PRAYER AND CONFESSION.
What is the most general, the most conspicuous form in which religion
expresses itself? Is it not in prayer? Where is the religion that is
without prayer? There is none. And perhaps, too, it is the very first
expression of religion, that when the savage fell and prayed the
lightning to spare him, he was inaugurating the greatest religious form
the world has known.
What a wonderful thing it is, wonderful in every form, beautiful
wherever you see it--from the glorious masses sung in the cathedrals to
the Mussulman spreading his mat upon the sand and bowing towards Mecca.
There is nothing so beautiful, nothing that so touches the heart of man
as prayer.
I have said that it is common to all religions, and so it is. Religions
live not in creeds, but in the believers. Pure Buddhism knows not
prayer, but does not the Buddhist know it? Go to any pagoda and see the
women there praying to Someone--Someone, they know not whom--and ask if
Buddhists know not prayer? I have written so fully of it in my other
book that I will not repeat it here.
Prayer is common to all believers; it is the greatest, as perhaps it is
the only expression common to all religions. And whence comes this
custom of prayer? The Jew and the Mussulman and the Christian will
answer and say, "It comes from our belief in God, it is an outcome of
that belief. Our God has bade us pray to Him."
And the Hindu, how will he answer? He will say, "Our gods have power
over us, they deal with us as they will. They listen to us if we pray.
And therefore it is right for us to beseech them in our trouble. It
comes from our belief in our gods." And the savage will answer, "I fear
the Devil, so I pray to him." But what will the Buddhist answer?
For Buddhism knows no God. The world is ruled by Law, unchangeable,
everlasting Law. No one can change that Law. If you suffer it is the
meet and proper consequence of your sins. The suffering is purifying you
and teaching you how to live. It would not be well for you to be
relieved of it now if you could be. Therefore suffer and be silent.
A very beautiful belief. And yet the people pray. Why? When a Buddhist
prays it is not in consequence of his belief, but in spite of it. It
cannot be traced as the result of any theory of causation.
Therefore one doubts the Theist's explanation and one reflects. Was,
indeed, prayer born of their beliefs? And then the doubt increases. Are
these creeds older than prayer, or maybe is it not that prayer is older
than the creeds? Did these creeds exist in men's minds first or did the
necessity for prayer exist first? Which is nearer to man?
Let us consider what prayer is. It consists of three things mainly.
Petition to be saved, to be helped from imminent danger; praise at being
so saved; and last, probably last, but surely greatest of all,
confession.
When men pray they are always doing one or other of these things. When
the savage was caught in the thunderstorm or shaken in the earthquake
and fell on his knees in fear, babbling strange things, do you think he
had reasoned out a God behind the force first? Do you think his
inarticulate cry for help was not involuntary? That if he had not first
reasoned out the God he would not so cry? Have you ever seen people in
deadly fear, how they will babble for help, crying unto the unknown? If
there was ever anything that came forth absolutely spontaneously from
the heart of man, which needed no belief of any kind anterior to its
birth, it was prayer, the prayer that comes from fear, the prayer for
help. It is the unconscious, unreasoned cry of the heart. If there is
Someone to whom to direct the cry, well and good; but if not, the cry
comes just the same.
When troubles fall upon the man, what is his first impulse? To tell
someone. If the confidant can help, so much the better; but if not,
still to tell. To ease the pent up heart by telling, that is what is
wanted. And with joy, too. Have you not seen how, when good news comes
to a man, he loves to rush forth and tell it? To whom? It does not
matter. Tell it, tell it. Cry it aloud, if but the trees and rocks can
hear. To keep secret a great thing is very hard. Remember the courtier
who discovered that King Midas had asses' ears. He could not keep the
terrible deadly truth to himself. He dared not tell it to man. And so,
going softly to the river, he confessed the dreadful knowledge to the
reeds: "Midas hath asses' ears." Can you trace here any cause and
effect? And there is confession, to tell someone of our sins, to
confess. Is that dependent upon any religious theory? Much has been
written about confession, this necessity of the laden spirit, but never
has anything been written like that study by Dostoieffsky called "Crime
and Punishment." The "Crime" was murder, not an ordinary murder
committed by a ruffian in passion or from sordid motives, but a murder
by a student intended to result in good. The murderer is suspected--nay,
is known by a police officer--and the motive of the first half of the
story is not to gain evidence, not to unravel the story, but it lies in
the efforts of the detective to induce Raskolnikoff to make a voluntary
confession. And why? There was evidence enough, the offender could have
been arrested and convicted at any time. But that would not do.
Punishment alone will not always, will indeed but seldom, benefit the
criminal. Punishment is for the protection of society. It is for the
future, not the past. For the criminal to redeem himself he must
confess. In that lies the only medicine for a diseased soul. It is a
marvellous story, and it holds the truth of truths. Confess. There is no
emotion of the human heart so strong as this, the eminent necessity to
tell someone. No one who has had much to do with crime will doubt this.
There is in all natural men a burning desire, an absolute necessity, to
tell of what has been done. It comes out sometimes in confessions to the
police or to the magistrate. All criminal annals are full of such
stories. A crime is committed and there is no clue, till the man
confesses. I have myself seen a great deal of this. I have received many
confessions. But you will object that was amongst Burmese; and I reply,
Wherein is there any difference? Criminals of all countries frequently
confess. But as civilisation progresses the confession is not often to a
magistrate. The fear, the terrible fear of punishment outweighs the
natural impulse. But still the confession is made. If you read the cases
in the papers you will see how often it is made. To a wife, to a
companion, sometimes to a complete stranger. The men who can hold their
tongues, who can stifle nature, are very few. With all but hardened
criminals the tendency is always to confession, and those whose work has
laid among them know that the denial, the defence, except with hardened
criminals, is seldom theirs. If there were no relations to urge them, no
lawyers to assist them, five out of six first offenders would confess
openly.
Is it otherwise with our children? What is it we teach them above all
else? Never to do wrong? No! For we know that is impossible. Children,
like men, will err. But, "when you have done wrong confess, for only so
can you lift the weight from your heart." Confess, confess. Everywhere
it is the same. If you have done wrong, only by confession can you
remove the stain. But it must be voluntary. It must not be forced. Such
a confession is of no value. Even our courts reject it.
It is an instinct of the heart that comes who can tell whence, that
means who can tell what? And from this have grown many things. It has
become part of all the greater religions, and the forms it has taken are
significant not so much of the faiths, but of the people.
Among the Jews and the Mahommedans we hear little of it. They were a
hard people when their faiths were formed, a strong people, and little
advanced in the gentler feelings. They were warriors who lived greatly
by the sword, and it was necessary for them to stifle all that might
weaken or even polish them. For one man to humble himself to another is
very hard, for a proud man to confess to another is almost impossible.
And so into these Theistic faiths the confession was to God. If a man
sinned it was to God alone he could confess. But with Christianity it
has been different. There is in Christianity what exists in no other
faith in the same way, an intermediary between God and man.
There are the priests.
This desire of the soul for confession, the absolute necessity with
strong emotional people to tell someone their sins and their truths, has
been one of the greatest cults of the Church of Rome. Man must confess,
let him confess to the priests. Their tongues are tied, they will never
reveal what they are told; they are the ministers of God. Therefore let
the innate desire for confession be directed towards the priests. It is
universal in Catholic countries. Whatever may be its abuses it is the
great safety valve, the great help of the people, that as they must
confess they should have someone to confess to.
With the Northern Teutonic nations it has been different. They got their
Christianity from Rome, a Christianity that was built on the needs of
impulsive Celtic natures. It suited not with the harder natures of the
north. They could not confess to men, it galled them to be told to
confess. Their natures were different. Had they no need of confession?
Yes, but they were as the Jews and Mahommedans. They would not humble
themselves to men. And so, for this and other similar reasons, they
revolted from Rome and made their own church, where confession is only
to God. But the necessity of confession still remains; our services are
full of it. It is strange how very often we find the Christianity of
Teutonic people nearer in observed facts to the faiths of Semitic
peoples than to the Christianity of the Celts. All these peoples, all
these Churches, recognise the need of confession. But, it may be said,
all this is a difference of very slight detail. All confession is to
God. The Roman priests are only representatives of God. If you believe
in God you must believe in confession, because God has always directed
it. Confession is in all the Churches because God ordered it. The need
comes from God, who gives absolution.
Then how about the Buddhists? They have no God, but yet they confess.
The Buddha himself many times pointed out how needful confession was,
and how healing to the heart. There is no God to confess to, there is no
representative of God. But there is the head of the Monastery. Let the
younger monk who sins confess his sins to his superior. There is no
absolution. Man works out his future himself, always by himself. There
is no absolution, no help to be gained by confession. But the Buddha
knew the hearts of man. He knew that confession was good for the soul.
He knew that it needed no absolution from any priest to help the
confesser, no belief in any God to pardon because of the confession.
Confession, if it be made honestly and truly, brings with it always its
own reward. It may be objected, that this is not general, but only
applies to those trying to live the holy life. The Buddha taught that
all men should do so. He meant it to be general. It is true that it is
not, it cannot be general, or the world would cease. Only a few are
monks. Is, then, the help of confession denied to the multitude? Perhaps
by the stringent Buddhist faith it may not be urgently inculcated, and
men and women in outside life cannot confess to monks. Do they then go
without? Not so. Go to any pagoda at any time and you will see there
kneeling many people, some men, but mostly women. They are there
confessing, audibly sometimes, their troubles, their sins, their joys
also. To whom? Ah! then I cannot tell you. "Someone will hear," they
say, "Someone will hear." Religions are for the necessity of man, and if
the narrow creed will not suffice it must be enlarged.
It is a strange subject this of confession, and its ally, prayer. It is
strange to follow it to its roots in the human heart, and to see that it
is stronger, is older, is more persistent than creeds. Creeds come and
go, they change, and man changes with them; he may have any religion or
have none, but it makes no difference to this. Hindu and Christian,
Mahommedan and Buddhist, Atheist and Jew, the heart of man is ever the
same. Read that wonderful story of Balzac's, "La Messe d'Athee," and you
will see.
* * * * *
If you postulate God or gods, and try from that to deduce prayer and
confession, you find yourself very soon as the boy found himself long
ago. You are at an impasse. If God be indeed as stated, then can prayer
and confession never be necessary. You cannot get round it, you can only
hide yourself in mists of words like the scientific theologian. If God
be as postulated, then can prayer and confession not be necessary, or
even beautiful.
But you can see from daily life that they are so. Who can doubt it?
There is in life nothing so beautiful, nothing so true, nothing that
acts as balm to the heart like prayer and confession, and they exist
naturally. They are there from the beginning; they need no religious
theory to bring them into life. What, then, is the inference? Not
perhaps exactly what it at first sight would seem to be, that God does
not exist or has those qualities of prejudice, of favour, of partiality
which religious books and religious people give to Him. It is, I think,
this: That the truth, the original truth, is the necessity of confession
and prayer, and that to explain this the theory of the nature of God or
gods have arisen. Prayer did not proceed from God, but God from
prayer--_i.e._, the theories of God.
No strongly religious man can reason about his own faith. Christians
will say that the idea of the True God is inherent in man also, that if
not earlier than prayer, it is co-existent. So be it. But how about
false gods--the savage praying to a mountain, the Hindu to an image or a
stone, representing who knows what? the Buddhist woman praying by the
pagoda? Their prayer is beautiful. It is as beautiful as yours. Never
doubt it. Go and see them pray. You will learn that prayer is beautiful,
is true in itself. And can such a thing proceed from a false theology?
See men pray and hear them confess and you will be sure of this, that
prayer and confession, no matter by whom, no matter to whom, are always
true, have always their effect upon the heart. Whatever is false, they
are not. It is one absolute truth that all men will admit.