II. n

34
LAST ESSAYS.
anatomical preparations correspond to their own muscles, their own bones, their own nerves, even their own brains. They gladly listened to an explanation how all these organs work together in the bodies of animals, and produce results very similar to those which they know from their own experience. Their mind thus grew stronger, larger, and more compre- hensive— it may be, more tolerant.
If after a time you go a step further, and bring a dead human body before them to dissect it before their eyes, there will be at first a little shudder creeping over them, something like the feeling which a young curate might have when recognizing for the first time the smock-frock of a German peasant as the prototype of his own beloved surplice. However, even that shudder might possibly be overcome, and in the end some useful lesson might be learned from
seeing ourselves as we are in the flesh.
But now suppose some bold vivisectionist were to venture beyond, and to dissect before our eyes a living man, in order to show us how we really breathe, and digest, and live, or in order to make us see what is right and wrong in his system. We should all say it was horrible, intolerable. We should turn away, and stop the proceedings.
If we apply all this, mutatis mutandis , to a study of religion, we shall readily understand the great advantages not only of an historical study of our own religion, but also of a comparative study of Eastern religions as they can be studied now in the translations of the Sacred Books of the East. I hose who are willing to learn may learn from a compara- tive study of Eastern religions all that can be known
FORGOTTEN BIBLES.
35
about religions— how they grow, how they decay, and how they spring up again. They may see all that is good and all that is bad in various forms and phases of ancient faith, and they must be blinder than blind if they cannot see how the comparative anatomy of those foreign religions throws light on the questions of the day, on the problems nearest to our own hearts, on our own philosophy, and on our own faith.
D 2
ANCIENT PRAYERS h
THERE are few religions, whether ancient or modern, whether elaborated by uncivilized or civilized people, in which we do not find tiaces of prayer. Hence, if we consult any work on the science or on the history of religion, we generally find prayer represented as something extremely natuial, as something almost inevitable in any leligion. It may seem very natural to us, but was it really so
very natural in the beginning ?
What was the meaning of prayer? It is always best to begin with the etymology of a word, R we want to know its original or its most ancient meaning. It is generally supposed that prayer was at first what its name implies in English, a petition. Our own word prayer is derived from a mediaeval Latin word precar ict, literally a bidding-prayer. In Latin we have precari, to ask, to beg, but also to pi ay in a more general sense ; for instance, in such expressions as 'precari ad deos, to pray to the gods, which does not necessarily mean to ask for any special favours. We have also the substantive prex, mostly used in the plural preces, meaning a request, but more particularly a request addressed to the gods, a prayer or suppli- cation. Procus, also, a wooer or suitor, and procax, a shameless beggar, both come from the same source.
1 Not published before.
ANCIENT PRAYERS.
3 7
Oiiginally the root from which these Latin words are derived had the more general meaning of asking or inquiiing. It occurs in this sense in Sanskrit prasna, question, and. in pri/c/cMmi, to ask. We have the same element in Gothic fraihnan, and in the modern German fragen, to ask. Even the German forschen, to inquire, which gives us Forschung, Forscher, and bprachf or scher, a student of language, was derived from the same root. If, then, by prayer was meant originally a petition, we ask once more, Was it really so very natural that people in all parts of the world, in ancient as well as in modern times, should have asked beings whom they had never seen to give them certain things, something to eat or something to drink, though, as a matter of fact, they knew that they had never directly received anything of the kind from these invisible hands?
It used to be said that prayers were originally addressed to the spirits of the departed, and not to gods. This opinion has been revived of late, but without much success. Historical evidence there is of course none, and no one would say that it was moie natural to ask these departed spirits for valuable gifts than the gods. As a matter of fact, they had never been known to bestow a single tangible gift on their worshippers. Of course, there may have been cases where, as soon as a man had prayed to the spirit of his father to send rain on the parched fields, ram came down from the sky ; but the fact that even we call such fulfilments precarious , that is prayer-like or uncertain (for precarious is likewise derived from precari), shows that we cannot call a belief in the efficacy of prayer very natural.
38
LAST ESSAYS.
Prayer becomes in reality more natuial and in- telligible when it is addressed, not to ancestral spirits, who are often conceived as troublesome beggars rather than as givers, but to certain phenomena of nature in which men had recognized the presence of agents who became everywhere the oldest gods.
As the rain came from the sky, and as the sky was called Dyaus in Sanskrit, Zeus in Greek, we may indeed call it natural that the Athenians when they saw their harvest— that is, their very life, ^destroyed by drought, should have said : vaov vaov, £ Zev, KOtTOt T/js apovpas tS)V A.9r}VCUU)V Kell TU)V 7T€8iCOV.
‘ Rain, rain, O dear Sky, down on the land of the Athenians and on the fields h
So natural is this Athenian prayer that we find it repeated almost in the same words among the Hottentots. Georg Schmidt, a Moravian missionary sent to the Cape in 1737, tells us that the natives at the return of the Pleiades assemble and sing together, according to the old custom of their ancestors, the following prayer: ‘O Tiqua, our Father above our heads, give rain to us, that the fruits may ripen and that we may have plenty of food, send us a good year-.
But though prayers like these may, in a certain sense, be called natural and intelligible, they pre- suppose nevertheless a long series of antecedents. People must have framed a name for sky, such as Dyaus, which originally meant Bright or Light, or rather the agent and giver of light ; they must have extended the sphere of action assigned to this agent so that he would be conceived not only as the giver
1 Science of Language, New Edition, 1892, ii. p. 546.
3 Introduction to the Science of Religion p. 282.
ANCIENT PRAYERS.
89
of light and warmth, but likewise as the giver of rain, and at the same time as the lord of the thunderstorm, as the wielder of the thunderbolt, as the most powerful among the actors behind the other phenomena of the sky. Only after all this had been done, could they think of calling that Zeus or that Dyaus, dear ( and you perceive how that one word dear at once changes the sky into a being endowed with human feelings, a being dear to human beings and not altogether unlike them.
INow with regard to the belief of the ancient people in the efficacy of prayer and the fulfilment of then- petitions, we must remember that the chances between rain and no rain are about equal. If, then, after days of drought a prayer for rain had been uttered, and there came rain, what was more natural than that those who had prayed to the sky for rain should offer thanksgiving to the sky or to Zeus for having heard their prayer, and that a belief should gradually grow up that the great gods of nature would hear prayers and fulfil them. Nor was that belief likely to be shaken if there was no rain in answer to prayer ; for there was always an excuse. Either it might be said that he who offered the prayer had committed a mistake — this was a very frequent explanation— or that he was no favourite with the gods ; or, lastly, that the gods were angry with the people, and there- fore would not fulfil their prayers.
It might seem that it would have been just the same with prayers addressed to the spirits of the departed. But yet it was not quite so. The ancient gods of nature were representatives of natural powers, and as Zeus, the god of the sky, was naturally implored
40
LAST ESSAYS.
for rain, the divine representatives of the sun would be implored either to give heat and warmth or to withhold them. Lunar deities might be asked for the return of many moons, that is to say, for a long life, the gods of the earth for fertility, the gods of the sea for fair wind and weather, the gods of rivers for protection against invaders, or against the invasion of their own floods. But there was nothing special that the spirits of the departed would seem able to grant. Hence the prayers addressed to them are mostly of a more general character. In moments of danger children would, by sheer memory, be reminded of their fathers or grandfathers who had been their guides and protectors in former years when threatened by similar dangers. A prayer addressed to the departed spirits for general help and protection might, therefore, in a certain sense be called natural ; that is to say, even we ourselves, if placed under similar circumstances, might feel inclined to remember our parents and call for their aid, as if they were still present with us, though we could form no idea in what way they could possibly render us any assistance.
Let us see, then, what we can learn about prayers from the accounts furnished to us of the religions of uncivilized, or so-called primitive, people. We ought to distinguish between three classes of religion, called ethnic , national, and individual. The religions of unorganized tribes, in the lowest state of civilization, have been called ethnic, to distinguish them from the religions of those who had grown into nations, and
O ° .
whose religions are called national, while a third class comprises all religions which claim individual
ANCIENT PRAYERS.
41
foundeis, and have therefore been called individual religions.
Nowhere can we find the earliest phase of prayer more clearly represented than among the Melanesian tribes, who have been so well described to us by the Rev. Dr. Codnngton. It is generally supposed that the religion of the inhabitants of the Melanesian islands consists entirely in a belief in spirits. No- thing can be more erroneous. We must distinguish, however, between ghosts and spirits. Ghosts, as’ Dr. Codrington tells us, are meant for the souls of the departed, while spirits are beings that have never been men. The two are sometimes mixed up together, but they are quite distinct in their origin. It seems that the spirits were always associated with physical phenomena, and thus were more akin to the gods of the Greeks and Romans. We hear of spirits of the sea, of the land, of mountains and valleys ; and though we are told that they are simply ghosts that haunt the sea and the mountains, there must have been some reason why one is connected with the sea, another with the mountains ; nay, their very abode would have imparted to each a physical character, e\en if in their origin they had been mere ghosts of the departed. These spirits and ghosts have different names in different, islands, but to speak of any of them as missionaries are very apt to do, as either gods or devils, is clearly misleading.
The answers given by natives when suddenly asked what they mean by their spirits and ghosts are naturally very varying and very unsatisfactory.
V\ hat should we ourselves say if we were suddenly asked as to what we thought a soul, or a spirit, or
42
LAST ESSAYS.
a ghost to be 1 Still, one thing is quite clear, that these spiritual and ghostly beings of the Melanesians are invisible, and that nevertheless they receive worship and prayers from these simple-minded people. Some of their prayers are certainly interesting. Some of them seem to be delivered on the spur of the moment, others have become traditional and are often supposed to possess a kind ot miraculous power, probably on account of having proved efficacious on former occasions.
There is a prayer used at sea and addressed to Daula, a ghost, or, in their language, a tindalo : —
canoe, grandfather, that I may quickly reach the shore whither 1 am bound. Do thou, Daula, lighten the canoe, that it may quickly gain the land and rise upon the shore.’
Sometimes the ancestral ghosts are invoked to- gether, as —
‘ Save us on the deep, save us from the tempest, bring us to the shore.’
To people who live on fish, catching fish is often a matter of life and death. Hence we can well under- stand a prayer like the following : —
‘ if thou art powerful, 0 Daula, put a fish or two into this net and let them die there.’
We can also understand that after a plentiful catch thanks should have been offered to the same beings, if only in a few words, such as —

This is all very abrupt, very short, and to the point. They are invocations rather than real prayers.
Some of these utterances become after a time charms handed down from father to son, nay, even taught to
ANCIENT PRAYERS.
43
others for a consideration. They are then called
lehungai x.
Again, if a man is sick, the people call out the name of the sick man, and if a sound is heard in response, they say, £ Come back to life,’ and then run to the house shouting, ‘ He will live.’
All this to a strict reasoner may sound very un- i easonable ; still, that it is in accordance with human natuie, in an uncivilized and even in a civilized age, can easily be proved by a comparison of the prayers
of other people, which we shall have to consider hereafter.
If it is once believed that the ghosts can confer benefits and protect from evil, it is but a small step to call on them to confound our enemies. Thus we read that in Mota when the oven is opened for piepaiing a meal, a leaf ol cooked mallow is thrown in for some dead person. His ghost is addressed with the following words : —
‘ 0 Tataro ! * (another name for the ghosts) or your eating ; they who have charmed your food, or have clubbed you— take hold of their hands, drag them away to hell, let them be dead ! ’
And if, after this, the man against whom this im- precation is directed meets with an accident, they cry out: —
‘ Oh, oh ! my curse in eating has worked upon him— he is dead.’
In Fiji prayer generally ends with these malignant requests : —
‘ Let us live, and let those that speak evil of us perish ! Let the enemy be clubbed, swept away, utterly destroyed, piled in heaps ! Let their teeth be broken. May they fall headlong in a pit. Let us live, and let our enemies perish ! ’
Codrington, The Melanesians , chap. ix.
44
LAST ESSAYS.
We must not be too bard on these pious savages, for with them there was only the choice between eating or being eaten, and they naturally preferred the former.
Before eating and drinking, the ghosts of the de- parted were often remembered at the family meal. Some drops of Kava were poured out, with the words : —
‘ Tataro, grandfather, this is your lucky drop of Kava ; let boars come to me ; let rawe come in to me : the money I have spent, let it come back to me : the food that is gone, let it come back hither to the house of you and me ! ’
On starting on a voyage they say : —
1 Tataro, uncle ! father ! Plenty of boars for you, plenty of rawe, plenty of money ; Kava for your drinking, lucky food for your eating in the canoe. I pray you with this, look down upon me, let me go on a safe sea ! ’
Prayers addressed to spirits who are not mere ghosts or departed souls, but connected with some of the phenomena of nature, seem to enter more into detail. Thus the Melanesians invoke two spirits (vui), Qat and Marawa : —
• Qat ! you and Marawa/ they say, ‘cover over with your hand the blow-hole from me, that 1 may come into a quiet landing- place ; let it calm well down away from me. Let the canoe of you and me go up in a quiet landing-place ! Look down upon me, prepare the sea of you and me, that I may go on a safe sea. Beat down the head of the waves from me ; let the tide-rip sink down away from me ; beat it down level, that it may go down and roll away, and I may come into a quiet landing-place. Let the canoe of you and me turn into a whale, a flying fish, an eagle ; let it leap on end over the waves, let it go, let it pass out to my land.'
If all went well, need we wonder that the people believed that Qat and Marawa had actually come and held the mast and rigging fast, and had led the canoe home laden with fish ! If, on the contrary,
ANCIENT PRAYERS.
45
the canoe and its crew were drowned, nothing could be. said against the spirits, Qat and Marawa, and the priests at home would probably say that the crew had failed to invoke their aid as they ought to have done, so that, as you see, the odds were always in favour of Qat and Marawa.
Nowhere is a belief and a worship of ancestral spirits so widely spread as in Africa. Here, therefore, we find many invocations and petitions addressed to the spirits. Some of these petitions are very short. Sometimes nothing is said beyond the name of the spirits.. They simply cry aloud, £ People of our house.’ Sometimes they add, like angry children, what they want, People of our house ! Cattle ! ’ Sometimes there is a kind of barter. ‘ People of our house,’ they say, ‘ I sacrifice these cattle to you, I pray for more cattle, more com, and many children ; then this your home will prosper, and many will praise and thank you.’
A belief in ancestral spirits or fathers leads on, very naturally, to a belief in a Father of all fathers, the Great Grandfather as he is sometimes called. He was known even to so low a race as that of the Hottentots, if we may trust Dr. Hahn, who las ■written down the following prayer from the mouth of a Hottentot friend of his : —
‘Thou, O Tsui-goa,
Thou Father of Fathers,
Thou art our Father !
Let stream the thunder-cloud !
Let our flocks live !
Let us also live !
I am very weak indeed From thirst, from hunger.
Oh, that I may eat the fruits of the field !
46
LAST ESSAYS.
Art thou not our Father,
The Father of Fathers,
Thou, Tsui-goa?
Oh, that we may praise thee,
That we may give thee in return,
Thou Father of Fathers,
Thou, O Lord,
Thou, O Tsui-goa ! ’
This is not a bad specimen of a savage prayer; nay, it is hardly inferior to some of the hymns of the Veda and Avesta.
The negro on the Gold Coast, who used formerly to be classed as a mere fetish-worshipper, addresses his petitions neither to the spirits of the departed nor to his so-called fetish, but he prays, * God, give me to-day rice and yams ; give me slaves, riches ; and health ! Let me be brisk and swift ! 1 When taking medicine, they say, ‘ Father - Heaven (Zeu -narep ) ! bless this medicine which I take.’ The negro on Lake Nyassa offers his deity a pot of beer and a basketful of meal, and cries out, ‘ Hear thou, 0 God, and send rain, while the people around clap their hands and intone a prayer, saying, ‘ Hear thou, O God.’
The idea that the religion of these negro races consists of fetish-worship is wellnigh given up. It has been proved that nearly all of them address their prayers to a Supreme Deity, while these fetishes are no more than what a talisman or a horse-shoe would be with us. Oldendorp, a missionary of large experi- ence in Africa, says : —
even the most ignorant, there is none who does not believe in God, give Him a name, and regard Him as a maker of the world. Besides this supreme beneficent deity, whom they all worship, they believed in many inferior gods, whose powers appear in serpents, tigers, rivers, trees, and stones. Some of them are
ANCIENT PRAYERS.
47
malevolent, but the negroes do not worship the bad or cruel gods : they only try to appease them by presents or sacrifices. They pray to the good gods alone. The daily prayer of a Watja negress was, *‘God, I know Thee not, but Thou knowest me. I need Thy help ! ” *
This is a prayer to which an Agnostic need not object.
A Roman Catholic Missionary, Father Loyer, who studied the habits of the natives of the Gold Coast, says the same.
‘It is a great mistake,’ he wrote, ‘to suppose that the negroes regard the so-called fetishes as gods. They are only charms or amulets. The negroes have a belief in one powerful being, to whom they offer prayers. Every morning they wash in the river, put sand on their head to express their humility, and, lifting up their hands, ask their God to give them yams and rice and other blessings V
So much for the prayers of races on the very lowest stage of civilization. Dr. Tylor, whose charming works on Primitive Culture we never consult in vain, tells us, ‘that there are many races who dis- tinctly admit the existence of spirits, but are not certainly known to pray to them, even in thought V I doubt whether there are many ; I confess I know of none ; and we must remember that, in a case like this, negative evidence is never quite satisfactory. Still, on the other hand, Mr. Freeman Clarke seems to me to go too far when, in his excellent work on The Ten Great Religions (part ii, p. 222), he calls the custom of prayer and worship, addressed to invisible powers, a universal fact in the history of man. It may be so, but we are not yet able to prove it, and in these matters caution is certainly the better part
1 Clarke, Ten Religions, ii. p. 1 1 c.
3 Primitive Culture, ii. p. 330.
48
LAST ESSAYS.
of valour. Nothing can well be lower in the scale of humanity than the Papuans. Yet the Papuans of Tanna offer the first-fruits to the ghosts of their ancestors, and their chief, who acts as a kind of high priest, calls out : —
‘ Compassionate Father ! there is some food for you ; eat it, and be kind to us on account of it ! ’
And this the whole assembly begins to shout together1.
The Indians of North America stand decidedly higher than the Papuans ; in fact, some of their religious ideas are so exalted that many students have suspected Christian influences 2. The Osages, for instance, worship Wohkonda, the Master of Life, and they pray to him : —
‘0 Wohkonda, pity me, I am very poor ; give me what I need ; give me success against my enemies, that I may avenge the death of my friends. May I be able to take scalps, to take horses ! ’
John Tanner tells us that when the Algonquin Indians set out in their frail boats to cross Lake Superior, the canoes were suddenly stopped when about two hundred yards from land, and the chief began to pray in a loud voice to the Great Spirit, saying
‘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.’
He then threw some tobacco into the lake, and the other canoes followed his example. The Delawares invoke the Great Spirit above to protect their wives and children that they may not have to mourn for
1 Compare Turner, Polynesia , p. S8 ; Tylor, Primitive Culture , ii. P- 33r-
2 M. M., Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 195.
ANCIENT PKAYEBS.
49
them. The Peruvians soar much higher in their prayers. M. Reville, in his learned work on the -Religion of Mexico, tells us that prayers are very rare among the Peruvians. Mr. Brinton, on the
contrary, in his Myths of the New World, p. 298, speaks of perfectly authentic prayers which had been collected and translated in the first generation after the conquest. One addressed to Viracocha Pachacamac is very striking, but here we can certainly perceive Christian influences, if only on the part of the translator : —
‘0 Pachacamac,’ they say, ‘thou who hast existed from the beginning and shalt exist unto the end, powerful and pitiful ; who createdst man by saying, Let man be ; who defendest us from evil, and preservest our life and health ; art thou in the sky or in the earth, in the clouds or in the depths? Hear the voice of him who implores thee, and grant him his petitions. Give us life everlasting, preserve us, and accept this our sacrifice.’
The specimens of ancient Mexican prayers collected by Sahagun are very numerous, and some of them are certainly very thoughtful and even beautiful
‘ Is ifc possible,’ says one of them, ‘ that this affliction is sent to us, not for our correction and improvement, but for our destruc- tion?’ Or, ‘0 merciful Lord, let this chastisement with which thou hast visited us, the people, be as those which a father or mother inflicts on their children, not out of anger, but to the end that they may be free from follies and vices.’
With regard to these Mexican prayers we must neither be too credulous nor too sceptical. Our first impulse is, no doubt, to suspect some influence of Christian missionaries, but when scholars who have made a special study of the South American literatures assure us that they are authentic, and go back to generations before the Spanish conquest, we must try to learn, as well as we can, the old lesson that God
ir. E
50
LAST ESSAYS.
has not left Himself without witness among any people. To me, I confess, this ancient Mexican literature, and the ancient Mexican civilization, as attested by architecture and other evidence of social advancement, have been a constant puzzle. In one sense it may be said that not even the negroes of Dahomey are more savage in their wholesale butcheries of human victims than the Mexicans seem to have been, according to their own confession. Not dozens, but hundreds, nay, thousands of human beings were slaughtered at one sacrifice, and no one seems to have seen any harm in it. The Spaniards assure us that they saw in one building 136,000 skulls, and that the annual number of victims was never less than 20,000. It was looked upon almost as an honour to be selected as a victim to the gods, and yet these people had the most exalted ideas of the Godhead, and at the time of the conquest they were in possession of really beautiful and refined poetry. There are collections of ancient Mexican poems, published in the original, with what professes to be a literal translation l. No doubt, whoever collected and wrote down these poems was a Spaniard and a Christian. Such words as Dios for God, Angel for angel, nay, even the names of Christ and the Virgin Mary occurring in the original poems, are clear evidence to that effect. But they likewise prove that no real fraud was intended. Some poems are professedly Christian, but the language, the thought, and the style of the majority of them seem to me neither Christian nor Spanish. I shall give a few specimens, particularly as some of them may really be called prayers: —
1 Ancient Poetry, by Brinton, 1887.
ANCIENT PRAYERS.
51
‘ Where shall ray soul dwell ? Where is my home ?
Where shall be my house ? I am miserable on earth.
We wind and we unwind the jewels, the blue flowers are woven over the yellow ones, that we may give them to the children
Let my soul be draped in various flowers, let it be intoxicated bj them ; for soon must I weep, and go before the face of our mother.
This only do I ask : thou Giver of Life, be not angry, be not severe on earth, let us live with thee on earth, and take us to thy heavens.
But what can I speak truly here of the Giver of Life ? We only dream, we are plunged in sleep. I speak here on earth, but never can we here on earth speak in worthy terms.
Although it may be jewels and precious ointments of speech, yet of the Giver of Life one can never speak here in worthy terms.’
Or again : —
• How much, alas ! shall I weep on earth? Truly I have lived in vain illusion. I say that whatever is here on earth must end with our lives. May I be allowed to sing to thee, the Cause of all, theie in the heaven, a dweller in thy mansion ; then may my soul lift its voice and be seen with thee and near thee, thee by whom we live, ohuaya ! ohuaya? ’
There is a constant note of sadness in all these Mexican songs; the poet expresses a true delight in the beauty of nature, in the sweetness of life, but he feels that all must end ; he grieves over those whom he will never see again among the flowers and jewels of this earth, and his only comfort is the life that is to come. That it was wrong to dispatch thousands of human beings rather prematurely to this life to come nay, to feed on their flesh — seems never to have struck the mind of these sentimental philosophers. In one passage of these prayers the priest says : —
Thou shalt clothe the naked and feed the hungry, for remember their flesh is thine, and they are men like thee.’
But the practical application of this commandment is seen in their sacrifices in all their ghastly hideous- ness.
52
LAST ESSAYS.
All the prayers which we have hitherto examined belong to the lowest stage of civilization, and imply the very simplest relation between man and some unseen powers. If addressed to the ghosts of the departed, these invocations are not much more than a continuation of what might have passed between children and their parents while they were still alive. If addressed to the spirits of heaven or other prominent powers of nature, they are often but petulant, childish requests, or mean bargains between a slave and his master. Yet, with all this, they prove the existence of a belief in something beyond this finite world, something not finite, but infinite, something invisible, yet real. This belief is one of the many proofs that man is more than a mere animal, though I am well aware that believers in the so-called mental evolution of animals have persuaded themselves that animals also worship and pray. And what is their evidence”? Certain monkeys in Africa, they say, turn every morning towards the rising sun, exactly like the Parsees or sun-worshippers. If they do not utter any sound, it is supposed that their feelings of reverence are too much for them ; if they do not beg, it is, perhaps, because they know that the lilies of the field are clothed and fed without having to pray. It is no use arguing against such twaddle. It is perfectly true, however, that in many cases the unuttered prayer stands higher than the uttered prayer, and that there comes a time in the history of religion when prayer in the sense of begging is con- demned. A silent inclination before the rising sun may lift the mind to a more sublime height than the most elaborate litany, but whether it is so in the case
ANCIENT PRAYERS.
53
of these monkeys who turn their faces to the rising sun, we must leave to Dr. Gamier to decide, who is now studying the language of the gorillas in Africa. I have often quoted the words of a poor Samoyede woman, who, when she was asked what her prayer was, replied : ‘ Every morning I step out of my tent and bow before the sun and say: “When thou risest, I too rise from my bed.” And every evening I say : “ When thou sinkest down, I too sink down to rest.” ’ Even this utterance, poor as it may seem to us as a piayer, was to her a kind of religious worship. Every morning and evening it lifted her thoughts from earth to heaven, it expressed a silent conviction that her life was bound up with a higher life. Her not asking for anything, for any special favour, even foi hei daily bread, showed likewise somewhat of that wonderful trust that the fowls of the air are fed, though they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns.
We have hitherto examined the incipient prayers of uncivilized or semi-civilized races. For even the Mexicans and Peruvians, whose prayers and literature as well as their architectural remains point to what may be called civilization before their conquest by the Spaniards, stand nevertheless lower than many savages when we consider the wholesale slaughter of human victims at their sacrifices, and the un- deniable traces of cannibalism to the latest period of their national existence.
We have now to consider some of the religions which are called ncitioTicil. They have grown up at a time when scattered tribes had grown into compact nationalities, while their founders are unknown and
54
LAST ESSAYS.
never appealed to as authorities. The most important among them are the religions of China, of India, of Persia, of Greece and Home.
When we speak of the ancient religion of China, sometimes called Confucianism, we often forget that Confucius himself protests most strongly against being supposed to have been the author or founder of that religion. Again and again he says that he has only collected and restored the old faith. In the sacred books of China which he collected there are hardly any prayers. It is not till quite modern times that we meet with prayer as an essential part of public worship. It does not follow from this that the Chinese people at large were ignorant of private prayers, whether addressed to their ancestors, or to the gods of nature, or to the Supreme Spirit, in whom they believed ; but it is curious to observe even in Confucius a certain reserve, a certain awe that would prevent any familiar intercourse between man and God. Thus he says : ‘ Reverence the spirits, but keep aloof from them.’
There is a curious prayer recorded as having been offered by an Emperor of China in the year 1538. It was on a memorable occasion when the name of the Supreme Deity was to be altered. The old name for God in China was Tien, which means heaven, just as Dyaus and Zeus, according to their etymology, meant heaven. Even we can still say, ‘ I have offended against heaven’; and what do we mean by saying, for instance, ‘He lives, heaven knows how’? In the ancient books Shang-Tien also is used for Tien. This means high heaven, and makes it quite clear that it was intended as a name of the Supreme Deity.
ANCIENT PRAYERS.
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Another name for spirit was Ti, and this name by itself, or with Slicing prefixed, became the recognized name for God as the Supreme Spirit, used often in the same sentences as interchangeable with Tien'. When the appointed day came, the Emperor and his court assembled around the circular altar. First they prostrated themselves eleven times, and then addressed the Great Being as he who dissipated chaos and formed the heavens, earth, and man.
The proclamation was as follows : —
‘ I, the Emperor, have respectfully prepared this paper to inform the spirit of the sun, the spirit of the moon, the spirits of the five planets, of the stars, of the clouds, of the four seas, of the great rivers, of the present year, &e., that on the first of next month we shall reverently lead our officers and people to honour the great name of Shang ti. We inform you beforehand, 0 ye celestial and terrestrial spirits, and will trouble you on our behalf to exei’t your spiritual power, and display your vigorous efficacy, commu- nicating our poor desire to Shang ti, praying him to accept our worship, and be pleased with the new title which we shall reverently present to him.’
We see here how the Chinese recognized, between man and the Supreme Ti, a number of intermediate spirits or ti’s, such as the sun, moon, stars, seas, and rivers, who were to communicate the prayer of the Emperor to the Supreme Being. That prayer ran as follows : —
‘Thou, O Ti, didst open the way for the form of matter to operate ; thou, O Spirit, didst produce the beautiful light of the sun and moon, that all thy creatures might be happy.
Thou hast vouchsafed to hear us, O Ti, for thou regardest us as thy children. I, thy child, dull and ignorant, can poorly express my feelings. Honourable is thy great name.’
Then food was placed on the altar, first boiled meat,
1 Legge, Sacred Books of the East, iii. p. 24.
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and cups of wine, and Ti was requested to receive them with these words : —
‘The Sovereign Spirit deigns to accept our offering. Give thy people happiness. Send down thy favour. All creatures are upheld by thy love. Thou alone art the parent of all things.
The service of song is now completed, but our poor sincerity cannot be expressed aright. The sense of thy goodness is in our heart. We have adored thee, and would unite with all spirits in honouring thy name. We place it on this sacred sheet of paper, and now put it in the fire, with precious silks, that the smoke may go up with our prayers to the distant blue heavens. Let all the ends of the earth rejoice in thy name.’
I doubt whether even in a Christian country any archbishop could produce a better official prayer. It is marked by deep reverence, but it also implies a belief that the close relationship between father and son exists between the Supreme Spirit and man. It is a hymn of praise rather than a prayer, and even when it asks for anything, it is only the divine favour.
When we now turn from China to the ancient religion of India, we find there a superabundance of prayers. The whole of the Rig-veda consists of hymns and prayers, more than a thousand ; the Sama- veda contains the same piTiyers again, as set to music, and the Yajur-veda contains verses and formulas employed at a number of ceremonial acts. Were these hymns spontaneous compositions, or were they composed simply and solely for the sake of the sacrifices, both public and private ? There has lately been a long and somewhat heated controversy, carried on both by Aryan and Semitic scholars, as to the general question whether sacrifice comes first or prayer. It is one of those questions which may be argued ad infinitum, and which in the end pro-
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duce the very smallest results. You remember bow the Algonquins, when crossing Lake Superior, ad- dressed certain prayers to Wohkonda, the Master of Life, and then threw a handful of tobacco into the lake. Now suppose we asked them the question, What was your first object? to throw tobacco into the lake or to invoke Wohkonda? What answer could they possibly give ? Still that is the question which we are asked to answer in the name of the ancient poets of Vedic India.
Again, the Peruvian prayer addressed to Pacha- camac is said to be recited at certain seasons. Suppose it was recited at a festival connected with the return of spring ; we are asked once more, Was the festival instituted first, and then a prayer composed for the occasion, or was the prayer composed to express feelings of gratitude for the return of spring, and afterwards repeated at every spring festival ?
No doubt, when we have such a case as the Emperor of China offering an official address to the Deity, we may be sure that the festival was ordained first and the official ode ordered afterwards ; but even in such an advanced state of civilization, we never hear that the meat and the wine were placed on the altar by themselves and as an independent act, and without anything being said. On the contrary, they were placed there as suggested by the poem.
If, then, we find a Vedic hymn used at the full- inoon or new-moon sacrifices, are we to suppose that the mysterious phases of the moon elicited at first nothing but a mute libation of milk, and that at a later time only hymns were composed in praise of the solemn festival? That there are Vedic hymns
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which presuppose a very elaborate ceremonial and a very complete priesthood, I was, I believe, the first to point out ; but to say that all V edic hymns were composed for ceremonial purposes is to say what can- not be proved. At a later time they may all have been included as part of the regular sacrifices, just as every psalm is read in church on appointed days. But we have only to look at some of the best-known Vedic hymns and prayers, and we shall soon perceive that they are genuine outpourings of personal feelings, which had not to wait for the call of an officiating priest before they could make their appearance. One poet says : —
‘ Let me not yet, 0 Varuwa, enter into the house of clay ’ (the grave) ; ‘ have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !
If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !
Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone to the wrong shore ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !
Thirst came upon thy worshipper, though he stood in the midst of the waters ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !
Whenever we men, 0 Varuwa, commit an offence before the heavenly host, whenever we break thy law through thoughtless- ness, have mercy. Almighty, have mercy ! ’
Now, I ask, had a poet to wait till a poem was wanted for a funeral service, or for the sacrifice of a horse, before he could compose such verses'? Is there a single allusion to a priest, or to a sacrifice in them ? That they, like the rest of the Rig-veda, may have been recited during certain ceremonies, who would deny ? But if we see how verses from different hymns, and from different Masalas, or collections of hymns, have to be patched together before they become serviceable for sacrificial purposes, we can easily see that the hymns must have existed as poems before
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they were used by the priests at certain sacrifices. Why should there have been a Rig-veda at all, that is to say, a collection of independent hymns, if the hymns had been composed simply to fit into the sacrificial ceremonial ? The hymns and verses as fitted for that purpose are found collected in the Ya(/ur and Sama- vedas. What then was the object of collecting the ten books of the Rig-veda, most of them the heirlooms of certain old families, and not of different classes of priests? Then, again, there is what the Brahmanic theologians call tiha, that is, the slight modification of certain verses so as to make them serviceable at a sacrifice. Does not that show that they existed first as independent of ceremonial employment ? However, the strongest argument is the character of the hymns themselves. As clearly as some, nay, a considerable number, of them were meant from the first to be used at well-established sacrifices, others were clearly unfit for that purpose. At what sacrifice could there be a call for the de- spairing song of a gambler, for the dialogue between Sarama and the robbers, for the address of Visvamitra to the rivers of the Penjab, for the song of the frogs, or for the metaphysical speculations beginning with ‘There was not nought, there was not ought’? As part of a sacred canon any verse of the Rig-veda might afterwards have been recited on solemn occa- sions, but the question is, Did the inspiration come from these solemn occasions, or did it come from the heart? It is extraordinary to see what an amount of ingenuity has been spent both by Vedic and Biblical scholars on this question of the priority of ceremonial or poetry ! But what has been gained by it in the
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end? For suppose that in Yedic India a completely mute ceremonial had reached as great a perfection and complication as the Roman Catholic ceremonial in our time, would that prove that no one could then or now have composed an Easter hymn or Christmas carol spontaneously, and without any reference to ecclesiastical employment ? When there is so much real work to be done, why waste our time on dis- entangling such cobwebs ?
When we consider that the Rig-veda contains more than a thousand hymns, you will understand how constant and intimate the intercourse must have been between the Yedic poets and their gods. Some of these hymns give us, no doubt, the impression of being artificial, and in that sense secondary and late, only we must not forget that what we call late in the Veda cannot well be later than 1000 B.c. Here are some more verses from a hymn addressed to Vanina, the god of the all-embracing sky, the Greek Ouranos : —
1 However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are, 0 god, Vanina.
Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the furious, nor to the wrath of the spiteful !
To propitiate thee, O Varuna, we unbend thy mind with songs, as the charioteer unties a weary steed.
When shall we bring hither the man who is victory to the warriors? when shall we bring Varuna the far-seeing to be pro- pitiated ?
He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the sky, who on the waters knows the ships ;
He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months, with the offering of each, and knows the month that is engendered afterwards’ (evidently the thirteenth or intercalary month) :
‘ He who knows the track of the wind, the wide, the bright, the mighty, and knows those who reside on high ;
He, the upholder of order, Varuna, sits down among his people ; he, the wise, sits down to govern.
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From thence, perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what has been and what will be.
May he, the wise, make our paths straight all our days ; may he prolong our life !
Vanina, wearing golden mail, has put on his shining cloak, the spies sat down around him.’ (Here you see mythology and anthropomorphism begin.)
‘ The god whom the scoffers do not provoke, nor the tormenters of men, nor the plotters of mischief ;
He who gives to men glory, and not half glory, who gives it even to ourselves.
Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move onward, as kine move to their pastures.
Let us speak together again, because my honey has been brought : that thou mayest eat what thou likest, like a friend.’ (Now, here people would probably say that there is a clear allusion to a sacri- ficial offering of honey. But why should such an offering not be as spontaneous as the words which are'uttered by the poet ?)
‘ Did I see the god who is to be seen by all, did I see the chariot above the earth ? He must have accepted my prayers.’ (This implies a kind of vision, while the chariot may refer to thunder and lightning.)
‘ 0 hear this my calling, Varuwa, be gracious now ! Longing for help, I have called upon thee.
Thou, 0 wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and earth ; hasten on thy way.
That I may live, take from me the upper rope, loose the middle and remove the lowest.’ (These ropes probably refer to the ropes by which a victim is bound. Here, however, they are likewise intended for the ropes of sin by which the poet, as he told us, felt himself chained and strangled.)
These translations are perfectly literal ; they have not been modernized or beautified, and they certainly display before our eyes buried cities of thought and faith, richer in treasures than all the ruins of Egypt, of Babylon, or Nineveh.
Even what are called purely sacrificial hymns are by no means without a human interest. One of the earliest sacrifices consisted probably in putting a log of wood on the fire of the hearth. The fire was called
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Agni, in Sanskrit, and we find the same name again, not indeed in Greek, but in the Latin Ignis. If any other gift was thrown into the fire the smoke seemed to carry it up to heaven, and thus Agni became the messenger and soon the mediator between men and gods. He was called the youngest among the gods, because he was new every morning. Here is a hymn addressed to him : —
listen well to these my songs.
With this log, 0 Agni, may we worship thee, the son of strength, conqueror of horses ! and with this hymn, thou high-born !
May we, thy servants, serve thee with songs, 0 granter of riches, thou who lovest songs and delightest in riches.
Thou lord of wealth and giver of wealth, be thou wise and powerful ; drive away from us the enemies !
He gives us rain from heaven, he gives us inviolable strength, he gives us food a thousandfold.
Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their invoker, most deserving of worship, come, at our praise, to him who worships thee and longs for thy help.
For thou, 0 sage, goest wisely between these two creations (heaven and earth, gods and men), ‘like a friendly messenger between two hamlets.
Thou art wise, and thou hast been pleased : perform thou,
intelligent Agni, the sacrifice without interruption, sit down on this sacred grass.’
That this hymn contains what may be called secondary ideas, that it requires the admission of considerable historical antecedents, is clear enough. Agni is no longer a mere visible fire, he is the invisible agent in the fire ; he has assumed a certain dramatic personality; he is represented as high-born, as the conqueror of horses, as wealthy and as the giver of wealth, as the messenger between men and gods. Why Agni, the fire, should be called the giver of rain is not quite clear, but it is explained by the fire
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ascending in a cloud of smoke, and by the cloud sending down the prayed-for rain. The sacred grass on which Agni is invited to sit down is the pile of grass on the hearth or the altar of the house which surrounds the fire, and the log of wood is the fuel to keep the fire burning. All this shows an incipient ceremonial which becomes more and more elaborate, but there is no sign that it had begun to fetter the wings of poetical inspiration.
The habit of praying, both in private and in public, continued through all the periods of the history of Indian religion. One phase only has to be excepted, that of Buddhism, and this will have to be considered when we examine what are called individual in contradistinction to national religions. We need not dwell here on those later prayers of the Brahmans, v hich we find scattered about in the epic poems, in the Purarias, and in the more modern sects established in every part of the country. They are to us of infeiior interest, though some of them are decidedly beautiful and touching.
According to Schopenhauer every prayer addressed to an objective deity is idolatrous. But it is important to remark how much superior the idolatry of prayer is to the idolatry of temple- worship. In India, more particularly, the statues and images of their popular gods are hideous, owing to their unrestrained symbolism and the entire disregard of a harmony with nature, let the prayers addressed to S'iva and Durga are almost entirely free from these blemishes, and often show a concept of Deity of which we ourselves need not be ashamed.
Nor need we dwell long on the prayers of the
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ancient Greeks and Romans, because they are well known from classical literature. We know how Priam prays before he sets out on his way to the Greek camp to ask for the body of his son. We know how Nestor prays for the success of the embassy sent to Achilles, and how Ulysses offers prayers before approaching the camp of the Trojans. We find in Homer penitential prayers , to confess sins and to ask for forgiveness ; bidding prayers , to ask for favours ; and thanksgiving prayers, praising the gods for having fulfilled the requests addressed to them. We never hear, however, of the Greeks kneeling at prayer. The Greeks seem to have stood up while praying, and to have lifted up their hands to heaven, or stretched them forth to the earth. Before praying it was the custom to wash the hands, just as the Psalmist says (xxvi. 6) : ‘ I will wash mine hands in innocency : so will I compass Thine altar, 0 Lord.’
That prayer, not only public, but private also, was common among the Greeks we may learn from Plato when he says that children hear their mothers every day eagerly talking with the gods in the most earnest manner, beseeching them for blessings. He also states, in another place, that every man of sense before beginning any important work will ask help of the gods. Men quite above the ordinary superstitions of the crowd, nay, men suspected of unbelief, were known to pray to the gods. Thus Pericles is said, before he began his orations, always to have prayed to the gods for power to do a good work. May I mention here what I have not seen mentioned elsewhere, and what the widow of Sir Robert Peel told Baron Bunsen, who told it me, that on the day
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when Peel was going to deliver his decisive speech on Tree Trade, she found him in his dressing-room on his knees praying, before going to Parliament.
Most impressive are some of the prayers composed by Greek thinkers, whose religion was entirely absorbed m philosophy, but whose dependence on a higher power remained as unshaken as that of a child. What can be more reverent and thoughtful than the prayer o Simplicius, at the end of his commentary on Epictetus : —
.1 beseech Thee, O Lord, the Father, Guide of our reason to make us mindful of the noble origin Thou hast thought worthy to confer upon us ; and to assist us to act as becomes free agents ; that we may be cleansed from the irrational passions of the body
inaTtW aUd §T'n thG Same’ USi*e them as instruments m a fitting manner ; and to assist us to the right direction of the
liahtof S' th n itS Participati0n in what is real by the
light of truth. And thirdly, I beseech Thee, my Saviour entirely
wemTT dal;kfneSSir0m the eyes of our bouIs, in order thlt p 7 know aright> as Homer says, both God and men.’ (Farrar Paganism and Christianity, p. 44.) v ’
Equally wise are the words of Epictetus himself (Discourses, ii. p. 16): —
Tho^wV0 T°0k Upr t0 God and say: 1)0 with henceforth as
nothinT th f am °ne, “ind With Thee- 1 am Th‘no- I decline nothing that seems good to Thee. Send me whither Thou wilt
f nH .“Ur • WilL Wilt Th0U that 1 take office or live
I J i ff Xiemam at h°me 0r g0 int0 exile> he poor or rich,
I will defend Thy purpose with me in respect of all these.’
,, The ^Romans were more religious and more prayerful han the Greeks, but they were less fluent in expressing their sentiments. It is very characteristic that the Komans, when praying, wrapped the toga round their heads, so that they might be alone with their o-0d undisturbed by the sights of the outer world. That
tells more than many a long prayer. That in praying