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 {203} 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
{204} 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 {205} 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 Epictetus[205.2]: “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 Thomas[205.4] 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 {206} 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 {207} 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]
{208}
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, {209} 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, {210} 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] {211} 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: {212} “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 {213} 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 {214} 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 {215} 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 {216} 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 {217} 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 {218} 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 {219} 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 {220} 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: {221} 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] {222} 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
{223} 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 {224} 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, {225} 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 {226} 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 {227} 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 {228} 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 {229} 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 {230} 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]