should get the knowledge of them and therewith the power to draw the divinities away. We may thus understand the often misinterpreted statement in Herodotus, that the Pelasgian deities were nameless; and the Greeks themselves must have been familiar with the ritual precaution of keeping secret the divine name, as we may gather from the phrase in the Euripidean fragment185.2 about the enlightened man “who knows the silent names of the gods”: it is curious to find exactly the same expression in a Vedic hymn,185.3 in which the sacrificial post, or tree to which the sacrifices were attached, is thus addressed: “Where thou knowest, oh tree, the sacred names of the gods, to that place make the offerings go.” It is possible that the same superstition may have been the original cause of the custom that has sometimes been observed of silent or inaudible prayer: the formulæ with the divine name attached to them being of such potency that they must be concealed.
The belief that the name belongs to the essence of the personality explains the curious formula in the Umbrian prayer preserved in the Tabulæ Iguvinæ, where the god Grabovius is implored to be propitious to the “Arx Fisia” and to “the name of the Arx Fisia,” as if the name of the city was a living and independent entity.
In the Greek liturgies we note the anxious care with which particular qualifying epithets were selected and attached to the personal name of the divinity, so as to make clear what was the precise operation of divine favour which the prayer aimed at evoking. This explains why so many divinities, some of whom were scarcely known outside a narrow area, were invoked as πολυώνυμε, “thou god of many names,” all possible titles of power being summed up in one word. Certain passages in the poets become intelligible only in the light of this idea: such as the well-known phrase in the chorus of the Agamemnon of Æschylus:187.1 “Zeus, whosoever the god is, if this name of Zeus is dear to him, by this name I now appeal to him.” The thought and the words of the Vedic poet are often the same as the Greek: Agni is πολυώνυμος: “Agni, many are the names of thee the Immortal one”; and again, “The father adoring gives many names to thee, oh Agni, if thou shouldest take pleasure therein.”187.2
But it is in Egypt, the land of magic, where the idea of the potency of the divine name assumes dimensions that are truly gigantic. In an early metaphysical theory of the origin of things, which in its harmonious self-contradiction reaches quite to the level of Hegelian philosophy, the universe is said to have come into being, and the first god himself effects his own creation by the utterance of his own portentous name:188.1 in the beginning was the name. It is said of the great god Ra that “his names are manifold and unknown, even the gods know them not.” Naturally, therefore, the goddess Isis was desirous of knowing his real name, and having discovered it by a ruse, she became mistress over him and all gods.188.2 In certain Egyptian papyri containing Abraxas prayers, we find the prayer sometimes coupled with the reminder that the petitioner knows the divine mystic name;188.3 thus equipped, the prayer is more than a mere humble entreaty.
Was it from Egypt that the early Israelites derived the same mystic illusion concerning the divine name, which to some of the scholars of the last generation appeared to be a faith peculiar to the chosen people? At least we are now enabled, by the recent exposition of the facts, to understand the inner force of such prayers as the Psalmist’s “Save me, oh God, by thy name and judge me by thy strength”:189.1 of Jahvé’s warning to his people in the Exodus to obey the angel whom he sends them, “Obey his voice… for my Name is in him:”189.2 of the oath taken by those initiated into the Essenian sect not to reveal the names of the angels:189.3 of expressions in the New Testament concerning the casting out of devils and the healing of the sick in the name of Jesus: finally, of the significant baptismal phrase, “to baptize into the name of Christ,”189.4 which reveals the name as a religious potency into which as into a spiritual atmosphere the adult catechumen or the initiated infant is brought. And these facts of old-world religion and religious logic cast a new light on the name-formulæ which close most of the prayers of the Christian Church, and which are words of power to speed the prayer home; and though the modern consciousness may often be unaware of this mystic function of theirs, we may believe that it was more clearly recognised in the early days of Christianity, for in the apocryphal acts of St John we find a long list of mystical names and titles attached to Christ giving to the prayer much of the tone of an enchantment.190.1
Connected as it seems with this superstition about names is the belief that, in order to gain complete power over a human or divine personality, it is necessary to know their origin and to express what one knows about them in the charm: thus in the Kalevala the young magician is taught the origin of things in order that he may know the proper enchantment against them, and a long account of the origin of iron, regarded as a demoniac substance, occurs in the word-magic used to cure the wound it inflicted. Hence we may account for the descriptive or, so to speak, biographical element in charms that are on the borderland of prayer. The exorciser of evil dreams in the Atharva-Veda prays or sings thus: “We know, oh sleep, thy birth; thou art the son of the divine women-folk, the instrument of Death. Thou art the ender, thou art Death. Thus do we know thee, oh sleep: do thou, oh sleep, protect us from evil dreams.”191.1 And in the worship of Agni the belief is expressed that “the prayers fill thee with power and strengthen thee,” and this is at once followed by an account of his nature and origin.191.2 Is it then too far-fetched to trace the survival of this old-world thought, rooted as it is in the magic of the word and the statement, in the prominence given to the dogmatic biographical statement in our own liturgy? We regard it as a confession of faith: it may also be regarded as an expression of the worshipper’s knowledge of the divine personality, whereby he raises himself into communion with it and thus gains power for his prayer.192.1
Considering now in a more general survey the liturgies of the nations that have attained culture, we might begin with our own fathers. But so little that touches the inner life of their pre-Christian religion has been preserved, that probably not much material for our present purpose is to be discovered from the records. We know that they were given to the employment of the rune or the spell, the rival or the parent of prayer; and one of these, used by Odin to heal the sprained foot of Baldur’s foal, is perhaps the only surviving fragment of Indo-Germanic poetry.193.1 Odin sings, “Bone to bone, blood to blood, limb to limb, as though they were glued together”; in a later Norwegian, and also in a Scottish version, it is Christ who heals the foal with the same magic words, strengthened however by the formula, “Heal in the Holy Ghost’s name.” And this useful medicine-charm was not forgotten by the Aryan Indians, for we find the words in the Atharva-Veda, “Fit together, hair with hair, fit together, skin with skin: thy blood, thy bone shall grow.”193.2 Neither god nor ghost was needed to help out the force of such incantations. But probably some time before Christianity prayer had come to prevail over spell in the Teutonic North, for there are traces there of a certain antagonism growing between magic and religion, which led to the condemnation of certain forms of magic.194.1
An interesting question arises about a prayer-charm used by the early English against sterility of the fields: “Hail be thou, Earth, Mother of Men, wax fertile in the embrace of God, fulfilled with fruit for the use of man.”194.2 This poetic utterance implies a veritable ἱερὸς γάμος, or holy marriage of earth and heaven in the Greek sense; and reminds us vividly of the spell-formula, used in the Eleusinian Mysteries and descending from the period when the purpose of these was mainly agricultural, Υέ Κύε, “Rain and Conceive,” which was uttered by the mystes, who folded his arms and glanced up to the sky at the first word and down to the earth at the second: a spell-prayer for fertility and human increase. It is probably then correct to call this phrase of our ancestors, which is the only surviving fragment, so far as I am aware, of their pre-Christian liturgy, a spell-prayer that was efficacious by way of suggestion rather than of entreaty.
Of the same ambiguous character was the old Roman chant of the priests of Mars, “Enos Lases juvate,” “Help us, O spirits of our ancestors,” repeated with the iteration common in enchantments and accompanied with dancing and with the utterance of the word “triumpe.” From the higher point of view the Roman prayers that have come down to us are barren and dull; the well-known liturgical archive containing Rome’s address to Jupiter in the critical days of the Hannibalic war is a wary and cleverly drawn legal document, intended to bind the god as well as the State.195.1 In fact the spiritual side of the old Roman character has left no trace of itself in any ritual or liturgy of which we have record. The prayer of Cato’s that has been preserved is merely materialistic.196.1
We expect much more from Greece, and in some measure we are not disappointed. Spell-ritual was no doubt always much in vogue, especially for the purposes of agriculture and purification: we hear of certain “magicians” or μάγοι of Cleonae who averted hailstorms with incantations and the shedding of their own blood.196.2 And a solemn part of the State liturgy in Greece was a commination service, which pronounced a curse on certain offences against the State. The religious curse is an interesting phenomenon of which it is not easy to give briefly a full and exact anthropological account; it is taken up by the higher religions, but it by no means originated in them, belonging to the sphere of spell rather than of prayer, and working out its effect by means of magic suggestion. Even the Jewish service, which we still use on Ash Wednesday, employs curse-formulæ in which there is no immediate reference to God, and they may have been regarded originally as having an independent efficacy. This was certainly the case in Greece, for the curse was itself personified as an independent, personal power; and the Erinyes themselves, in some degree the personal embodiments of the curse, work their effect on the victim by singing a spell-song, according to Æschylus, which binds his soul and withers him away.197.1 And the many private “devotiones” or “diræ” that have come down to us from Greek antiquity, written usually on leaden tablets and consecrating the enemy to the powers of the lower world, employ indeed an appeal to these powers that may be interpreted as prayer, but their essential quality is magical, and they certainly were supposed to operate as spells against the individual, while even the divinities to whom they are addressed appear to be constrained rather than entreated. In one interesting example of the first century A.D., found in Ægina,198.1 of Hellenic-Christian or possibly Judaic origin, the curse takes on the form of a prayer for righteous vengeance—“I call on the Highest God, the Lord of all spirits and of all flesh, before whom every soul this day is humbled with supplication, against those who have treacherously slain or poisoned the unfortunate Heracleia.” In the Greek legal procedure a curse was sometimes uttered against oneself if one forswore oneself or if one was guilty of the charge; and here as in similar cases in Christian jurisprudence the curse is an invocation of the high god who will punish perjury; but we find it similarly employed in the animistic stage of religion, by the African for instance, who takes an oath by his fetich,198.2 “May this fetich slay me if I do not fulfil the contract”; and in such cases we must regard the curse as a spell working by suggestion against oneself rather than as a prayer.
Before considering Greek prayer proper, we may note as a last example of an ambiguous formula, standing midway as it seems between spell and prayer, the striking liturgical utterance of the old Dodonæan ritual, employed for an agricultural service: the priestesses chanted the refrain in two hexameters, the old metre of religion, “God was, God is, God will be, oh Great God; the earth brings forth fruits, therefore call on mother earth.”199.1 The resemblance of this to the early English formula quoted above is striking enough. The first line belongs to an elevated religion and seems far removed from the region of magic; but equally spiritual formulæ concerning the nature and the attributes of God were used in the Zarathustrian and Babylonian liturgies for magical purposes, just as texts from the Bible and Koran have been. And the second line employs the same method as the Navajo Shaman employed, for it states that the divinity is doing that very thing which it is the object of the liturgy to bring about. The appeal to mother earth which is enjoined may have been merely the invocation of her name, a spell at least as much as a prayer. The same may be said of the other popular refrains chanted by the husbandmen of ancient Greece to obtain good crops or fair weather—“Give us big sheaves, sheaves,” to Demeter,200.1 or “Come forth, dear sun,” to the sun-god.200.2
The public prayers of Greece, those actually used in the temple-service and the official liturgies, have not been preserved, and in this respect the Greek record is very barren compared with the Babylonian, Vedic, or Iranian. But though the actual formulæ are lost, we can gather some impression from the inscriptions and other literary sources as to the objects of prayer. The Athenian state prayed, “For the health and safety of the people of the Athenians, their wives and children and all in the country,”201.1 and the formula might include a prayer for the prosperity of their allies, such as Milesians or Platæans. But we have no indications that the blessings prayed for included others besides the material ones. The Lacedæmonians are commended by Socrates201.2 for refraining from specifying any particular want, either in their private or public prayers, but contenting themselves with praying that the gods should grant them τὰ καλὰ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς: the phrase has something of a genuine ring, and is probably derived from a real liturgy, but it is not absolutely precise; it seems, however, to comprise spiritual blessings as well as material, and in this respect to be unique among the public prayers in Greece, if we dare judge them by the scanty record. Probably the formulæ were very old and the range of aspiration usually narrow; and the idea that moral advance could be attained by prayer is perhaps hardly likely to have been reflected in them; yet we must take note of the plaintive question put by the Corcyræan state, weary of civic strife and massacre, to the Dodonæan oracle, asking, “To what god or what hero shall we pray in order to obtain concord, and to govern our city fairly and well?”202.1 and we find an educational official of Cos, in the second century B.C., praying “for the health and the virtuous behaviour of the boys.”202.2
We are better informed concerning the style of private prayer in Greece, as also concerning the theory of prayer that gradually commended itself to the highest intelligences. The average private man was certainly capable of praying for blessings other than material. We have the prayer of a potter of Metapontum, of the sixth century B.C., praying to the god that he might “have a good report among men.”203.1 Among the prayers contained in the literature of the fifth century, our interest is arrested by such utterances as Pindar’s, “May I walk, oh God, in the guileless paths of life, and leave behind me a fair name for my children”;203.2 and again, “Oh God that bringest all things to pass, grant me the spirit of reverence for noble things”;203.3 and by this of Euripides, “May the spirit of chastity abide with me, the fairest gift of God.”203.4 To this age may belong the poetical fragment of a banquet song—for the Greeks could pray genially and seriously in the midst of social intercourse—which must have once had much vogue: “Oh Pallas, born of waters, Queen Athena, mayest thou and thy father keep this city and its citizens in prosperity, free from sorrow, civic discord, and untimely deaths.”203.5 The prayers of Xenophon and Plutarch may be taken as typical of the average ethical feeling of their respective periods: the former petitions for “health, bodily strength, good feeling among friends, safety in war, and wealth”;204.1 the latter for “wealth, concord, righteousness in word and deed.”204.2
Meantime the philosophers from Socrates onwards were insisting on the more spiritual view of prayer, preaching that, in the first place, there was no need to particularise one’s needs in one’s petitions to God, for there was danger lest one should pray for what is injurious; in the second place, that prayer should look only to the spiritual, not the material life. And we owe to this theory some striking utterances that must rank high in the literature of ethical religion: such as the prayer of Socrates, δοίητέ μοι καλῷ γενέσθαι τἄνδοθεν, “Grant me to become noble of heart”204.3; of Apollonius of Tyana, ὦ θεοὶ δοίητέ μοι τὰ ὀφειλόμενα, “Oh gods, grant me that which I deserve”204.4; the longer poetic formula quoted by Plato, “King Zeus, grant us the good whether we pray for it or not, but evil keep from us though we pray for it”205.1: and with these we may compare the dictum of Epictetus205.2: “In praying to the divine powers ask for divine things, things free from fleshly or earthly circumstance.” Other expressions of the Stoic sect are equally striking for the spirit of fervent acquiescence and resignation that inspires them. Here is the prayer of Epictetus: “Do with me what thou wilt: my will is thy will: I appeal not against thy judgments”205.3; and a poetic version of this has come down to us from earlier stoicism—“Lead me, O God, and I will follow, willingly if I am wise, but if not willingly I still must follow.” A prayer recorded in the apocryphal Acts of St Thomas205.4 seems almost an echo of these: “I go whither Thou wilt, oh Jesus: Thy will be done.”
When the best thought of the age had reached to such a point of spiritual abstraction, it was natural that the same question should arise as arose among the more philosophic adherents of early Christianity, whether special prayers were justifiable at all. It seems that at some period the Pythagorean school were inclined to forbid prayer altogether,206.1 for the reason that God knew better how to give than man knew how to ask; but the later Neo-Platonism discovered an ideal raison-d’être for the practice, on the ground that it raised the mind to direct communion and converse with God; and this view is developed at great length by Proclus.206.2
This sketch of the Greek phenomena that belong to our subject may close with an example of that perfervid mysticism that marks the liturgies of latest paganism: the following is the close of a long address to Asclepios—an Hellenic deity attracted here into the Egyptian circle—found in the treatise called Asclepios, attributed to Apuleius:207.1 “We rejoice in thy divine salvation, because thou hast shown thyself wholly to us: we rejoice that thou hast deigned to consecrate us to eternity, while we are still in these mortal bodies. We have known thee, oh true life of the life of man.… Adoring thy goodness, we make this our only prayer… that thou wouldst be willing to keep us all our lives in the love of thy knowledge.” Portions at least of this prayer, which was the prelude to a communion supper, would not surprise us if we found it in a Christian liturgy.207.2
It will be convenient next to glance at the records of the other great branches of the ancient Aryan world, the Vedic Indians and the Iranians. One does not read long in the sacred books of India without attaining the conviction that the highest religion of the Vedas was deeply penetrated with sacerdotal magic; which was so far from losing its hold in the later period that it imprisoned the religious thought, and the later Brahmanism was capable of the belief that without the spell of the sacrifice the sun could not run his course in heaven. And the recital of spells forms a great part of the Vedic ritual. Thus the hymns say of the fire-god Agni, “The thoughtful men find Agni when they have recited the spells”; and the gods themselves, like the Norse divinities, work by spells: “Agni upholds the sky by his efficacious spells.”208.1 Yet the early record gives us also copious illustration of real prayer, and occasionally of a very exalted tone. It is true, as we should expect, that material and temporal advantages are by far the predominant objects of the petition: the head of the household prays for wealth, offspring, victory in battle or the races; with rare exceptions, the prayers are personal and private rather than political, and are thus in marked contrast to the Hellenic; yet we have a few that are evidently proffered for the community,209.1 and at times the deity is petitioned to grant an abundant supply of valiant men. But even in the few prayers that reflect the political life of the State, the individualistic spirit is apt to appear. We have a curious example of a petition to Indra to make a man powerful in the political assembly: “In this entire gathering render, O Indra, me successful,” and this is combined with a naïve spell whereby the politician endeavours to mesmerise the whole meeting: he names the assembly—as our Speaker might name a recalcitrant member—“We know thy name, oh assembly.… Of them that are sitting together I take to myself the power and the understanding”: and again, “With my mind do I seize your minds.”210.1 But even when the prayer is personal and materialistic a real fervour and a genial poetic freshness is often to be found. Here is a beautiful prelude to a prayer for long life proffered to the ancient heaven-god: “Many dawns have not yet dawned: grant me to live in them, O Varuna.” And often the worshipper rises above mere material aspirations, as in such appeals to Agni as the following: “May we be well-doers before the gods.”210.2 “Give us not up, oh Agni, to want of thought.”210.3 “Mayest thou bestow splendour, renown, and (wise) mind upon such mortals as satisfy thee with refreshment, oh Agni.”210.4 “Drive far from us senselessness and anguish: drive far all ill-will from whom thou attendest.”210.5 At times also the hymns reveal a deep consciousness of sin and a desire for divine forgiveness. “Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone astray. Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!”211.1 “Agni, drive away from us sin, which leads us astray.”211.2 “By the earth’s greatness, oh Agni, forgive us even committed sin, that we may be great.”211.3 “Whatever sin we have committed against thee in thoughtlessness, men as we are, make thou us sinless before Aditi.”211.4 Yet we may suspect that the term sin is not always used in these prayers in its modern ethical sense, not for instance in the prayer, “From the sins which knowingly or unknowingly we have committed, do ye, all gods, of one accord release us”;211.5 and the primitive concept on which the old magic of sin-transference was based survives in such passages as the following: “Pass far away, oh sin of the mind: why dost thou utter things not to be uttered? Pass away, I love thee not: to the trees and the forests go on!”212.1 “Enter into the rays, into smoke, oh sin; go into the vapours, and into the fog.”212.2 The context discloses only an indirect appeal to a personal deity, though the term sin in the former passage is clearly applied to what we should call moral offences.
In the Vedic ritual, then, we find a pure and spiritual form of prayer; yet a certain spell-power may attach even to the highest types, for we find not infrequently the conception that not only the power of the worshipper but the power of the deity also is nourished and strengthened by prayer;212.3 and the prayer itself is usually accompanied by a potent act. With this aspect of Vedic prayers we may associate the fact that Agni, the fire-god, appears as the chief divinity to whom they are addressed; for his ritual is purificatory, and the prayers are thus based on a liturgy of purification which stimulates the mental or spiritual force of the worshipper.
We may now turn to another great Aryan stock, the Iranian, whose earlier religion culminated in the Zarathustrian system. The relation of spell to prayer is, on the whole, the same in the Zend-Avesta as we find it in the Vedic hymns, a real spell can accompany a real prayer, and the text of the prayer itself becomes a most potent charm. The “sacerdotal” physician, who, as we have seen, occupied a higher rank in the Zarathustrian estimate than the scientific practitioner, offers first a genuine prayer to Ahura-Mazda for spiritual strength to deal with the disease—“Give us, Ahura, that powerful sovereignty by the strength of which we may smite down the drug (the demon).” Fraught with this mesmeric power he then directs his spell against the sickness-demon: “To thee, oh Sickness, I say—Avaunt! To thee, oh Death, I say—Avaunt!”214.1 And in the ritual of purification, which closely resembles the system of therapeutics, the formulæ of prayers of the most exalted type in the sacred books are used, not as prayers, but as cathartic spells.214.2 It is not hard to discern the steps that lead from this grade of thought to the highest at which the religious speculation of the Zarathustrian arrived. The uttered Word of God is given a supernatural cosmic force; and the prophet pronounces that this utterance of the “Holy Word is of such a nature that if all the corporeal and living world should learn it, and learning hold fast to it, they should be redeemed from their mortality.”214.3 And we can understand why a large part of the Zarathustrian liturgy should be devoted to the recital of formulæ which are statements of the Mazdean faith. Before rising in the morning and retiring at night, the pious Persian was recommended to say, “All good thoughts, all good words, all good deeds I do willingly: all evil thoughts, all evil words, all evil deeds I do unwillingly.”215.1 It is interesting to compare with our own creed the following Mazdean confession: “I confess myself a Mazdayasnian of Zarathustra’s order: I celebrate my praises for good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.… With chanting praises I present all good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, and with rejection I repudiate all evil thoughts and words and deeds. Here I give to you, oh ye Bountiful Immortals, sacrifice and homage with the mind,215.2 with words, deeds, and my entire person, yea, I offer to you the flesh of my very body.”215.3 The formulæ of confession, as well as other parts of this liturgy, are penetrated with the idea of a moral-theological dualism to which our Christian theology has been indirectly deeply indebted. The Mazdean proclaims his detestation of the Daevas, and of Angra-Mainyu, the evil god. “Taught by Ahura, I drive away Angra-Mainyu from this house, this borough”; such words are “victorious, most healing,”216.1 and could be used as the recitation of our creed and paternoster have been used, as veritable spells against the evil power or demon. But in comparing the spell-prayers of the Persian with the Vedic, we are struck with the superiority of the former liturgy in one respect, that here the spell is only brought to bear on the demon, not on the highest god; the prayer increases the spiritual force of the worshipper but does not constrain Ahura.
And the Iranian prayers appear to rise above the Vedic in the enthusiasm of the idea of righteousness that pervades them, and in the conviction that the believer can aid Ahura-Mazda in the continual struggle against the power of evil and in helping towards the final establishment of the righteous kingdom. He prays that, “Through the good thought and the holiness of him who offers thee the due meed of praise thou mayest, oh Lord, make the world of Resurrection appear at thy will, under thy sovereign rule.”217.1 “May we be such as those who bring on this great Renovation.”217.2 “May we help to bring on the good government of Ahura, which is the best for us at every present hour.”217.3 “Be righteousness life-strong and clothed with body. In that realm which shines with splendour as the sun, let piety be present, and may she, through the indwelling of thy good mind, give us blessings in reward for deeds.”217.4 In fact the greater number of the prayers are strikingly spiritual, and for spiritual, not material blessings. The prophet asks Ahura, “How man may become most like unto thee?”217.5 and prays for “aids of grace, beseeching what in accordance with thy wished-for aim is best.”218.1 And the prayer is sometimes directed to abstract moral powers, emanations of Ahura: “If the Mazda-Ahura and Righteousness and Pious Concord be invokable, I implore through the good mind a kingdom for myself, through whose increase we may conquer the Lie.” The kingdom is here the “Desirable Kingdom of Righteousness.”218.2 Certainly the Mazdean kingdom was not of this world, and the Zarathustrian religion is one of the least materialistic that the world has known; its chief moral weakness being, as we have seen, its bondage to ritualistic purity. We may note in conclusion, as showing the continuity of the national spirit, the pronouncement of a Persian Christian, Bishop Aphrahat of East Syria, that the only valid object of prayer was purity of heart.218.3
Many of the phenomena that we have been noting among the Aryan races confront us again when we turn to the Chaldæan-Babylonian liturgies. Here also there appears no real antagonism between spell and prayer, magic and religion.219.1 Spell-formulæ are used and accompanied with a ritual of purification to drive out the evil spirits of sickness; and the highest hymns containing real prayers can be employed as texts for magic purposes; even the gods themselves work by magic, and Marduk himself is invoked as the arch-magician.219.2 And the idea that the prayer could in some sense exercise compulsion on the god appears in an anecdote told by Porphyry about a Chaldæan who was an expert in “purifications of the soul: but found his efforts thwarted because another man who was powerful in the same art had, by means of mystic prayers, bound over the powers he had invoked not to grant his demands.”219.3 Yet by the side of all this we find often an exalted type of prayer, with spiritual and fervent expressions of homage; and the religious law that “prayer absolves from sin” is given as part of Marduk’s revelation to man.220.1 A large number of the records contain the liturgies used by the kings, and while victory, health, and long life, the permanence of the dynasty are the more usual objects of the petition, the deeper ethical tone is often heard. The following are a few examples of the higher aspirations of the Babylonian religion. The founder of the new Babylonian kingdom has recorded his convictions for the guidance of his successor: “Marduk sees through the lips, sees the heart: he who keeps true to Bel and the son of Bel will last for ever.”220.2 One of the greatest prayers in this or any other liturgical collection is that which Nebukadnezar made to Marduk on his accession:220.3 “Oh Eternal Ruler, Lord of All… lead the King by the right way… I am… the work of thy hand: after thy great mercy which thou showest to all, oh Lord, grant that thy high majesty may show compassion upon me: set in my heart the fear of thy Godhead: grant me what thou deemest best: for thou it is that hast created my life.” This is scarcely the Nebukadnezar whom we once thought we knew. There is also a pathetic interest attaching to the prayer of Nabonnedos to the god Schamasch for his son Belsazar:221.1 “Prolong the days of Belsazar, my first-born son—may he commit no sin.” The king Nabonnedos prays also to Marduk: “May I rule as king according to thy wish… let me not in my pride lose knowledge of thee, for it is thou that hast chosen me out.”221.2 The following phrases in a prayer to Marduk of an unknown ruler are still more striking: “Oh Marduk, great Lord… let me behold thy Godhead, let me attain my heart’s desire: set righteousness on my lips and grace in my heart.”221.3 Among the attributes of the gods there is a fervent recognition of their mercy and compassionateness: Marduk is “the god full of mercy, who loves to quicken that which is dead”;222.1 and Ischtar, the goddess, is invoked as “the helper of the oppressed, oh thou endowed with majesty; thou who raisest the fallen and exaltest the trodden under foot.”222.2 And the same idea reappears in a hymn to another goddess of like character with Ischtar, in which we catch the tones of a high religious poetry of homage:222.3 “Oh strong and majestic, highest of the goddesses, radiant star… strongest of the goddesses whose robe is the light: thou who dost course through heaven and engirdle the earth… dealing punishment and pleading for men, rewarding the just, leading the wanderer, overthrowing the enemy who feareth not thy Godhead, protecting the captive, taking the weak by the hand—be gracious unto thy servant, who calls upon thy name with grace.”
This brief illustrative selection may close with the quotation of a prayer or hymn of praise to Marduk, perhaps the most remarkable among those that have as yet been translated:223.1 “The Lord, peerless in might, the King of grace, the Ruler of the lands, that bringeth peace in heaven, that through his glance overthroweth the mighty. Lord, thy seat is Babylon, thy crown Borsippa. Thy thought, oh Lord, passeth over the wide heavens, and with thine eyes thou beholdest the affliction of men, through the anger of thy countenance thou spreadest lamentation, and thou takest him captive who regardeth thee not and setteth himself up against thee. Through thy gracious countenance thou showest men favour, thou lettest them see the light and they proclaim thy Righteousness. Oh Lord of the lands, Light of Izizi, thou who proclaimest grace, who is it whose mouth doth not tell of thy Righteousness, who doth not praise thy majesty, and glorify thy lordship?… Look down upon the hands raised in prayer to thee. Grant favour to thy city Babylon… and turn thy countenance upon thy house, and give help to the sons of Babylon and all thy people.”
With all their spells and their magic, the higher minds of the Babylonians knew how to pray, and the fervent and exalted tones of such liturgies remind us of the religious poetry of Israel. And it is interesting to note that among the few deities of Babylon whose ideal reached to such a point of ethical development, the moon-god Sin appears, who gave his name to Sinai, and who has been thought by some to have had some original affinity with the God of Israel.224.1
As regards the liturgies of Egypt, so far as I have been able with very limited opportunities to examine them, the superstition of the spell lay so heavy on the Egyptian mind, that prayer does not seem able to extricate itself from its prepossession. Not only do the deities work by means of spells and the magic of their names, but the worshipper uses the same means to work upon them; and the prayer that accompanies the spell seems usually to savour of self-confidence and command. At least this is the impression one gathers from what is published concerning the Book of the Dead and the ritual practised to secure the happiness of the deceased. By utterance of words of enchantment over pictures, the soul of the dead becomes divine.225.1 The magic word helps to transfer the power of the deity into the fetich, and this with the word written upon it is placed on the body of the dead: for instance, an amulet with the words, “May the blood of Isis… and the word of power of Isis be mighty to protect this mighty one”;225.2 a terra-cotta lamp of the Greco-Roman period, carved with the symbol of the frog-headed goddess Heqt, and bearing the words, “I am the Resurrection.”226.1 On an object placed under the head of the deceased to maintain the warmth of the body, we find the following words, supposed to be addressed by the spirit to Amen:226.2 “I am a perfect spirit among the companions of Ra, and I have gone in and come forth among the perfect souls… grant thou unto me the things which my body needeth, and heaven for my soul and a hidden place for my mummy.” “May the god who himself is hidden and whose face is concealed, who shineth upon the world in his forms of existence and in the underworld, grant that my soul may live for ever.”226.3 Here we have the statement of a conviction that gains its assurance from magic, followed by prayer. It seems that the Egyptian prayed to the gods, as if by such prayer he might gain immortality, but that he trusted equally to magical means, to pictures and words of power from the sacred texts, and employed at once the methods of religion and of enchantment.227.1
Looking at the Christian religion, we should find it hard to give a succinct and accurate account of these phenomena in the various stages of its history. We may be able to set forth the theories and ritual-practices of the various churches and compare them with what we find elsewhere; but it is more difficult to analyse accurately the religious psychology, the thought and feeling which accompanies the ritual: the quality of the mental state would depend partly on the ancestral conditions and the strength of the ancestral instincts of the individual. And the teaching of the most spiritual Christian philosophy has not been able to prevent some touches of the old-world magic from contaminating the worship. The theory of the leading thinkers among the early Christian fathers agreed, as we have seen, with the pronouncement of later Greek philosophy. Both for Clemens, who gives us the earliest theory of Christian prayer, without finding, however, a clear logical system, and for Origen, the final justification of prayer was communion with God, τὸ ἀνακραθῆναι τῷ πνεύματι,228.1 ὁμιλία πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἡ εὐχή.228.2 And Clemens maintains that the true gnostic, he who has the true knowledge of God, “works himself with God in his prayer so as to attain perfection.”228.3 The gnostic of Clemens, then, is not purely petitionary in his prayer; by his spontaneous self-projection he contributes something himself to the attainment of the end he prays for; and, as I have ventured to suggest above, we may discern in this theory the meeting-point of the more primitive and the more exalted religious views.
Meantime the actual heretic sect of the gnostics were applying much of the old magic under new names and new texts, and did not even care to discard wholly the old spell-nomenclature.229.1 And even in the orthodox churches, as we have seen, the mystic power and liturgical use of the name has continued, being the inheritance of a different religious world from that with which we are familiar or of which we are conscious. We may also legitimately compare many of the ritual acts which accompany prayer, for instance in the earlier and later Roman Church, with the suggestive or mimetic religious actions of less advanced cults. One of the most interesting examples that may be quoted is the description of the blessing of the baptismal water on the eve of the Epiphany, a custom prevalent in the earlier Church of Rome:229.2 the priest, while praying to God to sanctify the water, dipped a crucifix thrice into it, recalling in his prayer the miracle described in Exodus, the sweetening of the bitter water with wood; then followed antiphonal singing describing Christ’s baptism in Jordan, which sanctified the water. We appear to have here a combination of the great typical forms of the immemorial religious energy, prayer pure and simple, the potent use of the spiritually charged object, the fetich (in this case the crucifix), and an intoned or chanted narrative which has the spell-value of suggestion.230.1
What maintained the use of the spell-prayer in full vigour throughout the earlier and medieval epochs of Christendom, even in the orthodox ritual, was chiefly the practice of exorcism and the belief in demons and demoniac possession; and the legal institution of the ordeal contributed also to its maintenance. As modern society has abandoned such institutions, and the modern mind is no longer possessed with demonology, so in the modern worship prayer has become more and more purified from the associations of the spell; the traces that remain of the latter are faint and usually unintelligible to the modern worshipper. And on the other side there is a progressive tendency beginning to be felt, making for a reform of our liturgy in respect of the objects for which prayer should be proffered. But in this respect, as the comparison has shown, we cannot be said to have advanced as yet beyond many of the old-world religions.
The special subjects of these last two lectures, the history of purification and prayer, have only been presented in an inadequate sketch. The full and exhaustive treatment of either would serviceably fill a gap in the library of comparative religion. But they have served my present purpose, if they have been able to illustrate and to some extent test the value of the comparative study of the various theologies of mankind.
[The End]