THE PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER.
The foregoing analysis of the religious sentiment results in finding it,
even in its simplest forms, a product of complicated reasoning forced
into action by some of the strongest emotions, and maintaining its
position indefeasibly through the limitations of the intellect. This it
does, however, with a certain nobleness, for while it wraps the unknown
in sacred mystery, it proclaims man one in nature with the Highest, by
birthright a son of the gods, of an intelligence akin to theirs, and
less than they only in degree. Through thus presenting at once his
strength and his feebleness, his grandeur and his degradation, religion
goes beyond philosophy or utility in suggesting motives for exertion,
stimuli to labor. This phase of it will now occupy us.
The Religious Sentiment manifests itself in thought, in word and in act
through the respective media of the Prayer, the Myth and the Cult. The
first embraces the personal relations of the individual to the object
of his worship, the second expresses the opinions current in a community
about the nature and actions of that object, the last includes the
symbols and ceremonies under and by which it is represented and
propitiated.
The first has the logical priority. Man cares nothing for God--_can_
care nothing for him practically--except as an aid to the fulfilment of
his desires, the satisfaction of his wants, as the “ground of his
hopes.” The root of the religious sentiment, I have said, is “a wish
whose fruition depends upon unknown power.” An appeal for aid to this
unknown power, is the first form of prayer in its religious sense. It is
not merely “the soul’s sincere desire.” This may well be and well
directed, and yet not religious, as the devotion of the mathematician to
the solution of an important problem. With the desire must be the
earnest appeal to the unknown. A theological dictionary I have at hand
almost correctly defines it as “a petition for spiritual or physical
benefits which [we believe] we cannot obtain without divine
co-operation.” The words in brackets must be inserted to complete the
definition.
It need not be expressed in language. Rousseau, in his _Confessions_,
tells of a bishop who, in visiting his diocese, came across an old woman
who was troubled because she could frame no prayer in words, but only
cry, “Oh!” “Good mother,” said the wise bishop, “Pray always so. Your
prayers are better than ours.”[119-1]
A petition for assistance is, as I have said, one of its first forms;
but not its only one. The assistance asked in simple prayers is often
nothing more than the neutrality of the gods, their non-interference;
“no preventing Providence,” as the expression is in our popular
religion. Prayers of fear are of this kind:
“And they say, God be merciful,
Who ne’er said, God be praised.”
Some of the Egyptian formulæ even threaten the gods if they prevent
success.[119-2] The wish accomplished, the prayer may be one of
gratitude, often enough of that kind described by La Rochefoucauld, of
which a prominent element is “a lively sense of possible favors to
come.”[119-3]
Or again, self-abasement being so natural a form of flattery that to
call ourselves “obedient and humble servants” of others, has passed
into one of the commonest forms of address, many prayers are made up of
similar expressions of humility and contrition, the votary calling
himself a “miserable sinner” and a “vile worm,” and on the other hand
magnifying his Lord as greater than all other gods, mighty and helpful
to those who assiduously worship him.
In some form or other, as of petition, gratitude or contrition, uttered
in words or confined to the aspirations of the soul, prayer is a
necessary factor in the religious life. It always has been, and it must
be present.
The exceptions which may be taken to this in religious systems are
chiefly two, those supposed to have been founded by Buddha Sakyamuni and
Confucius.
It is undoubtedly correct that Buddha discouraged prayer. He permitted
it at best in the inferior grades of discipleship. For himself, and all
who reached his stage of culture, he pronounced it futile.
But Buddha did not set out to teach a religion, but rather the inutility
of all creeds. He struck shrewdly at the root of them by placing the
highest condition of man in the total extinguishment of desire. He bound
the gods in fetters by establishing a theory of causal connection (the
twelve Nidana) which does away with the necessity of ruling powers. He
then swept both matter and spirit into unreality by establishing the
canon of ignorance, that the highest knowledge is to know that nothing
is; that there is neither being nor not-being, nor yet the becoming.
After this wholesale iconoclasm the only possible object in life for the
sage is the negative one of avoiding pain, which though as unreal as
anything else, interferes with his meditations on its unreality. To this
negative end the only aid he can expect is from other sages who have
gone farther in self-cultivation. Self, therefore, is the first, the
collective body of sages is the second, and the written instruction of
Buddha is the third; and these three are the only sources to which the
consistent Buddhist looks for aid.
This was Buddha’s teaching. But it is not Buddhism as professed by the
hundreds of millions in Ceylon, in Thibet, China, Japan, and Siberia,
who claim Sakyamuni under his names Buddha, the awakened, Tathagata,
thus gone, or gone before, Siddartha, the accomplisher of the wish, and
threescore and ten others of like purport, as their inspired teacher.
Millions of saints, holy men, Buddhas, they believe, are ready to aid in
every way the true believer, and incessant, constant prayer is, they
maintain, the one efficient means to insure this aid. Repetition,
dinning the divinities and wearying them into answering, is their
theory. Therefore they will repeat a short formula of four words (_om
mani padme hum_--Om! the jewel in the lotus, amen) thousands of times a
day; or, as they correctly think it not a whit more mechanical, they
write it a million times on strips of paper, fasten it around a
cylinder, attach this to a water or a wind-wheel, and thus sleeping or
waking, at home or abroad, keep up a steady fire of prayer at the gods,
which finally, they sanguinely hope, will bring them to submission.
No sect has such entire confidence in the power of prayer as the
Buddhists. The most pious Mahometan or Christian does not approach their
faith. After all is said and done, the latter has room to doubt the
efficacy of his prayer. It may be refused. Not so the Buddhists. They
have a syllogism which covers the case completely, as follows:--
All things are in the power of the gods.
The gods are in the power of prayer.
Prayer is at the will of the saint.
Therefore all things are in the power of the saint.
The only reason that any prayer fails is that it is not repeated often
enough--a statement difficult to refute.
The case with Confucius was different.[122-1] No speculative dreamer,
but a practical man, bent on improving his fellows by teaching them
self-reliance, industry, honesty, good feeling and the attainment of
material comfort, he did not see in the religious systems and doctrines
of his time any assistance to these ends. Therefore, like Socrates and
many other men of ancient and modern times, without actually condemning
the faiths around him, or absolutely neglecting some external respect to
their usages, he taught his followers to turn away from religious topics
and occupy themselves with subjects of immediate utility. For questions
of duty, man, he taught, has a sufficient guide within himself. “What
you do not like,” he said, “when done to yourself, do not to others.”
The wishes, he adds, should be limited to the attainable; thus their
disappointment can be avoided by a just estimate of one’s own powers. He
used to compare a wise man to an archer: “When the archer misses the
target, he seeks for the cause of his failure within himself.” He did
not like to talk about spiritual beings. When asked whether the dead had
knowledge, he replied: “There is no present urgency about the matter. If
they have, you will know it for yourself in time.” He did not deny the
existence of unseen powers; on the contrary, he said: “The _kwei shin_
(the most general term for supernatural beings) enter into all things,
and there is nothing without them;” but he added, “We look for them and
do not see them; we listen, but do not hear them.” In speaking of deity,
he dropped the personal syllable (_te_) and only spoke of heaven, in the
indefinite sense. Such was this extraordinary man. The utilitarian
theory, what we call the common sense view of life, was never better
taught. But his doctrine is not a religion. His followers erect temples,
and from filial respect pay the usual honors to their ancestors, as
Confucius himself did. But they ignore religious observances, strictly
so-called.
These examples, therefore, do not at all conflict with the general
statement that no religion can exist without prayer. On the contrary, it
is the native expression of the religious sentiment, that to which we
must look for its most hidden meaning. The thoughtful Novalis, whose
meditations are so rich in reflections on the religious nature of man,
well said: “Prayer is to religion what thought is to philosophy. To pray
is to make religion. The religious sense prays with like necessity that
the reason thinks.”
Whatever the form of the prayer, it has direct or indirect relation to
the accomplishment of a wish. David prays to the Lord as the one who
“satisfies the desire of every living thing,” who “will fulfil the
desire of them that fear him,” and it is with the like faith that the
heart of every votary is stirred when he approaches in prayer the
divinity he adores.
Widely various are the things wished for. Their character is the test of
religions. In primitive faiths and in uncultivated minds, prayers are
confined to the nearest material advantages; they are directed to the
attainment of food, of victory in combat, of safety in danger, of
personal prosperity. They may all be summed up in a line of one which
occurs in the Rig Veda: “O Lord Varuna! Grant that we may prosper in
_getting and keeping_!”
Beyond this point of “getting and keeping,” few primitive prayers take
us. Those of the American Indians, as I have elsewhere shown, remained
in this stage among the savage tribes, and rose above it only in the
civilized states of Mexico and Peru. Prayers for health, for plenteous
harvests, for safe voyages and the like are of this nature, though from
their familiarity to us they seem less crude than the simple-hearted
petition of the old Aryan, which I have quoted. They mean the same.
The more thoughtful votaries of the higher forms of religion have,
however, frequently drawn the distinction between the direct and
indirect fulfilment of the wish. An abundant harvest, restoration to
health, or a victory in battle is the object of our hopes, not in
itself, but for its results upon ourselves. These, in their final
expression, can mean nothing else than agreeable sensations and
pleasurable emotions. These, therefore, are the real though indirect
objects of such prayers; often unconsciously so, because the ordinary
devotee has little capacity and less inclination to analyze the nature
of his religious feelings.
A recent writer, Mr. Hodgson, has said: “The real answer to prayer is
the increase of the joyful emotions, the decrease of the painful
ones.”[126-1] It would seem a simpler plan to make this directly the
purport of our petitions; but to the modern mind this naked simplicity
would be distasteful.
Nor is the ordinary supplicant willing to look so far. The direct, not
the indirect object of the wish, is what he wants. The lazzarone of
Naples prays to his patron saint to favor his choice of a lottery
ticket; if it turn out an unlucky number he will take the little leaden
image of the saint from his pocket, revile it, spit on it, and trample
it in the mud. Another man, when his prayer for success is not followed
by victory, sends gifts to the church, flogs himself in public and
fasts. Xenophon gives us in his _Economics_ the prayer of a pious
Athenian of his time, in the person of Ischomachus. “I seek to obtain,”
says the latter, “from the gods by just prayers, strength and health,
the respect of the community, the love of my friends, an honorable
termination to my combats, and riches, the fruit of honest industry.”
Xenophon evidently considered these appropriate objects for prayer, and
from the petitions in many recent manuals of devotion, I should suppose
most Christians of to-day would not see in them anything inappropriate.
In spite of the effort that has been made by Professor Creuzer[127-1] to
show that the classical nations rose to a higher use of prayer, one
which made spiritual growth in the better sense of the phrase its main
end; I think such instances were confined to single philosophers and
poets. They do not represent the prayers of the average votary. Then and
now he, as a rule, has little or no idea of any other answer to his
prayer than the attainment of his wish.
As such petitions, however, more frequently fail than succeed in their
direct object, and as the alternative of considering them impotent is
not open to the votary, some other explanation of their failure was
taught in very early day. At first, it was that the god was angered, and
refused the petition out of revenge. Later, the indirect purpose of such
a prayer asserted itself more clearly, and aided by a nobler conception
of Divinity, suggested that the refusal of the lower is a preparation
for a higher reward. Children, in well-ordered households, are
frequently refused by parents who love them well; this present analogy
was early seized to explain the failure of prayer. Unquestioning
submission to the divine will was inculcated. Some even went so far as
to think it improper to define any wish at all, and subsumed all prayer
under the one formula, “Thy will be done.” Such was the teaching of St.
Augustine, whose favorite prayer was _Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis_,
a phrase much criticized by Pelagius and others of his time as too
quietistic.[128-1] The usual Christian doctrine of resignation proceeds
in theory to this extent. Such a notion of the purpose of prayer leads
to a cheerful acceptance of the effects of physical laws, effects which
an enlightened religious mind never asks to be altered in its favor, for
the promises and aims of religion should be wholly outside the arena of
their operation. The ideal prayer has quite other objects than to work
material changes.
To say, as does Mr. Hodgson, that its aim is the increase of the joyful
emotions is far from sufficient. The same may be said of most human
effort, the effort to make money, for instance. The indirect object of
money-making is also the increase of the agreeable feelings. The
similarity of purpose might lead to a belief that the aims of religion
and business are identical.
Before we can fully decide on what, in the specifically religious sense
of the word, is the answer to prayer, we should inquire as a matter of
fact what effect it actually exerts, and to do this we should understand
what it is as a psychological process. The reply to this is that prayer,
in its psychological definition, is a form of Expectant Attention. It is
always urged by religious teachers that it must be very earnest and
continuous to be successful. “Importunity is of the essence of
successful prayer,” says Canon Liddon in a recent sermon. In the New
Testament it is likened to a constant knocking at a door; and by a
curious parity of thought the Chinese character for prayer is composed
of the signs for a spirit and an axe or hammer.[129-1] We must “keep
hammering” as a colloquial phrase has it. Strong belief is also
required. To pray with faith we must expect with confidence.
Now that such a condition of expectant attention, prolonged and earnest,
will have a very powerful subjective effect, no one acquainted with the
functions of the human economy can doubt. “Any state of the body,”
observes the physiologist Müller, “expected with certain confidence is
very prone to ensue.” A pill of bread-crumbs, which the patient supposes
to contain a powerful cathartic, will often produce copious evacuations.
No one who studies the history of medicine can question that scrofulous
swellings and ulcerations were cured by the royal touch, that paralytics
have regained the use of their limbs by touching the relics of the
saints, and that in many countries beside Judea the laying on of hands
and the words of a holy man have made issues to heal and the lame to
walk.[130-1]
Such effects are not disputed by physicians as probable results of
prayer or faith considered as expectant attention. The stigmata of St.
Francis d’Assisi are more than paralleled by those of Louise Lateau, now
living at Bois d’Haine in Belgium, whose hands, feet and side bleed
every Friday like those of Christ on the cross. A commission of medical
men after the most careful precautions against deception attributed
these hemorrhages to the effect of expectation (prayer) vastly
increased in force by repetition.[131-1] If human testimony is worth
anything, the cures of Porte Royale are not open to dispute.[131-2]
The mental consequences of a prayerful condition of mind are to inspire
patience under afflictions, hope in adversity, courage in the presence
of danger and a calm confidence in the face of death itself. How
mightily such influences have worked in history is shown in every
religious war, and in the lives of the martyrs of all faiths. It matters
not what they believed, so only that they believed it thoroughly, and
the gates of Hades could not prevail against them.
No one will question that these various and momentous results are the
legitimate effects or answers to prayers. But whether prayer can
influence the working of the material forces external to the individual
is a disputed point. If it cannot in some way do this, prayers for rain,
for harvests, for safety at sea, for restoration to health, for delivery
from grasshoppers[131-3] and pestilence, whether for our own benefit or
others, are hardly worth reciting. A physicist expresses the one opinion
in these words: “Science asserts that without a disturbance of natural
law, quite as serious as the stoppage of an eclipse or the rolling of
the St. Lawrence up the Falls of Niagara, no act of humiliation,
individual or national, could call one shower from heaven or deflect
toward us a single beam of the sun.” “Assuming the efficacy of free
prayer to produce changes in external nature, it necessarily follows
that natural laws are more or less at the mercy of man’s
volition.”[132-1]
This authoritative statement, much discussed at the time it was
published, does not in fact express the assertion of science. To the
scientific apprehension, man’s volitions and his prayers are states of
emotion, inseparably connected in their manifestations with changes in
his cerebral structure, with relative elevation of temperature, and with
the elimination of oxygen and phosphorus, in other words with
chemico-vital phenomena and the transformation of force. Science also
adds that there is a constant interaction of all force, and it is not
prepared to deny that the force expended by a national or individual
prayer may become a co-operating cause in the material change asked
for, even if the latter be a rain shower. This would not affect a
natural law but only its operation, and that much every act of our life
does. The fact that persistency and earnestness in prayer--_i. e._, the
increased development of force--add to its efficacy, would accord with
such a scientific view. It would further be very materially corroborated
by the accepted doctrine of the orders of force. A unit of electrical or
magnetic force equals many of the force of gravity; a number of
electrical units are required to make one of chemical force; and
chemico-vital or “metabolic” force is still higher; whereas thought
regarded as a form of force must be vastly beyond this again.
To render a loadstone, which lifts filings of iron by its magnetic
force, capable of doing the same by the force of gravity, its density
would have to be increased more than a thousand million times. All
forces differ in like degree. Professor Faraday calculated that the
force latent in the chemical composition of one drop of water, equals
that manifested in an average thunderstorm. In our limited knowledge of
the relation of forces therefore, a scientific man is rash to deny that
the chemico-vital forces set loose by an earnest prayer may affect the
operation of natural laws outside the body as they confessedly do in
it.
Experience alone can decide such a question, and I for one, from theory
and from observation, believe in the material efficacy of prayer. In a
certain percentage of the cases where the wished-for material result
followed, the physical force of the active cerebral action has seemed to
me a co-operating cause. A physician can observe this to best advantage
in the sickness of children, as they are free from subjective bias,
their constitutions are delicately susceptible, and the prayers for them
are in their immediate vicinity and very earnest.
But this admission after all is a barren one to the truly devout mind.
The effect gained does not depend on the God to whom the prayer is
offered. Blind physical laws bring it about, and any event that comes
through their compulsive force is gelded of its power to fecundate the
germs of the better religious life. The knowledge of this would paralyze
faith.
Further to attenuate the value of my admission, another consideration
arises, this time prompted not by speculative criticism, but by
reverence itself. A scholar whom I have already quoted justly observes:
“Whenever we prefer a request as a means of obtaining what we wish for,
we are not praying in the religious sense of the term.”[134-1] Or, as a
recent theologian puts the same idea: “Every true prayer prays to be
refused, if the granting of it would be hurtful to us or subversive of
God’s glory.”[135-1] The real answer to prayer can never be an event or
occurrence. Only in moments of spiritual weakness and obscured vision,
when governed by his emotions or sensations, will the reverent soul ask
a definite transaction, a modification in the operation of natural laws,
still less such vulgar objects as victory, wealth or health.
The prayer of faith finds its only true objective answer in itself, in
accepting whatever befalls as the revelation of the will of God as to
what is best. This temper of mind as the real meaning of prayer was
beautifully set forth by St. John: “If we know that he hear us,
whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of
him.”[135-2]
But this solution of the problem does not go far enough. Prayer is
claimed to have a positive effect on the mind other than resignation.
Joyful emotions are its fruits, _spiritual enlightenment_ its reward.
These are more than cheerful acquiescence, nor can the latter come from
objects of sense.
The most eminent teachers agree in banishing material pleasure and
prosperity from holy desires. They are of one mind in warning against
what the world and the flesh can offer, against the pursuit of riches,
power and lust. Many counsel poverty and deliberate renunciation of all
such things. Nor is the happiness they talk of that which the pursuit of
intellectual truth brings. This, indeed, confers joy, of which whoever
has tasted will not hastily return to the fleshpots of the senses, but
it is easy to see that it is not religious. Prayer and veneration have
not a part in it. Great joy is likewise given by the exercise of the
imagination when stirred by art in some of its varied forms, and a joy
more nearly allied to religion than is that of scientific investigation.
But the esthetic emotions are well defined, and are distinctly apart
from those concerned with the religious sentiment. Their most complete
satisfaction rather excludes than encourages pious meditations. That
which prayer ought to seek outside of itself is different from all of
these, its dower must be divine.
We need not look long for it. Though hidden from the wise, it has ever
been familiar to the unlearned. Man has never been in doubt as to what
it is. He has been only too willing to believe he has received it.
In barbarism and civilization, in the old and new worlds, the final
answer to prayer has ever been acknowledged to be _inspiration_,
revelation, the thought of God made clear to the mind of man, the
mystical hypostasis through which the ideas of the human coincide with
those of universal Intelligence. This is what the Pythian priestess, the
Siberian shaman, the Roman sibyl, the Voluspan prophetess, the Indian
medicine-man, all claimed in various degrees along with the Hebrew seers
and the Mahometan teacher.[137-1]
The TRUTH, the last and absolute truth, is what is everywhere recognized
as, if not the only, at least the completest, the highest answer to
prayer. “Where I found the truth, there I found my God, himself the
truth,” says St. Augustine; and in a prayer by St. Chrysostom, the
“Golden Mouth,” unsurpassed in its grand simplicity, it is said:
“Almighty Father, * * grant us in this world _knowledge of Thy truth_,
and in the world to come, life everlasting.” Never has the loftiest
purpose of prayer been more completely stated. This it was that had been
promised them by Him, to whom they looked as an Intercessor for their
petitions, who had said: “I will send unto you the Comforter. * * When
he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you unto all truth.”
The belief that this answer is at all times attainable has always been
recognized by the Christian Church, Apostolic, Catholic, and Protestant.
Baptism was called by the Greek fathers, “enlightenment” (Φωτισμος), as
by it the believer received the spirit of truth. The Romanist, in the
dogma of infallibility, proclaims the perpetual inspiration of a living
man; the Protestant Churches in many creeds and doctrinal works extend a
substantial infallibility to all true believers, at least to the extent
that they can be inspired to recognize, if not to receive divine verity.
The Gallican Confession of Faith, adopted in 1561, rests the principal
evidence of the truth of the Scriptures on “_le témoignage et
l’intérieure persuasion du Saint Esprit_,” and the Westminster
Confession on “the inward work of the holy spirit.” The Society of
Friends maintain it as “a leading principle, that the work of the Holy
Spirit in the soul is not only immediate and direct, but perceptible;”
that it imparts truth “without any mixture of error;” and thus is
something quite distinct from conscience, which is common to the race,
while this “inward light” is given only to the favored of God.[138-1]
The non-juror, William Law, emphatically says: “The Christian that
rejects the necessity of immediate divine inspiration, pleads the whole
cause of infidelity; he has nothing to prove the goodness of his own
Christianity, but that which equally proves to the Deist the goodness of
his infidelity.”[139-1] That by prayer the path of duty will be made
clear, is a universal doctrine.
The extent to which the gift of inspiration is supposed to be granted is
largely a matter of church government. Where authority prevails, it is
apt to be confined to those in power. Where religion is regarded as
chiefly subjective and individual, it is conceded that any pious votary
may become the receptacle of such special light.
Experience, however, has too often shown that inspiration teaches such
contradictory doctrines that they are incompatible with any standard.
The indefinite splitting of Protestant sects has convinced all clear
thinkers that the claim of the early Confessions to a divinely given
power of distinguishing the true from the false has been a mistaken
supposition. As a proof to an unbeliever, such a gift could avail
nothing; and as evidence to one’s own mind, it can only be accepted by
those who deliberately shut their eyes to the innumerable contradictions
it offers.[140-1]
While, therefore, in this, if anywhere, we perceive the only at once fit
and definite answer to prayer, and find that this is acknowledged by all
faiths, from the savage to the Christian, it would seem that this answer
is a fallacious and futile one. The teachings of inspiration are
infinitely discrepant and contradictory, and often plainly world-wide
from the truth they pretend to embody. The case seems hopeless; yet, as
religion of any kind without prayer is empty, there has been a proper
unwillingness to adopt the conclusion just stated.
The distinction has been made that “the inspiration of the Christian is
altogether _subjective_, and directed to the moral improvement of the
individual,”[140-2] not to facts of history or questions of science,
even exegetic science. The term _illumination_ has been preferred for
it, and while it is still defined as “a spiritual intelligence which
brings truth within the range of mental apprehension by a kind of
intuition,”[141-1] this truth has reference only to immediate matters of
individual faith and practice. The Roman church allows more latitude
than this, as it sanctions revelations concerning events, but not
concerning doctrines.[141-2]
Looked at narrowly, the advantage which inspiration has been to
religions has not so much depended on what it taught, as on its strength
as a psychological motive power. As a general mental phenomenon it does
not so much concern knowledge as belief; its province is to teach faith
rather than facts. No conviction can equal that which arises from an
assertion of God directly to ourselves. The force of the argument lies
not in the question whether he did address us, but whether we believe he
did. As a stimulus to action, prayer thus rises to a prime power.
Belief is considered by Professor Bain and his school to be the ultimate
postulate, the final ground of intellection. It is of the utmost
importance, however,--and this Professor Bain fails to do--to
distinguish between two kinds of belief. There are men who believe and
others who disbelieve the Koran or the Bible; I can accept or reject
the historical existence of King Arthur or Napoleon; but, if I
understand them, I cannot disbelieve the demonstrations of Euclid, nor
the relations of subject and object, nor the formal laws of thought. No
sane man, acquainted with the properties of numbers, can believe that
twice three are ten, or that a thing can be thought as other than
itself. These truths that “we cannot help believing,” I have defined in
the first chapter as absolute truths. They do not come to us through
testimony and induction, but through a process variously called
“immediate perception,” “apprehension,” or “intuition,” a process long
known but never satisfactorily explained.
All such truths are analytic, that is, they are true, not merely for a
given time or place, but at all times and places conceivable, or, time
and space out of the question, they still remain formally true. Of
course, therefore, they cannot refer to historic occurrences nor
phenomena. The modern position, that truth lies in facts, must be
forsaken, and with the ancients, we must place it in ideas.
If we define inspiration as that condition of mind which is in the
highest degree sensitive to the presence of such truth, we have of it
the only worthy idea which it is possible to frame. The object of
scientific investigation is to reach a truth which can neither be denied
nor doubted. If religion is willing to content itself with any lower
form of truth, it cannot support its claims to respect, let alone
reverence.
It may be said that the subjects with which the religious sentiment
concerns itself are not such as are capable of this absolute expression.
This is, however, disclaimed by all great reformers, and by none more
emphatically than by him who said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but my statements (λογοι) shall not pass away.” There is clear reference
here to absolute truths. If what we know of God, duty and life, is not
capable of expression except in historic narrative and synthetic terms,
the sooner we drop their consideration the better. That form sufficed
for a time, but can no longer, when a higher is generally known. As the
mathematical surpasses the historic truth, so the former is in turn
transcended by the purely logical, and in this, if anywhere, religion
must rest its claims for recognition. Here is the arena of the theology
of the future, not in the decrees of councils, nor in the records of
past time.
Inspiration, in its religious sense, we may, therefore, define to be
that condition of mind in which the truths relating to deity and duty
become in whole or in part the subjects of immediate perception.
That such a condition is possible will be granted. Every reformer who
has made a permanent betterment in the religion of his time has
possessed it in some degree. He who first conceived the Kosmos under
logical unity as an orderly whole, had it in singular power; so too had
he who looking into the mind became aware of its purposive laws which
are the everlasting warrants of duty. Some nations have possessed it in
remarkable fulness, none more so than the descendants of Abraham, from
himself, who left his kindred and his father’s house at the word of God,
through many eminent seers down to Spinoza, who likewise forsook his
tribe to obey the inspirations vouchsafed him; surpassing them all,
Jesus of Nazareth, to whose mind, as he waxed in wisdom, the truth
unfolded itself in such surpassing clearness that neither his immediate
disciples nor any generations since have fathomed all the significance
of his words.
Such minds do not need development and organic transmission of thought
to enrich their stores. We may suppose the organization of their brains
to be so perfect that their functions are always accordant with true
reasoning, so self-prompting, that a hint of the problem is all they ask
to arrive at its demonstration. Blaise Pascal, when a boy of twelve,
whose education had been carefully restrained, once asked his father
what is geometry. The latter replied that it is a method devised to draw
figures correctly, but forbade any further inquiry about it. On this
hint Pascal, by himself, unassisted, without so much as knowing the name
of a line or circle, reached in a few weeks to the demonstration of the
thirty-second problem of the first book of Euclid! Is it not possible
for a mind equally productive of religious truth to surpass with no less
ease its age on such subjects?
As what Newton so well called “patient thought,” constant application,
prolonged attention, is the means on which even great minds must rely in
order to reach the sempiternal verities of science, so earnest continued
prayer is that which all teachers prescribe as the only avenue to
inspiration in its religious sense. While this may be conceded,
collaterals of the prayer have too often been made to appear trivial and
ridiculous.
In the pursuit of inspiration the methods observed present an
interesting similarity. The votary who aspires to a communion with the
god, shuts himself out from the distraction of social intercourse and
the disturbing allurements of the senses. In the solitude of the forest
or the cell, with complete bodily inaction, he gives himself to fasting
and devotion, to a concentration of all his mind on the one object of
his wish, the expected revelation. Waking and sleeping he banishes all
other topics of thought, perhaps by an incessant repetition of a
formula, until at last the moment comes, as it surely will come in some
access of hallucination, furor or ecstasy, the unfailing accompaniments
of excessive mental strain, when the mist seems to roll away from the
mortal vision, the inimical powers which darkened the mind are baffled,
and the word of the Creator makes itself articulate to the creature.
Take any connected account of the revelation of the divine will, and
this history is substantially the same. It differs but little whether
told of Buddha Sakyamuni, the royal seer of Kapilavastu, or by Catherine
Wabose, the Chipeway squaw,[146-1] concerning the _Revelations_ of St.
Gertrude of Nivelles or of Saint Brigida, or in the homely language of
the cobbler George Fox.
For six years did Sakyamuni wander in the forest, practising the
mortifications of the flesh and combatting the temptations of the
devil,before[TN-8] the final night when, after overcoming the crowning
enticements of beauty, power and wealth, at a certain moment he became
the “awakened,” and knew himself in all his previous births, and with
that knowledge soared above the “divine illusion” of existence. In the
cave of Hari, Mohammed fasted and prayed until “the night of the divine
decisions;” then he saw the angel Gabriel approach and inspire him:
“A revelation was revealed to him:
One terrible in power taught it him,
Endowed with wisdom. With firm step stood he,
There, where the horizon is highest,
Then came he near and nearer,
A matter of two bowshots or closer,
And he revealed to his servant a revelation;
He has falsified not what he saw.”[147-1]
With not dissimilar preparation did George Fox seek the “openings” which
revealed to him the hollowness of the Christianity of his day, in
contrast to the truth he found. In his _Journal_ he records that for
months he “fasted much, walked around in solitary places, and sate in
hollow trees and lonesome places, and frequently in the night walked
mournfully about.” When the word of truth came to him it was of a
sudden, “through the immediate opening of the invisible spirit.” Then a
new life commenced for him: “Now was I come up in Spirit through the
flaming sword into the Paradise of God. All things were new: all the
creation gave another smell unto me than before.” The healing virtues of
all herbs were straightway made known to him, and the needful truths
about the kingdom of God.[147-2]
These are portraitures of the condition of _entheasm_. Its lineaments
are the same, find it where we may.
How is this similarity to be explained? Is it that this alleged
inspiration is always but the dream of a half-crazed brain? The deep and
real truths it has now and then revealed, the noble results it has
occasionally achieved, do not allow this view. A more worthy explanation
is at hand.
These preliminaries of inspiration are in fact but a parody, sometimes a
caricature, of the most intense intellectual action as shown in the
efforts of creative thought. The physiological characteristics of such
mental episodes indicate a lowering of the animal life, the respiration
is faint and slow, the pulse loses in force and frequency, the nerves of
special sense are almost inhibited, the eye is fixed and records no
impression, the ear registers no sound, necessary motions are performed
unconsciously, the condition approaches that of trance. There is also an
alarming similarity at times between the action of genius and of
madness, as is well known to alienists.
When the creative thought appears, it does so suddenly; it breaks upon
the mind when partly engaged with something else as an instantaneous
flash, apparently out of connection with previous efforts. This is the
history of all great discoveries, and it has been abundantly illustrated
from the lives of inventors, artists, poets and mathematicians. The
links of such a mental procedure we do not know. “The product of
inspiration, genius, is incomprehensible to itself. Its activity
proceeds on no beaten track, and we seek in vain to trace its footsteps.
There is no warrant for the value of its efforts. This it can alone
secure through voluntary submission to law. All its powers are centred
in the energy of production, and none is left for idle watching of the
process.”[149-1]
The prevalent theory of the day is that this mental action is one
essentially hidden from the mind itself. The name “unconscious
cerebration” has been proposed for it by Dr. Carpenter, and he has amply
and ably illustrated its peculiarities. But his theory has encountered
just criticism, and I am persuaded does not meet the requirements of the
case. Whether at such moments the mind actually receives some impulse
from without, as is the religious theory, or, as science more willingly
teaches, certain associations are more easily achieved when the mind is
partially engaged with other trains of ideas, we cannot be sure. We can
only say of it, in the words of Dr. Henry Maudsley, the result “is truly
an inspiration, coming we know not whence.” Whatever it is, we recognize
in it the original of that of which religious hallucination is the
counterfeit presentment. So similar are the processes that their
liability to be confounded has been expressly guarded against.[150-1]
The prevalence of such caricatures does not prove the absence of the
sterling article. They rather show that the mind is conscious of the
possibility of reaching a frame or mood in which it perceives what it
seeks, immediately and correctly. Buddhism distinctly asserts this to be
the condition of “the stage of intuitive insight;” and Protestant
Christianity commenced with the same opinion. Every prayer for guidance
in the path of duty assumes it. The error is in applying such a method
where it is incompatible, to facts of history and the phenomena of
physical force. Confined to the realm of ideas, to which alone the norm
of the true and untrue is applicable, there is no valid evidence
against, and many theoretical reasons for, respecting prayer as a fit
psychological preparation for those obscure and unconscious processes,
through which the mind accomplishes its best work.
The intellect, exalted by dwelling upon the sublimest subjects of
thought, warmed into highest activity by the flames of devotion,
spurning as sterile and vain the offers of time and the enticements of
sense, may certainly be then in the mood fittest to achieve its greatest
victories. But no narrowed heaven must cloud it, no man-made god
obstruct its gaze. Free from superstition and prejudice, it must be
ready to follow wherever the voice of reason shall lead it. All inspired
men have commenced by freeing themselves from inherited forms of Belief
in order that with undiverted attention they might listen to the
promptings of the divinity within their souls. One of the greatest of
them and one the most free from the charge of prejudice, has said that
to this end prayer is the means.[151-1]
He who believes that the ultimate truth is commensurate with reason,
finds no stumbling-block in the doctrine that there may be laws through
whose action inspiration is the enlightenment of mind as it exists in
man, by mind as it underlies the motions which make up matter. The truth
thus reached is not the formulæ of the Calculus, nor the verbiage of the
Dialectic, still less the events of history, but that which gives what
validity they have to all of these, and moreover imparts to the will and
the conscience their power to govern conduct.
FOOTNOTES:
[119-1] The “silent worship” of the Quakers is defended by the writers
of that sect, on the ground that prayer is “often very imperfectly
performed and sometimes materially interrupted by the use of words.”
Joseph John Gurney, _The Distinguishing Views and Practice of the
Society of Friends_, p. 300. (London, 1834.)
[119-2] Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker_, Bd. I., s.
162.
[119-3] The learned Bishop Butler, author of the _Analogy of Religion_,
justly gives prominence to “our expectation of future benefits,” as a
reason for gratitude to God. _Sermons_, p. 155. (London, 1841.)
[122-1] The expressions of Confucius’ religious views may be found in
_The Doctrine of the Mean_, chaps. xiii., xvi., the _Analects_, i., 99,
100, vii., and in a few other passages of the canonical books.
[126-1] _An Inquiry into the Theory of Practice_, p. 330.
[127-1] _Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Völker._ Bd. I., ss. 165,
sqq. One of the most favorable examples (not mentioned by Creuzer) is
the formula with which Apollonius of Tyana closed every prayer and gave
as the summary of all: “Give me, ye Gods, what I deserve”--Δοιητε μοι τα
οφειλομενα. The Christian’s comment on this would be in the words of
Hamlet’s reply to Polonius: “God’s bodkin, man! use every man after his
desert and who should ’scape whipping?”
[128-1] Aurelii Augustini, _De Dono Perseverantiæ_, cap. xx. Comte
remarks “Depuis St. Augustin toutes les âmes pures ont de plus en plus
senti, à travers l’égoisme Chrétien, que prier peut n’être pas
demander.” _Système de Politique Positive_, I., p. 260. Popular
Protestantism has retrograded in this respect.
[129-1] Plath, _Die Religion und Cultus der alten Chineser_, s. 836.
This author observes that the Chinese prayers are confined to temporal
benefits only, and are all either prayers of petition or gratitude.
Prayers of contrition are unknown.
[130-1] Numerous examples can be found in medical text books, for
instance in Dr. Tuke’s, _The Influence of the Mind on the Body_. London,
1873.
[131-1] The commission appointed by the Royal Academy of Medicine of
Belgium on Louise Lateau reported in March, 1875, and most of the
medical periodicals of that year contain abstracts of its paper.
[131-2] They may be found in the life of Pascal, written by his sister,
and in many other works of the time.
[131-3] It is worthy of note, as an exponent of the condition of
religious thought in 1875, that in May of that year the Governor of the
State of Missouri appointed by official proclamation a day of prayer to
check the advance of the grasshoppers. He should also have requested the
clergy to pronounce the ban of the Church against them, as the Bishop of
Rheims did in the ninth century.
[132-1] Tyndall, _On Prayer and Natural Law_, 1872.
[134-1] S. M. Hodgson, _An Inquiry into the Theory of Practice_, pp.
329, 330.
[135-1] The Rev. Dr. Thomas K. Conrad, _Thoughts on Prayer_, p. 54: New
York, 1875.
[135-2] I. John, v. 15. “There are millions of prayers,” says Richard
Baxter, “that will all be found answered at death and judgment, which we
know not to be answered any way but by believing it.” _A Christian
Directory_, Part II. chap. xxiii.
[137-1] “So wie das Gebet ein Hauptwurzel alter Lehre war, so war das
Deuten und Offenbaren ihre ursprüngliche Form.” Creuzer, _Symbolik und
Mythologie der alten Völker_, Bd. I., s. 10. It were more accurate to
say that divination is the answer to, rather than a form of prayer.
[138-1] Joseph John Gurney, _The Distinguishing Views and Practices of
the Society of Friends_, pp. 58, 59, 76, 78. An easy consequence of this
view was to place the decrees of the internal monitor above the written
word. This was advocated mainly by Elias Hicks, who expressed his
doctrine in the words: “As no spring can rise higher than its fountain,
so likewise the Scriptures can only direct to the fountain whence they
originated--the Spirit of Truth.” _Letters of Elias Hicks_, p. 228
(Phila., 1861).
[139-1] _Address to the Clergy_, p. 67.
[140-1] See an intelligent note on this subject in the Rev. Wm. Lee’s
work, entitled _The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures_, pp. 44, 47
(London and New York, 1857).
[140-2] Rev. William Lee, _u. s._, p. 243.
[141-1] Blunt, _Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology_, s. v.
[141-2] There is a carefully written essay on the views of the Romish
Church on this subject, preceding _The Revelations of Saint Brigida_ (N.
Y. 1875).
[146-1] Chusco or Catherine Wabose, “the prophetess of Chegoimegon,” has
left a full and psychologically most valuable account of her
inspiration. It is published in Schoolcraft’s _History and Statistics of
the Indian Tribes_, Vol. I., p. 390, sqq.
[147-1] _The Koran_, Sura liii. This is in date one of the earliest
suras.
[147-2] _The Journal of George Fox_, pp. 59, 67, 69.
[149-1] Wilhelm von Humboldt, _Gesammelte Werke_, Bd. iv., s. 278.
[150-1] In his treatise _De Veritate_, itself the subject, as its author
thought, of a special revelation, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, gives as one
of the earmarks of a real revelation: “ut afflatum Divini numinis
sentias, ita enim internæ Facultatum circa veritatem operationes a
revelationibus externis distinguuntur.” p. 226.
[151-1] Spinoza, _Espistolæ et Responsionnes_, Ep. xxxiv.
THE MYTH AND THE MYTHICAL CYCLES.
SUMMARY.
Myths are inspirations concerning the Unknown. Science treats them
as apperceptions of the relations of man and nature. Moments of
their growth, as treated by mythological science. Their similar
forms, explained variously, the topic of the philosophy of
mythology. The ante-mythical period. Myths have centred chiefly
around three subjects, each giving rise to a Mythical Cycle.
I. The Epochs of Nature.
The idea of Time led to the myth of a creation. This starting the
question, What was going on before creation? recourse was had to
the myth of recurrent epochs. The last epoch gave origin to the
Flood Myths; the coming one to that of the Day of Judgment.
II. The Paradise lost and to be re-gained.
To man, the past and the future are ever better than the present.
He imagines a Golden Age in the past and believes it will return.
The material Paradise he dreams of in his ruder conditions, becomes
a spiritual one with intellectual advancement. The basis of this
belief.
III. The Hierarchy of the Gods.
The earliest hierarchy is a dual classification of the gods into
those who help and those who hinder the fruition of desire. Light
and darkness typify the contrast. Divinity thus conceived under
numerical separateness. Monotheisms do not escape this. The triune
nature of single gods. The truly religious and only philosophic
notion of divinity is under logical, not mathematical unity. This
discards mythical conceptions.