ORIENTAL PRAYER.
Like one that stands upon a promontory,
And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,
Wishing his foot were equal to his eye.—SHAKSPEARE.
Prayer is still in the East, just what it was of old time, a matter of
prescribed words, postures, and repetitions. This, however, is only
what it is on the outside, and it is not the outside of anything that
keeps it alive, but what is within. It is there we must look for what
gives life. We shall be misled, too, again, if in our search for life
in this practice we suppose that what prompts it in Orientals must be,
precisely, the same as what prompts it in ourselves. Our manifestation
of this instinct is somewhat different from theirs. Prayer with
them is the bringing the mind into close contact with the ideas of
infinitude—infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite goodness. It calls
up within them, by an intense effort of the imagination, their idea of
God, just as the same kind of effort calls up within ourselves any image
we please. The image called up, whatever it may be, produces certain
corresponding sensations and emotions. But none can produce such deep
emotions as the idea of God: it moves the whole soul. It is the ultimate
concentrated essence of all thought. The man who is brought under its
influence is prostrated in abasement, or nerved to patient endurance,
or driven into wild fanaticism. It calms and soothes. It fills with
light. It puts into a trance. Mental sensations may be pleasurable just
as those of the body, and the deeper the sensation the more intense
the satisfaction. In their simple religion these attributes of God are
really, as well as ostensibly, the nucleus, the soul, of the matter. All
things else are merely corollaries to and deductions from them—matter
that is evidently very subordinate. Theirs is a religion of one idea, the
idea of God. And the calling up within them of this idea is their prayer.
Or we may put this in another way. We may say that prayer is with them
the conscious presentation to their minds of certain ideas, and the
prostration of their minds before them—namely, the ideas of the different
forms of moral perfectness, the idea of intellectual perfectness or
complete knowledge, and the idea, belonging to the physical order,
of perfect power. Their conception of these ideas is, of course, not
identical with ours, but such as their past history, and the existing
conditions of Eastern society, enable them to attain to. We can separate
this effort of theirs into two parts. First, there is the creation in the
mind of these ideas of the several kinds of perfectness; and then there
is the effect the holding of them in the mind has on the mind itself.
That effect is the production in themselves of a tendency towards making
these forms of moral being, such as they have been conceived, instinctive
sentiments, and instinctive principles of action.
In this view prayer is with the Oriental, the effort by which he both
forms the conception of what is good, and actually becomes good; both,
of course, in accordance with the measure of what is possible for him.
But why, it may be asked, should he do this? All men who have lived in
organized societies have done it; though, indeed, the character of the
act has not in all been so distinctly moral as it is with the Oriental.
Still it has been a natural ladder by which individuals and communities,
and mankind generally, have mounted from lower to higher stages of moral
being. It has been the natural means by which the moral ideas, which
the working of the successive stages of social progress suggested, have
been brought into shape, purified, disseminated, and made universal and
instinctive. As respects the community everybody understands that its
peace, and order, and even that its existence, very much depend on there
being a general unanimity in moral ideas and sentiments throughout all
its classes and members. And it has always been perceived that the most
effectual way of bringing this about is that all should have the same
object of worship—that is to say, that the prayers of all should be the
same. Formerly, when these things were more studied than they are now,
this was regarded as the one paramount way. Fellow-citizens then were
those who worshipped the same Gods in the same temples; aliens were those
who worshipped other Gods. There could be no citizenship where there was
a diversity of prayers; for that gave rise to, and implied, a diversity
of moral standards. And with respect to the individual, the spontaneous
working of what is within has pretty generally revealed to him that this
moral effect of prayer is his highest personal concern. He regards it as
the advancement of his truest self; for, if he is not a moral being, he
cannot tell in what he differs, specifically, from the lower animals; and
prayer, he knows it is, which has been the chief means for keeping alive,
and nurturing, and bringing into form, his moral being. It gives birth,
form, permanence, and vitality to moral aspirations.
To dwell for a moment longer on the subject, looking still at the same
fact, but now from a somewhat different point of view. The object of
their prayer has been the highly compound abstraction of all, but more
especially in the moral order, that would, according to their ideas and
knowledge, contribute towards the upholding and building up of a human
society. We see indications of this elsewhere besides among Orientals.
In a democracy wisdom and counsel in the general body of the community
are necessary, and so at Athens was worshipped the Goddess of Wisdom. The
maintenance and enlargement of Rome depended on the sword, and so the god
of Rome was the God of War. The martial spirit and martial virtues were
necessary to them. When concord became necessary, a temple was erected to
Concord. This also explains the deification of living Egyptian Pharaohs,
and of living Roman emperors. Each was in his time the “_præsens deus_”
of society. What was done was done by their providence. Their will was
the law of society, and its regulative power.
Even revealed religion is not exempt from this necessity. When the
existence of the Hebrew people depended on the sword, Jehovah was the
Lord of Hosts, the God of Battles. He taught the hands to war, and
the fingers to fight. He gave them the victory over all their enemies
round about. He it was Who made them a peculiar people—that is to say,
Who brought about within them the sentiment of national exclusiveness;
and Who, in short, made them zealous of all the good works that would
maintain society under its existing conditions and circumstances. At the
Christian epoch, when the chief hope of the world was in peace and order,
He was regarded as the institutor of civil government; and as having made
all people of one blood, so that there could be no ground for anything
exclusive. As men’s ideas changed, the substance of their prayers changed
correspondingly. To deny these facts is to deny both history, and the
plain, unmistakable announcements of the Sacred Volume. And to reject the
grand, simple, instructive explanation universal history thus gives is to
refuse to accept that view of the working of providence in human affairs,
which God submits to our consideration, just as He does the order and
the mind of the visible material world. It is, in fact, to refuse to be
taught of God.
But to return to the modern Egypto-Arabs. To us there appears to be very
little, surprisingly little, in their minds. They have but little thought
about political matters, no thoughts about history, no thoughts about
the knowledge of outward nature. Their ideas, then, of God, which are
the summary of their religion, obtain full sway over them. Prayer is the
continual exhibition of them to their minds. It stirs and keeps alive
their hearts and souls. While these ideas are acting upon them they are
conscious of an unselfish, and sublime, exaltation of their moral, and
intellectual being.
With us Prayer has somewhat of a different aspect, both as to its
immediate source, and even, apparently, in some degree, as to its
substance. It is not always primarily, or mainly, an attempt to bring
our inmost thought into contact with the pure and simple idea of God.
It almost seems as if something had occurred which had interposed an
insulating medium between our hearts and that idea, which cannot now,
as of old, directly reach our hearts, and generate within them its
own forms of moral perfectness. Much of our Prayer is prompted by the
thought of our own wants, and of our own sins; and so has something of a
personal, and of a selfish character. Still, perhaps, this is ultimately
the same thing. It may be only an indirect way of reaching the same
point. It is, evidently, a perpetual reminder of our moral requirements,
and a perpetual effort to form just and elevated conceptions of those
requirements. This mode of culture quickens the moral sentiments, raises
them to the level of their immediate purpose, and makes them distinct,
vigorous, ever-present, and instinctive.
What has been said will explain why Orientals pray in set forms of
words. Words represent ideas; and the Prophet, or the Saint, whose mind
is in a state of extraordinary religious exaltation, and the general
thought of religious teachers and of religious people, can, of course,
better imagine the attributes of Deity, and clothe what they imagine in
more appropriate words, than ordinary people could. It is, therefore,
better to take their words than to leave the matter to the ignorant, the
unimaginative, and the dead in soul. Under their system of unchangeable
forms all become alike animated by the best ideas, presented in the most
suitable words. This will explain why they practise repetitions. With
their method it is a necessity.
Short forms, composed of as few ideas as a piece of granite is of
ingredients, and as inelastic and inexpansive, and those forms
incessantly repeated, could not affect us in the way of prayer; but
they mightily affect the Oriental. They are both the frame in which his
mind and life are set, and the spring upon which they are wound up. In
short, and in truth, these ideas are the seminal germs which fecundate,
legitimately, the moral capabilities of his nature, which, if unquickened
by their contact, either will become aborted; or, by having been brought
into contact with other illegitimate ideas, will give birth to abnormal,
and more or less pernicious developments.