the evolution of religion, a stage in which it is recognised that the
individual worshipper may petition the gods for deliverance from the
evil which afflicts them. And the petitions used appear in some cases,
as we have seen, to have been adopted into the ritual of the gods,
word for word as they were found already in existence. If then they
were, both in the words in which they were expressed, and in the
purpose which they sought to achieve, such that they could be taken
up, as they were and without change, into the ritual of the
community's gods, it would seem that, even before they were so taken
up, they could not have been wholly, if at all, alien to the spirit of
religion. What marks them as religious, in the cuneiform inscriptions,
is their context: it shows that the power, relied on for the
accomplishment of the desires expressed in these petitions, was the
power of the gods. Remove the context, and it becomes a matter of
ambiguity, whether the wish is supposed, by those who utter it, to
depend for its realisation on some power, possessed and exercised by
those who express the wish, or whether it is supposed to depend on the
good will of some being vaguely conceived, and not addressed by name.
But if eventually the wish, and the words in which it was expressed,
are taken up into the worship of the gods, there seems a balance of
probability that the wish was from the beginning rather in the nature
of religion than of magic, rather a petition than a command; though
the categories were not at first discriminated, and there was at first
no clear vision of the quarter from which fulfilment of the wish was
hoped for.
From this point of view, optative sentences, sentences which express
the wishes of him who pronounces them, may, in the beginning, well
have been ambiguous, because there was, in the minds of those who
uttered them, no clear conception of the quarter to which they were
addressed: the idea of God may have been vague to the extreme of
vagueness. Some of these optative sentences however, were such that
the community as a whole could join in them; and they were
potentially, and became actually, prayers to the god of the community.
The being to whom the community, as a whole, could pray, was thereby
displayed as the god of the community. The idea of God became, so far,
somewhat less vague, somewhat more sharply defined. Optative
sentences, however, in which the community could not join, in which no
one but the person who framed them could take part, could not be
addressed to the god of the community. The idea of God thus was
defined negatively: there were wishes which could not be communicated
to him--those which were repugnant to the well-being of the community.
The prayers of savages, that is of the men who are probably still
nearest to the circumstances and condition of primitive man, furnish
the material from which we can best infer what was the idea of God
which was present in their consciousness at those moments when it was
most vividly present to them. In view of the infinite number and
variety of the forms of religion and religious belief, nothing would
seem, _a priori_, more reasonable than to expect an equally infinite
number of various and contradictory ideas. Especially should this seem
a reasonable expectation to those who consider the idea of God to be
fundamentally, and of its very nature, impossible and untenable. And
so long as we look at the attempts which have been made, by means of
reflection upon the idea, to body it forth, we have the evidence of
all the mythologies to show the infinite variety of monstrosities,
which reflection on the idea has been capable of producing. If then we
stop there, our _a priori_ expectation of savage and irrational
inconsistency is fulfilled to abundance and to loathsome excess. But
to stop there is to stop short, and to accept the speculations of the
savage when he is reflecting on his experience, instead of pushing
forward to discover for ourselves, if we may, what his experience
actually was. To discover that, we cannot be content to pause for
ever on his reflections. We must push back to the moment of his
experience, that is to the moments when he is in the presence of his
gods and is addressing them. Those are the moments in which he prays
and in which he has no doubt that he is in communion with his gods. It
is, then, from his prayers that we must seek to infer what idea he has
of the gods to whom he prays.
When, however, we take his prayers as the evidence from which to infer
his idea of God, instead of the luxuriant overgrowth of speculative
mythology, we find everywhere a bare simplicity, and everywhere
substantial identity. If this is contrary to our expectation and at
first seems strange, let us bear in mind that the science of morals
offers a parallel, in this respect, to the science of religion. At one
time it was, unconsciously but none the less decidedly, assumed that
savages had a multiplicity of irrational and disgusting customs but no
morals. The idea that there could be a substantial identity between
the moral rules of different savage races, and even between their
moral rules and ours, was an idea that simply was not entertained.
Nevertheless, it was a fact, though unnoticed; and now it is a fact
which, thanks to Dr Westermarck, is placed beyond dispute. 'When,' he
says, 'we examine the moral rules of uncivilised races we find that
they in a very large measure resemble those prevalent among nations
of culture.' The human spirit throughout the process of its evolution
is, in truth, one; the underlying unity which manifests itself
throughout the evolution of morality is to be found also in the
evolution of religion; and it is from the prayers of man that we can
infer it.
The first and fundamental article of belief implied by the offering of
prayers is that the being to whom they are offered--however vaguely he
may be conceived--is believed to be accessible to man. Man's cry can
reach Him. Not only does it reach Him but, it is believed, He will
listen to it; and it is of His very nature that He is disposed to
listen favourably to it. But, though He will listen, it is only to
prayers offered in the right spirit that He will listen. The earliest
prayers offered are in all probability those which the community sends
up in time of trouble; and they must be offered in the spirit of
repentance. It is with the conviction that they have offended that the
community first turns to the being worshipped, by whom they hope to be
delivered from the evil which is upon them, and by whom they pray to
be forgiven.
Next, the offering of prayer implies the belief that the being
addressed, not merely understands the prayers offered, but has the
power to grant them. As having not only the power, but also the will
so to do, he is approached not only with fear but also with hope. No
approach would or could be made, if nothing could be hoped from it;
and nothing could be hoped, unless the being approached were believed
to have the power to grant the prayer. The very fact that approach is
made shows that the being is at the moment believed to be one with
whom it rests to grant or refuse the supplication, one than whom no
other is, in this respect at least, more powerful, _quo nihil maius_.
But prayers offered in time of trouble, though they be, or if they be,
the earliest, are not the only prayers that are offered by early man.
Man's wishes are not, and never were, limited: escape from calamity is
not, and never has been, the only thing for which man is capable of
wishing. It certainly is not the only thing for which he has been
capable of praying. Even early man wishes for material blessings: the
kindly fruits of the earth and his daily food are things for which he
not only works but also prays. The negro on the Gold Coast prays for
his daily rice and yams, the Zulu for cattle and for corn, the Samoan
for abundant food, the Finno-Ugrian for rain to make his crops grow;
the Peruvian prayed for health and prosperity. And when man has
attained his wish, when his prayers have been granted, he does not
always forget to render thanks to the god who listened to his prayer.
'Thank you, gods'; says the Basuto, 'give us bread to-morrow also.'
Whether the prayer be for food, or for deliverance from calamity, the
natural tendency is for gratitude and thanks to follow, when the
prayer has been fulfilled; and the mental attitude, or mood of
feeling, is then no longer one of hope or fear, but of thankfulness
and praise. It is in its essence, potentially and, to varying degrees,
actually, the mood of veneration and adoration.
'My lips shall praise thee,
So will I bless thee while I live:
I will lift up my hands in thy name,
And my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips.'
From the prayers that are offered in early, if not primitive,
religions we may draw with safety some conclusions as to the idea,
which the worshippers had before their minds, of the being to whom
they believed they had access in prayer. He was a being accessible in
prayer; and he had it in his power, and, if properly approached, in
his will, to deliver the community from material and external evils.
The spirit in which he was to be properly approached was one of
confession and repentance of offences committed against him: the
calamities which fell upon the community were conceived to have fallen
justly. He was not conceived to be offended without a cause. Doubtless
the causes of offence, like the punishments with which they were
visited, were external and visible, in the sense that they could be
discovered and made plain to all who were concerned to recognise
them. The offences were actions which not only provoked the wrath of
the god, but were condemned by the community. They included offences
which were purely formal and external; and, in the case of some
peoples, the number of such offences probably increased rather than
diminished as time went on. The _Surpu_ tablets of the cuneiform
inscriptions, which are directed towards the removal of the _mamit_,
the ban or taboo, consequent upon such offences, are an example of
this. Adultery, murder and theft are included amongst the offences,
but the tablets include hundreds of other offences, which are purely
ceremonial, and which probably took a long time to reach the luxuriant
growth they have attained in the tablets. For ceremonial offences a
ceremonial purification was felt to suffice. But there were others
which, as the Babylonian Penitential Psalms testify, were felt to go
deeper and to be sins, personal sins of the worshipper against his
God. The penitent exclaims:
'Lord, my sins are many, great are my misdeeds.'
The spirit, in which he approaches his God, is expressed in the words:
'I thy servant, full of sighs, call upon thee.
Like the doves do I moan, I am o'ercome with sighing,
With lamentation and groaning my spirit is downcast.'
His prayer is that his trespasses may be forgiven:
'Rend my sins, like a garment!
My God, my sins are unto seven times seven.
Forgive my iniquities.'
And his hope is in God:
'Oh, Lord, thy servant, cast him not away,
The sins which I have committed, transform by thy grace!'
The attitude of mind, the relation in which the worshipper finds
himself to stand towards his God, is the same as that revealed in the
Psalm of David:
'Wash me throughly from mine iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions:
And my sin is ever before me.
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.
Cast me not away from thy presence.'
The earliest prayers offered by any community probably were, as we
have already seen, those which were sent up in time of trouble and
inspired by the conviction that the community's god had been justly
offended. The psalms, from which quotations have just been given, show
the same idea of God, conceived to have been justly offended by the
transgressions of his servants. The difference between them is that,
in the later prayers, the individual self-consciousness has come to
realise that the individual as well as the community exists; that the
individual, as well as the community, is guilty of trespasses; and
that the individual, as well as the community, needs forgiveness. That
is to say, the idea of God has taken more definite shape: God has been
revealed to the individual worshipper to be 'My God'; the worshipper
to be 'Thy servant'; and what is feared is not merely that the
worshipper should be excluded from the community, but that he should
be cast away from communion with God. The communion, aspired to, is
however still such communion as may exist between a servant and his
master.
Material and external blessings, further, are, together with
deliverance from material and external evil, still the principal
subjects of prayer in the Psalms both of the Old Testament and of the
cuneiform inscriptions; and, so far as this is the case, the
worshipper's prayer is that his individual will may be done, and it is
because he has received material and external blessings, because his
will has been done, that his joyful lips praise and bless the Lord.
That is to say, the idea of God, implied by such prayer and praise, is
that He is a being who may help man to the fulfilment of man's desires
and to the realisation of man's will. The assumption required to
justify this conception is that in man, man's will alone is operative,
and never God's. This assumption has its analogy in the fact, already
noticed, that in the beginning the individual is not self-conscious,
or aware of the individuality of his own existence. When the
individual's self-consciousness is thus but little, if at all,
manifested, it is the community, as a community, which approaches its
god and is felt to be responsible for the transgressions which have
offended him. As self-consciousness comes to manifest itself, more and
more, the sense of personal transgression and individual
responsibility becomes more and more strong. If now we suppose that at
this point the evolution, or unfolding, of the self ceases, and that
the whole of its contents is now revealed, we shall hold that, in man,
man's will alone can operate, and never God's. It is indeed at this
point that non-Christian religions stop, if they get so far. The idea
of God as a being whose will is to be done, and not man's, is a
distinctively Christian idea.
The petition, which, as far as the science of religion enables us to
judge, was the first petition made by man, was for deliverance from
evil. The next, in historical order, was for forgiveness of sins; and,
then, when society had come to be settled on an agricultural basis and
dependent on the harvest, prayer was offered for daily bread. In the
Lord's Prayer, the order of these petitions is exactly reversed. A
fresh basis, or premiss, for them, is supplied. They are still
petitions proper to put forward, if put forward in the consciousness
of a fact, hitherto not revealed--that man may do not his own will
but the will of Our Father, who is in heaven.
Prayer is thus, at the end, what it was at the beginning, the prayer
of a community. But whereas at the beginning the community was the
narrow and exclusive community of the family or tribe, at the end it
is a community which may include all mankind. Thus, the idea of God
has increased in its extension. In its intension, so to speak, it has
deepened: God is disclosed not as the master and king of his subjects
and servants, but as the Father in heaven of his children on earth. It
has however not merely deepened, it has been transformed, or rather it
is to be approached in a different mood, and therefore is revealed in
a new aspect: whereas in the beginning the body of worshippers,
whether it approached its god with prayer for deliverance from
calamities or for material blessings, approached him in order that
their desires might be fulfilled; in the end the worshipper is taught
that approach is possible only on renunciation of his own desires and
on acceptance of God's will. The centre of religion is transposed: it
is no longer man and his desires round which religion is to revolve.
The will of God is to be the centre, to which man is no longer to
gravitate unconsciously but to which he is deliberately to determine
himself. As in the solar system the force of gravity is but one, so in
the spiritual system that which holds all spiritual beings together
is the love which proceeds from God to his creatures and may
increasingly proceed from them to Him. It is the substitution of the
love of God for the desires of man which makes the new heaven and the
new earth.
From the point of view of evolution the important fact is that this
new aspect of the idea of God is not something merely superposed upon
the old: if it were simply superposed, it would not be evolved.
Neither is the disclosure, to the soul, of God as love, evolved from
the conception of Him as the being from whom men may seek the
fulfilment of their desires. To interpret the process of religious
evolution in this way would be to misinterpret it, in exactly the same
way as if we were to suppose that, only when the evolution of
vegetable life had been carried out to the full in all its forms, did
the evolution of animal life begin. Animals are not vegetables carried
to a rather higher stage of evolution, any more than vegetables are
animals which have relapsed to a lower stage. If then we are to apply
the theory of evolution to spiritual life, as well as to bodily life,
we must apply it in the same way. We must regard the various forms, in
the one case as in the other, as following different lines, and
tending in different directions from a common centre, rather than as
different and successive sections of one and the same line. Spell no
more becomes prayer than vegetables become animals. Impelled by the
force of calamity to look in one direction--that of deliverance from
pestilence or famine--early man saw, in the idea of God, a refuge in
time of trouble. Moved at a later time by the feeling of gratitude,
man found in the idea of God an object of veneration; and then
interpreted his relation as that of a servant to his lord. Whichever
way this interpretation was pushed--whether to mean that the servant
was to do things pleasing to his lord, in order to gain the fulfilment
of his own desires; or to imply that his transgressions stood ever
between him and his offended master--further advance in that direction
was impossible. A new direction, and therefore a fresh point of
departure, was necessary. It was forthcoming in the Christian idea of
God as the heavenly Father. That idea when revealed is seen to have
been what was postulated but never attained by religion in its earlier
stages. The petitions for our daily bread, for forgiveness of sins,
and for delivery from evil, had as their basis, in pre-Christian
religions, man's desire. In Christianity those petitions are preferred
in the conviction that the making of them is in accordance with God's
will and the granting of them in accordance with His love; and that
conviction is a normative principle of prayer.
V
THE IDEA AND BEING OF GOD
Men thought, spoke and acted for long ages before they began to
reflect on the ways in which they did so; and, when they did begin to
reflect, it was long before they discovered the principles on which
they thought, spoke and acted, or recognised them as the principles on
which man must speak, if he is to speak intelligibly; on which, as
laws of thought, he must think, if he is to think correctly; and on
which, as laws of morality, he must act, if he is to act as he should
act.
But though many thousands of years elapsed before he recognised these
laws, they were, all the time, the laws on which he had to think,
speak and act, and did actually think, speak and act, so far as he did
so correctly. When, then, we speak of the evolution of thought, speech
and action, we cannot mean that the laws of thought, for instance,
were in the beginning different from what they are now, and only
gradually came to be what they are at present. That would be just the
same as saying that the law of gravitation did not operate in the way
described by Newton until Newton formulated the law. The fact is that
science has its evolution, just as thought, speech and action have.
Man gradually and with much effort discovers laws of science, as he
discovers the laws of thought, speech and action. In neither case does
he make the laws; all that he does in either case is to come to
recognise that they are there. But the recognition is a process, a
slow process, attended by many mistakes and set-backs. And this slow
process of the gradual recognition or discovery of fundamental laws,
or first principles, is the process in which the evolution of science,
as well as the evolution of thought, speech and action, consists. It
is the process by which the laws that are at the bottom of man's
thought, speech and action, and are fundamental to them, tend to rise
to the surface of consciousness.
It is in this same process that the evolution of religion consists. It
is the slow process, the gradual recognition, of the fundamental idea
of religion--the idea of God--which tends to rise to the surface of
the religious consciousness. Just as laws of thought, speech and
action are implied by the very conception of right thought or speech
or action, so the idea of God is implied by the mere conception of
religion. It is implied always; it is implicit from the very
beginning. It is disclosed gradually and imperfectly. The process of
disclosure, which is the evolution of the idea, may, in many
instances, be arrested at a stage of very early imperfection, by
causes which make further development in that direction impossible;
and then, if further progress is to be made, a fresh movement, in a
fresh direction must be made. Just as men do not always think
correctly, or act rightly, though they tend, in different degrees, to
do so; so too, in religion, neither do they always move in the right
direction, even if they move at all. They may even deteriorate, at
times, in religion, as, at times, they deteriorate in morality. But it
is not necessary to infer from this undoubted fact that there are no
principles of either morality or religion. We are not led to deny the
existence of the laws of logic or of grammar, because they are
frequently disregarded by ourselves and others.