The physician, if he is to do his work, must know both a healthy and a
diseased body, or organ, when he sees it. He must know the difference
between the two and the symptoms both of health and disease. Otherwise
he is in danger of trying to cure an organ which is healthy already--in
which case his remedies will simply aggravate the disease. That is
obviously true of the physician who seeks to heal the body, and it is
equally, if not so obviously, true of the physician who seeks to
minister to a mind, or a soul, diseased. Now, the missionary will find
that the heathen, to whom he is to minister, have the habit of prayer;
and the question arises, What is to be his attitude towards it? He
cannot take up the position that prayer is in itself a habit to be
condemned; he is not there to eradicate the habit, or to uproot the
tendency. Neither is he there to create the habit; it already exists,
and the wise missionary will acknowledge its existence with
thankfulness. His business is not to teach his flock to {139} pray,
but how to pray, that is to say, for what and to whom. But even if he
thus wisely recognises that prayer is a habit not to be created, but to
be trained by him, it is still possible for him to assume rashly that
it is simply impossible for a heathen ever to pray for anything that is
right, and therefore, that it is a missionary's duty first to insist
that everything for which a savage or barbarian prays must be condemned
as essentially irreligious and wicked. In that case, what will such a
missionary, if sent to the Khonds of Orissa, say, when he finds them
praying thus: "We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know
what is good for us. Give it to us!"? Can he possibly say to his
flock, "All your prayers, all the things that you pray for now, are
wicked; and your only hope of salvation lies in ceasing to pray for
them"? If not, then he must recognise the fact that it is possible for
the heathen to pray, and to pray for some things that it is right to
pray for. And he must not only recognise the fact, but he must utilise
it. Nay! more, he must not only recognise the fact if it chances to
force itself upon him, he must go out of his way with the deliberate
purpose of finding out what things are prayed for. He will then find
himself in {140} more intimate contact with the soul of the man than he
can ever attain to in any other way; and he may then find that there
are other things for which petitions are put up which could not be
prayed for save by a man who had a defective or erroneous conception of
Him who alone can answer prayer.
But it is a blundering, unbusinesslike way of managing things if the
missionary has to go out to his work unprepared in this essential
matter, and has to find out these things for himself--and perhaps not
find them out at all. The applied science of religion should equip him
in this respect; it should be able to take the facts and truths
established by the science of religion and apply them to the purposes
of the missionary. But it is a striking example of the youth and
immaturity of the science of religion that no attempt has yet been made
by it to collect the facts, much less to coordinate and state them
scientifically. If a thing is clear, when we come to think of it, in
the history of religion, it is that the gods are there to be prayed to:
man worships them because it is on their knees that all things lie. It
is from them that man hopes all things; it is in prayer that man
expresses his hopes and desires. It is from his prayers that we should
be able to find out {141} what the gods really are to whom man prays.
What is said about them in mythology--or even in theology--is the
product of reflection, and is in many cases demonstrably different from
what is given in consciousness at the moment when man is striving after
communion with the Highest. Yet it is from mythology, or from the
still more reflective and deliberative expression of ritual, of rites
and ceremonies, that the science of religion has sought to infer the
nature of the gods man worships. The whole apparatus of religion,
rites and ceremonies, sacrifice and altars, nature-worship and
polytheism, has been investigated; the one thing overlooked has been
the one thing for the sake of which all the others exist, the prayer in
which man's soul rises, or seeks to rise, to God.
The reason given by Professor Tylor (_Primitive Culture_, II, 364) for
this is not that the subject is unimportant, but that it is so simple;
"so simple and familiar," he says, "is the nature of prayer that its
study does not demand that detail of fact and argument which must be
given to rites in comparison practically insignificant." Now, it is
indeed the case that things which are familiar may appear to be simple;
but it is also the case that sometimes things {142} are considered
simple merely because they are familiar, and not because they are
simple. The fact that they are not so simple as every one has assumed
comes to be suspected when it is discovered that people take slightly
different views of them. Such slightly different views may be detected
in this case.
Professor Hoeffding holds that, in the lowest form in which religion
manifests itself, "religion appears under the guise of desire," thus
ranging himself on the side of an opinion mentioned by Professor Tylor
(_op. cit._, II, 464) that, as regards the religion of the lower
culture, in prayer "the accomplishment of desire is asked for, but
desire is as yet limited to personal advantage." Now, starting from
this position that prayer is the expression of desire, we have only to
ask, whose desire? that of the individual or that of the community? and
we shall see that under the simple and familiar phrase of "the
accomplishment of desire" there lurks a difference of view which may
possibly widen out into a very wide difference of opinion. If we
appeal to the facts, we may take as an instance a prayer uttered "in
loud uncouth voice of plaintive, piteous tone" by one of the Osages to
Wohkonda, {143} the Master of Life: "Wohkonda, pity me, I am very poor;
give me what I need; give me success against mine enemies, that I may
avenge the death of my friends. May I be able to take scalps, to take
horses!" etc. (Tylor, II, 365). So on the Gold Coast a negro in the
morning will pray, "Heaven! grant that I may have something to eat this
day" (_ib._, 368), not "give us this day our daily bread"; or, raising
his eyes to heaven, he will thus address the god of heaven: "God, give
me to-day rice and yams, gold and agries, give me slaves, riches and
health, and that I may be brisk and swift!" (_ib._). On the other
hand, John Tanner (_Narrative_, p. 46) relates that when Algonquin
Indians were setting out in a fleet of frail bark canoes across Lake
Superior, the chief addressed a prayer to the Great Spirit: "You have
made this lake; and you have made us, your children; you can now cause
that the water shall remain smooth while we pass over in safety." The
chief, it will be observed, did not expressly call the Great Spirit
"our Father," but he did speak of himself and his men as "your
children." If we cross over to Africa, again, we find the Masai women
praying thus; and be it observed that though the first person singular
is used, {144} it is used by the chorus of women, and is plural in
effect:--
I
"My God, to thee alone I pray
That offspring may to me be given.
Thee only I invoke each day,
O morning star in highest heaven.
God of the thunder and the rain,
Give ear unto my suppliant strain.
Lord of the powers of the air,
To thee I raise my daily prayer.