These instances may suffice to show that it would not have been safe to infer, a year or two ago, from the fact that the Australians were not known to pray, that therefore prayer was unknown to them. Indeed, we may safely go farther and surmise that other instances besides those noted really exist, though they have not been observed or if observed have not been understood. Among the northern tribes of central Australia rites are performed to secure food, just as they are performed by the Dieri to avert drought. The Dieri rites are accompanied by a prayer, as we have seen. The Kaitish rites to promote the growth of grass are accompanied by the singing of words, which "have no meaning known to the natives of the present day" (Spencer and Gillen,Northern Tribes, p. 292). Amongst the Mara tribe the rain-making rite consists simply in "singing" the water, drinking it and spitting it out in all directions. In the Anula tribe "dugongs are a favourite article of food," and if the natives desire to bring them out from the rocks, they "can do so by 'singing' and throwing sticks at the rocks" (ib., pp. 313, 314). It is reasonable to suppose that in all these cases the "singing" is now merely a charm. But if we remember that prayers, whentheir meaning is forgotten, pass by vain repetitions into mere charms, we may also reasonably suppose that these Australian charms are degraded prayers; and we shall be confirmed in this supposition to some extent by the fact that in the Kaitish tribes the words sung "have no meaning known to the natives of the present day." If the meaning has evaporated, the religion may have evaporated with it. That the rites, of which the "singing" is an essential part, have now become magical and are used and understood to be practised purely to promote the supply of dugongs and other articles of food, may be freely admitted; but it is unsafe to infer that the purpose with which the rites continue to be practised is the whole of the purpose with which they were originally performed. If the meaning of the "singing" has passed entirely away, the meaning of the rites may have suffered a change. At the present day the rite is understood to increase the supply of dugongs or other articles of food. But it may have been used originally for other purposes. Presumably rites of a similar kind, certainly of some kind, are practised by the Australians who have for their totem the blow-fly, the water-beetle, or the evening star. But they do noteat flies or beetles. Their original purpose in choosing the evening star cannot have been to increase its number. Nor can that have been the object of choosing the mosquito for a totem. But if the object of the rites is not to increase the number of mosquitoes, flies, and beetles, it need not in the first instance have been the object with which the rites were celebrated in the case of other totems.
Let us now return to Professor Tylor's statement that "at low levels of civilisation there are many races who distinctly admit the existence of spirits, but are not certainly known to pray to them even in thought." The number of those races who are not known to pray is being reduced, as we have seen. And I think we may go even farther than that and say that where the existence of spirits is not merely believed in, but is utilised for the purpose of establishing permanent relations between a community and a spirit, we may safely infer that the community offers prayer to the spirit, even though the fact may have escaped the notice of travellers. The reason why we may infer it is that at the lower levels of civilisation we meet with religion, in Höffding's words, "in the guise of desire." We may put the same truth in other words and say that religion isfrom the beginning practical. Such prayers as are known to us to be put up by the lowest races are always practical: they may be definite petitions for definite goods such as harvest or rain or victory in time of war; or they may be general petitions such as that of the Khonds: "We are ignorant of what it is good for us to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it us." But in any case what the god of a community is there for is to promote the good of the community. It is because the savage has petitions to put up that he believes there are powers who can grant his petitions. Prayer is the very root of religion. When the savage has taken every measure he knows of to produce the result he desires, he then goes on to pray for the rainfall he desires, crying out in a loud voice "the impoverished state of the country and the half-starved condition of the tribe." It is true that it is in moments of stress particularly, if not solely, that the savage turns to his god—and the same may be said of many of us—but it is with confidence and hope that he turns to him. If he had no confidence and no hope, he would offer no prayers. But he has hope, he has faith; and every time he prays his heart says, if his words do not, "in Thee, Lord, do we put our trust."
That prayer is the essence, the very breath, of religion, without which it dies, is shown by the fact that amongst the very lowest races of mankind we find frequent traditions of the existence of a high god or supreme being, the creator of the world and the father of mankind. The numerous traces of this dying tradition have been collected by the untiring energy and the unrivalled knowledge of Mr. Andrew Lang in his book,The Making of Religion. In West Africa Dr. Nassau (Fetichism in West Africa, pp. 36 ff.) "hundreds of times" (p. 37) has found that "they know of a Being superior to themselves, of whom they themselves," he says, "inform me that he is the Maker and the Father." What is characteristic of the belief of the savages in this god is that, in Dr. Nassau's words, "it is an accepted belief, but it does not often influence their life. 'God is not in all their thought.' In practice they give Him no worship." The belief is in fact a dying tradition; and it is dying because prayer is not offered to this remote and traditional god. I say that the belief is a dying tradition, and I say so because its elements, which are all found present and active where a community believes in, prays to, and worships the god of the community,are found partially, but only partially, present where the belief survives but as a tradition. Thus, for instance, where the belief is fully operative, the god of the community sanctions the morality of the community; but sometimes where the belief has become merely traditional, this traditional god is supposed to take no interest in the community and exercises no ethical influence over the community. Thus, in West Africa, Nyankupon is "ignored rather than worshipped." In the Andaman Islands, on the other hand, where the god Puluga is still angered by sin or wrong-doing, he is pitiful to those in pain or distress and "sometimes deigns to afford relief" (Lang p. 212 quotingMan,J. A.I., XII, 158). Again, where the belief in the god of the community is fully operative, the occasions on which the prayers of the community are offered are also the occasions on which sacrifice is made. Where sacrifice and prayers are not offered, the belief may still for a time survive, at it does among the Fuegians. They make no sacrifice and, as far as is known, offer no prayers; but to kill a man brings down the wrath of their god, the big man in the woods: "Rain come down, snow come down, hail come down, wind blow, blow, very much blow.Very bad to kill man. Big man in woods no like it, he very angry" (Lang, p. 188, quoting Fitzroy, II, 180). But when sacrifice and prayer cease, the ultimate outcome is that which is found amongst the West African natives, who, as Dr. Nassau tells us (p. 38), say with regard to Anzam, whom they admit to be their Creator and Father, "Why should we care for him? He does not help nor harm us. It is the spirits who can harm us whom we fear and worship, and for whom we care." Who the spirits are Dr. Nassau does not say, but they must be either the other gods of the place or the fetich spirits. And the reason why Anzam is no longer believed to help or harm the natives is obviously that, from some cause or other, there is now no longer any established form of worship of him. The community of which he was originally the god may have broken up, or more probably may have been broken up, with the result that the congregation which met to offer prayer and sacrifice to Anzam was scattered; and the memory of him alone survives. Nothing would be more natural, then, than that the natives, when asked by Dr. Nassau, "Why do you not worship him?" (p. 38), should invent a reason, viz. that it is no use worshippinghim now—the truth being that the form of worship has perished for reasons now no longer present to the natives' mind. In any case, when prayers cease to be offered—whether because the community is broken up or because some new quarter is discovered to which prayers can be offered with greater hope of success—when prayers, for any reason, do cease to be offered to a god, the worship of him begins to cease also, for the breath of life has departed from it.
In this lecture, as my subject is primitive religion, I have made no attempt to trace the history of prayer farther than the highest point which it reaches in the lower levels of religion. That is the point reached by the Khond prayer: "We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it us." That is also the highest point reached by the most religious mind amongst the ancient Greeks: Socrates prayed the gods simply for things good, because the gods knew best what is good (Xen.,Mem., I, iii, 2). The general impression left on one's mind by the prayers offered in this stage of religious development is that man is here and the gods are—there. But "there" is such a long way off. And yet, far off as it is, mannever came to think it was so far off that the gods could not hear. The possibility of man's entering into some sort of communication with them was always present. Nay! more, a community of interests between him and them was postulated: the gods were to promote the interests of the community, and man was to serve the gods. On occasions when sacrifice was made and prayer was offered, the worshippers entered into the presence of God, and communion with Him was sought; but stress was laid rather on the sacrifice offered than on the prayers sent up. The communion at which animal sacrifice aimed may have been gross at times, and at others mystic; but it was the sacrifice rather than the prayer which accompanied it that was regarded as essential to the communion desired, as the means of bridging the gap between man here and the gods there. If, however, the gap was to be bridged, a new revelation was necessary, one revealing the real nature of the sacrifice required by God, and of the communion desired by man. And that revelation is made in Our Lord's Prayer. With the most earnest and unfeigned desire to use the theory of evolution as a means of ordering the facts of the history of religion and of enablingus—so far as it can enable us—to understand them, one is bound to notice as a fact that the theory of evolution is unable to account for or explain the revelation, made in Our Lord's Prayer, of the spirit which is both human and divine. It is the beam of light which, when turned on the darkness of the past, enables us to see whither man with his prayers and his sacrifices had been blindly striving, the place where he fain would be. It is the surest beacon the missionary can hold out to those who are still in darkness and who show by the fact that they pray—if only for rain, for harvest, and victory over all their enemies—that they are battling with the darkness and that they have not turned entirely away from the light of His countenance who is never at any time far from any one of us. Their heart within them is ready to bear witness. Religion is present in them, if only under "the guise of desire"; but it is "the desire of all nations" for which they yearn.
There are, Höffding says, "two tendencies in the nature of religious feeling: on the one hand there is the need to collect and concentrate ourselves, to resign ourselves, to feel ourselves supported and carried by a power raised above allstruggle and opposition and beyond all change. But within the religious consciousness another need makes itself felt, the need of feeling that in the midst of the struggle we have a fellow-struggler at our side, a fellow-struggler who knows from his own experience what it is to suffer and meet resistance" (The Philosophy of Religion, § 54). Between these two tendencies Höffding discovers an opposition or contradiction, an "antinomy of religious feeling." But it is precisely because Christianity alone of all religions recognises both needs that it transcends the antinomy. The antinomy is indeed purely intellectual. Höffding himself says, "only when recollection, collation, and comparison are possible do we discover the opposition or the contradiction between the two tendencies." And in saying that, inasmuch as recollection, collation, and comparison are intellectual processes, he admits that the antinomy is intellectual. That it is not an antinomy of religious feeling is shown by the fact that the two needs exist, that is to say, are both felt. To sayà priorithat both cannot be satisfied is useless in face of the fact that those who feel them find that Christianity satisfies them.
In my last lecture I called attention to the fact that the subject of prayer has been strangely neglected by the science of religion. Religion, in whatever form it manifests itself, is essentially practical; man desires to enter into communication or into communion with his god, and in so doing he has a practical purpose in view. That purpose may be to secure a material blessing of a particular kind, such as victory in war or the enjoyment of the fruits of the earth in their due season, or the purpose may be to offer thanks for a harvest and to pray for a continuance of prosperity generally. Or the purpose of prayer may be to ask for deliverance from material evils, such as famine or plague. Or it may be to ask for deliverance from moral evils and for power to do God's will. In a word, if man had no prayer to make, the most powerful, if not the only, motive inciting him to seek communion would be wanting. Now, to some of us it may seemà priorithat there is no reason why the communion thus sought inprayer should require any external rite to sanction or condition it. If that is ourà prioriview, we shall be the more surprised to find that in actual fact an external rite has always been felt to be essential; and that rite has always been and still is sacrifice, in one or other of its forms. Or, to put the same fact in another way, public worship has been from the beginning the condition without which private worship could not begin and without which private worship cannot continue. To any form of religion, whatever it be, it is essential, if it is to be religion, that there shall be a community of worshippers and a god worshipped. The bond which unites the worshippers with one another and with their god is religion. From the beginning the public worship in which the worshippers have united has expressed itself in rites—rites of sacrifice—and in the prayers of the community. To the end, the prayers offered are prayers to "Our Father"; and if the worshipper is spatially separated from, he is spiritually united to, his fellow-worshippers even in private prayer.
We may then recognise that prayer logically and ultimately implies sacrifice in one or other of its senses; and that sacrifice as a rite is meaningless and impossible without prayer. But if we recognisethat sacrifice wherever it occurs implies prayer, then the fact that the observers of savage or barbarous rites have described the ritual acts of sacrifice, but have not observed or have neglected to report the prayers implied, will not lead us into the error of imagining that sacrifice is a rite which can exist—that it can have a religious existence—without prayer. We may attend to either, the sacrifice or to the prayer, as we may attend either to the concavity or the convexity of a curve, but we may not deny the existence and presence of the one because our attention happens to be concentrated on the other. The relation in primitive religion of the one to the other we may express by saying that prayer states the motive with which the sacrifice is made, and that sacrifice is essential to the prayer, which would not be efficacious without the sacrifice. The reason why a community can address the god which it worships is that the god is felt to be identified in some way with the community and to have its interests in his charge and care. And the rite of sacrifice is felt to make the identification more real. Prayer, again, is possible only to the god to whom the community is known; with whom it is identified, more or less; and with whom, when his help is required, thecommunity seeks to identify itself more effectually. The means of that identification without which the prayers of the community would be ineffectual is sacrifice. The earliest form of sacrifice may probably be taken to be the sacrifice of an animal, followed by a sacrificial meal. Later, when the god has a stated place in which he is believed to manifest himself,—tree or temple,—then the identification may be effected by attaching offerings to the tree or temple. But in either case what is sought by the offering dedicated or the meal of sacrifice is in a word "incorporation." The worshippers desire to feel that they are at one with the spirit whom they worship. And the desire to experience this sense of union is particularly strong when plague or famine makes it evident that some estrangement has taken place between the god and the community which is normally in his care and under his protection. The sacrifices and prayers that are offered in such a case obviously do not open up communication for the first time between the god and his tribe: they revive and reënforce a communion which is felt to exist already, even though temporal misfortunes, such as drought or famine, testify that it has been allowed by the tribe to become less close than it ought to be, or thatit has been strained by transgressions on the part of individual members of the community. But it is not only in times of public distress that the community approaches its god with sacrifice and prayer. It so happens that the prayers offered for victory in war or for rain or for deliverance from famine are instances of prayer of so marked a character that they have forced themselves on the notice of travellers in all parts of the world, from the Eskimo to the Australian black fellows or the negroes of Africa. And it was to this class of prayers that I called your attention principally in the last lecture. But they are, when we come to think of it, essentially occasional prayers, prayers that are offered at the great crises of tribal life, when the very existence of the tribe is at stake. Such crises, however, by their very nature are not regular or normal; and it would be an error to suppose that it is only on these occasions that prayers are made by savage or barbarous peoples. If we wish to discover the earliest form of regularly recurring public worship, we must look for some regularly recurring occasion for it. One such regularly recurring occasion is harvest time, another is seed time, another is the annual ceremonial at which the boys whoattain in the course of the year to the age of manhood are initiated into the secrets or "mysteries" of the tribe. These are the chief and perhaps the only regularly recurring occasions of public worship as distinguished from the irregular crises of war, pestilence, drought, and famine which affect the community as a whole, and from the irregular occasions when the individual member of the community prays for offspring or for delivery from sickness or for success in the private undertaking in which he happens to be engaged.
Of the regularly recurring occasions of public worship I will select, to begin with, the rites which are associated with harvest time. And I will do so partly because the science of religion provides us with very definite particulars both as to the sacrifices and as to the prayers which are usually made on these occasions; and partly because the prayers that are made are of a special kind and throw a fresh light on the nature of the communion that the tribe seeks to effect by means of the sacrificial offering.
At Saa, in the Solomon Islands, yams are offered, and the person offering them cries in a loud voice, "This is yours to eat" (Frazer,G. B.^2, II, 465). Inthe Society Islands the formula is, "Here, Tari, I have brought you something to eat" (ib., 469). In Indo-China, the invitation is the same: "Taste, O goddess, these first-fruits which have just been reaped" (ib., 325). There are no actually expressed words of thanks in these instances; but we may safely conjecture that the offerings are thank-offerings and that the feeling with which the offerings are made is one of gratitude and thankfulness. Thus in Ceram we are told that first-fruits are offered "as a token of gratitude" (ib., 463). On the Niger the Onitsha formula is explicit: "I thank God for being permitted to eat the new yam" (ib., 325). At Tjumba in the East Indies, "vessels filled with rice are presented as a thank-offering to the gods" (ib., 462). The people of Nias on these occasions offer thanks for the blessings bestowed on them (ib., 463). By a very natural transition of thought and feeling, thankfulness for past favours leads to prayer for the continuance of favour in the future. Thus in Tana, in the New Hebrides, the formula is: "Compassionate father! here is some food for you; eat it; be kind to us on account of it" (ib., 464); while the Basutos say: "Thank you, gods; give us bread to-morrow also" (ib., 459); and in Tonga the prayersmade at the offering of first-fruits implore the protection of the gods, and beseech them for welfare generally, though in especial for the fruits of the earth (ib., 466).
The prayers of primitive man which I quoted in my last lecture were in the nature of petitions or requests, as was natural and indeed inevitable in view of the fact that they were preferred on occasions when the tribe was in exceptional distress and required the aid of the gods on whose protection the community relied. But the prayers which I have just quoted are not in their essence petitions or requests, even though in some cases they tend to become so. They are essentially prayers of thanksgiving and the offerings made are thank-offerings. Thus our conception of primitive prayer must be extended to include both mental attitudes—that of thankfulness for past or present blessings as well as the hope of blessings yet to come. And inasmuch as sacrifice is the concomitant of prayer, we must recognise that sacrificial offerings also serve as the expression of both mental attitudes. And we must note that in the regularly recurring form of public or tribal worship with which we are now dealing the dominant feeling to which expression is given isthat of thankfulness. The tribe seeks for communion with its god for the purpose of expressing its thanks. Even the savage who simply says, "Here, Tari, I have brought you something to eat," or, still more curtly, "This is yours to eat," is expressing thanks, albeit in savage fashion. And the means which the savage adopts for securing that communion which he seeks to renew regularly with the tribal god is a sacrificial meal, of which the god and his worshippers partake. Throughout the whole ceremony, whether we regard the spoken words or the acts performed, there is no suggestion of magic and no possibility of twisting the ceremony into a piece of magic intended to produce some desired result or to exercise any constraint over the powers to which the ceremony is addressed. The mental attitude is that of thankfulness.
Now, it is, I venture to suggest, impossible to dissociate from the first-fruits ceremonials which I have described the ceremonies observed by Australian black fellows on similar occasions. And it is also impossible to overlook the differences between the ceremony in Australia and the ceremony elsewhere. In Australia, as elsewhere, when the time of year arrives at which the food becomes fit for eating,a ceremony has to be performed before custom permits the food to be eaten freely. In Australia, as elsewhere, a ceremonial eating, a sacramental meal, has to take place. But whereas elsewhere the god of the community is expressly invited to partake of the sacramental meal, even though he be not mentioned by name and though the invitation take the curt form of "This is yours to eat," in Australia no words whatever are spoken; the person who performs the ceremony performs it indeed with every indication of reverential feeling, he eats solemnly and sparingly, that is to say formally and because the eating is a matter of ritual, but no reference is made by him so far as we know, to any god. How then are we to explain the absence of any such reference? There seems to me to be only one explanation which is reasonably possible. It is that in the Australian ceremony, which would be perfectly intelligible and perfectly in line with the ceremony as it occurs everywhere else, the reference to the god who is or was invited to partake of the first-fruits has in the process of time and, we must add, in the course of religious decay, gradually dropped out. The invitation may never have been more ample than the curt form, "This is yours to eat." Even in theabsence of any verbal invitation whatever, a gesture may long have sufficed to indicate what was in the mind and was implied by the act of the savage performing the ceremony. Words may not have been felt necessary to explain what every person present at the ceremony knew to be the purpose of the rite. But in the absence of any verbal formula whatever the purpose and meaning of the rite would be apt to pass out of mind, to evaporate, even though custom maintained, as it does in Australia to this day maintain, the punctual and punctilious performance of the outward ceremony. I suggest, therefore, that in Australia, as elsewhere, the solemn eating of the first-fruits has been a sacramental meal of which both the god and his worshippers were partakers. The alternative is to my mind much less probable: it is to use the Australian ceremony as it now exists to explain the origin of the ceremony as we find it elsewhere. In Australia it is not now apparently associated with the worship of any god; therefore it may be argued in other countries also it was not originally part of the worship of any god either. If, then, it was not an act of public worship originally, how are we to understand it? The suggestion is that the fruits of the earth or the animals which become the food ofman are, until they become fit for eating, regarded as sacred or taboo, and therefore may not be eaten. That suggestion derives some support from the fact that in Australia anything that is eaten may be a totem and being a totem is taboo. But if it is thus sacred, then in order to be eaten it must be "desacralised," the taboo must be taken off. And it is suggested that that precisely is what is effected by the ceremonial eating of the totem by the headman of the totem clan: the totem is desacralised by the mere fact that it is formally and ceremonially eaten by the headman, after which it may be consumed by others as an ordinary article of food. But this explanation of the first-fruits ceremony is based upon an assumption which is contrary to the facts of the case as it occurs in Australia. It assumes that the plant or the animal until desacralised is taboo to all members of the tribe, and that none of them can eat it until it has been desacralised by the ceremonial eating. But the assumption is false; the plant or animal is sacred and taboo only to members of the clan whose totem it is. It is not sacred to the vast majority of the tribe, for they have totems of their own; to them it is not sacred or taboo, they may kill it—and they do—without breaking any taboo. The ceremonialeating of the first-fruits raises no taboo as far as the tribe generally is concerned, for the plant or animal is not taboo to them. As far as the tribe generally is concerned, no process of desacralisation takes place and none is effected by the ceremonial eating. It is the particular totem group alone which is affected by the ceremony; and the inference which it seems to me preferable to draw is that the ceremonial eating of the first-fruits is, or rather has been, in Australia what it is elsewhere, viz. an instance of prayer and sacrifice in which the worshippers of a god are brought into periodic—in this case annual—communion with their god. The difference between the Australian case and others seems to be that in the other cases the god who partakes of the first-fruits is the god of the whole community, while in Australia he is the god of the particular totem group and is analogous to the family gods who are worshipped elsewhere, even where there is a tribal or national god to be worshipped as well.
We are then inclined, for these and other reasons, to explain the ceremonial eating of the totem plant or animal in Australia by the analogy of the ceremonial eating of first-fruits elsewhere, and to regard the ceremony as being in all cases an act of worship,in which at harvest time the worshippers of a god seek communion with him by means of sacrifice and prayers of thanksgiving. But if we take this view of the sacrifice and prayers offered at harvest time, we shall be inclined to regard the rites which are performed at seed time, or the period analogous to it, as being also possibly, in part, of a religious character. In the case of agricultural peoples it is beyond doubt that some of the ceremonies are religious in character: where the food plant is itself regarded as a deity or the mode in which a deity is manifested, not only may there be at harvest time a sacramental meal in which, as amongst the Aztecs, the deity is formally "communicated" to his worshippers, but at seed time sacrifice and prayer may be made to the deity. Such a religious ceremony, whatever be the degree of civilisation or semicivilisation which has been reached by those who observe the ceremony, does not of course take the place of the agricultural operations which are necessary if the fruits are to be produced in due season. And the combination of the religious rites and the agricultural operations does not convert the agricultural operations into magical operations, or prove that the religious rites are merely pieces of magicintended to constrain the superior power of the deity concerned. Indeed, if among the operations performed at seed time we find some that from the point of view of modern science are perfectly ineffectual, as vain as eating tiger to make you bold, we shall be justified in regarding them as pieces of primitive science, eventually discarded indeed in the progress of advancing knowledge, but originally practised (on the principle that like produces like) as the natural means of producing the effect desired. If we so regard them, we shall escape the error of considering them to be magical; and we shall have no difficulty in distinguishing them from the religious rites which may be combined with them. Further, where harvest time is marked by the offering of sacrifice and prayers of thanksgiving, we may not unreasonably take it that the religious rites observed at seed time or the period analogous to it are in the nature of sacrifice and prayers addressed to the appropriate deity to beseech him to favour the growth of the plant or animal in question. In a word, the practice of giving thanks to a god at harvest time for the harvest creates a reasonable presumption that prayer is offered to him at seed time; and if thanks are given at a period analogous toharvest time by a people like the Australian black fellows, who have no domesticated plants or animals, prayers of the nature of petitions may be offered by them at the period analogous to seed time.
The deity to whom prayers are offered at the one period and thanksgiving is made at the other may be, as in the case of the Aztec Xilonen, or the Hindoo Maize-mother, the spirit of the plant envisaged as a deity; or may be, not a "departmental" deity of this kind, but a supreme deity having power over all things. But when we turn from the regularly recurring acts of public worship connected with seed time and harvest to the regularly recurring ceremonies at which the boys of a tribe are initiated into the duties and rights of manhood, it is obvious that the deity concerned in them, even if we assume (as is by no means necessary) that he was originally "departmental" and at first connected merely with the growth of a plant or animal, must be regarded at the initiation ceremonies as a god having in his care all the interests of that tribe of which the boys to be initiated are about to become full members. Unmistakable traces of such a deity are found amongst the Australian black fellows in the "father of all," "the all-father" described by Mr. Howitt. Theworship of the "all-father" is indeed now of a fragmentary kind; but it fortunately happens that in the case of one tribe, the Euahlayi, we have evidence, rescued by Mrs. Langloh Parker, to show that prayer is offered to Byamee; the Euahlayi pray to him for long life, because they have kept his law. The nature of Byamee's law may safely be inferred from the fact that at this festival, both amongst the Euahlayi and other Australians, the boys who are being initiated are taught the moral laws or the customary morality of the tribe. But though prayers are still offered by the Euahlayi and may have at one time been offered by all the Australian tribes, there is no evidence at present to show that the prayer is accompanied by a sacrifice, as is customary amongst tribes whose worship has not disintegrated so much as is the case amongst the Australians.
The ceremonies by which boys are admitted to the status of manhood are, probably amongst all the peoples of the earth who observe them, of a religious character, for the simple reason that the community to which the boy is admitted when he attains the age of manhood is a community, united together by religious bonds as a community worshipping the same god or gods; and it is to theworship and the service of these gods that he is admitted. But the ceremonies themselves vary too much to allow of our drawing from them any valuable or important conclusion as to the nature and import of sacrifice as a religious institution. On the other hand, the ceremonies observed at harvest time, or the analogous period, have, wherever they occur, such marked similarity among themselves, and the institution of prayer and sacrifice is such a prominent feature in them, that the evidence they afford must be decisive for us in attempting to form a theory of sacrifice. Nor can we dissociate the ceremonies observed in spring from the harvest ceremonies; as Dr. Frazer remarks (G. B., II, 190), "Plainly these spring and harvest customs are based on the same ancient modes of thought and form parts of the same primitive heathendom." What, then, are these "ancient modes of thought" and what the primitive customs based upon them? We may, I think, classify them in four groups. If we are to take first those instances in which the "ancient mode of thought" is most clearly expressed—whether because they are the most fully developed or because they retain the ancient mode most faithfully and with the least disintegration—we mustturn to ancient Mexico and Peru. In Mexico a paste idol or dough image of the god was made; the priest hurled a dart into its breast; and this was called the killing of the god, "so that his body might be eaten." The dough image was broken and the pieces were given in the manner of a communion to the people, "who received it with such tears, fear, and reverence, as it was an admirable thing," says Father Acosta, "saying that they did eat the flesh and bones of God." Or, again, an image of the goddess Chicomecoatl was made of dough and exhibited by the priest, saying, "This is your god." All kinds of maize, beans, etc., were offered to it and then were eaten in the temple "in a general scramble, take who could." In Peru ears of maize were dressed in rich garments and worshipped as the Mother of the Maize; or little loaves of maize mingled with the blood of sheep were made; the priest gave to each of the people a morsel of these loaves, "and all did receive and eat these pieces," and prayed that the god "would show them favour, granting them children and happy years and abundance and all that they required." In this, the first group of instances, it is plain beyond all possibility of gainsaying that the spring and harvest customs consistof the worship of a god, of sacrifice and prayers to him, and of a communion which bound the worshippers to one another and to him.
Our second group of instances consists of cases in which the corn or dough or paste is not indeed made into the form or image of a god, but, as Dr. Frazer says (G. B.II, 318), "the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally, that is, as the body of the corn spirit." The spirit thus worshipped may not yet have acquired a proper name; the only designation used may have been such a one as the Hindoo Bhogaldai, meaning simply Cotton-mother. Indeed, even amongst the Peruvians, the goddess had not yet acquired a proper name, but was known only as the Mother of the Maize. But precisely because the stage illustrated in our second group of instances is not so highly developed as in Mexico or Peru it is much more widely spread. It is found in the East Indian island of Euro, amongst the Alfoors of Minahassa, in the Celebes, in the Neilgherry Hills of South India, in the Hindoo Koosh, in Indo-China, on the Niger, amongst the Zulus and the Pondos, and amongst the Creek, Seminole, and Natchez Indians (ib.321-342). In this, the second group of instances, then, though the godmay have no special, proper, name, and though no image of him is made out of the dough or paste, still "the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally, that is as the body of the corn spirit"; by means of the sacramental eating, of sacrifice and prayer, communion between the god and his worshippers is renewed and maintained.
The third group of instances consists of the harvest customs of northern Europe—the harvest supper and the rites of the Corn-mother or the Corn-maiden or the Kern Baby. It can scarcely be contended that these rites and customs, so far as they survive at the present day, retain, if they ever had, any religious value; they are performed as a matter of tradition and custom and not because any one knows why they are performed. But that they originally had a meaning—even though now it has evaporated—cannot be doubted. Nor can it be doubted that the meaning, if it is to be recovered, must be recovered by means of the comparative method. And, if the comparative method is to be applied, the Corn-mother of northern Europe cannot be dissociated from the Maize-mother of ancient Peru. But if we go thus far, then we must, with Dr. Frazer (ib.288), recognise "clearly thesacramental character of the harvest-supper," in which, "as a substitute for the real flesh of the divine being, bread and dumplings are made and eaten sacramentally." Thus, once more, harvest customs testify in northern Europe, as elsewhere, to the fact that there was once a stated, annual, period at which communion between the god and his worshipper was sought by prayer and sacrifice.
The North-European harvest customs are further interesting and important because, if they are clearly connected on the one hand with the groups of instances already given, they are also connected on the other with the group to which we have yet to call attention. Thus far the wheat or maize, if not eaten in the form of little loaves or cakes, has been made into a dough image, or else the ears of maize have been dressed in rich garments to indicate that they represent the Mother of the Maize; and in Europe also both forms of symbolism are found. But in northern Europe, the corn spirit is also believed to be manifested, Dr. Frazer says, in "the animal which is present in the corn and is caught or killed in the last sheaf." The animal may be a wolf, dog, cock, hare, cat, goat, bull, cow, horse, or pig. "The animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partakenof by the harvesters," and, Dr. Frazer says, "these customs bring out clearly the sacramental character of the harvest supper." Now, this manifestation of the corn spirit in animal form is not confined to Europe; it occurs for instance in Guinea and in all the provinces and districts of China. And it is important as forming a link between the agricultural and the pre-agricultural periods; in Dr. Frazer's words, "hunting and pastoral tribes, as well as agricultural peoples, have been in the habit of killing their gods" (ib.366). In the pastoral period, as well as in agricultural times, the god who is worshipped by the tribe and with whom the tribe seeks communion by means of prayer and sacrifice, may manifest himself in animal form, and "the animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken of."
We now come to the fourth and the last of our groups of instances. It consists of the rites observed by Australian tribes. Amongst these tribes too there is what Dr. Frazer terms "a sacramental eating" of the totem plant or animal. Thus Central Australian black men of the kangaroo totem eat a little kangaroo flesh, as a sacrament (Spencer and Gillen, p. 204 ff.). Now, it is impossible, I think, todissociate the Australian rite, to separate this fourth group, from the three groups already described. In Australia, as in the other cases, the customs are observed in spring and harvest time, and in harvest time, in Australia as well as elsewhere, there is a solemn and sparing eating of the plant or animal; and, in Dr. Frazer's words, "plainly these spring and harvest customs are based on the same ancient modes of thought, and form part of the same primitive heathendom." What, then, is this ancient and primitive mode of thought? In all the cases except the Australian, the thought manifestly implied and expressed is that by the solemn eating of the plant or the animal, or the dough image or paste idol, or the little loaves, the community enters into communion with its god, or renews communion with him. On this occasion the Peruvians prayed for children, happy years and abundance. On this occasion, even among the Australians, the Euahlayi tribe pray for long life, because they have kept Byamee's law. It would not, therefore, be unreasonable to interpret the Australian custom by the same ancient mode of thought which explains the custom wherever else—and that is all over the world—it is found. But perhaps, if we can find some other interpretationof the Australian custom, we should do better to reverse the process and explain the spring and harvest customs which are found elsewhere by means of, and in accordance with, the Australian custom. Now another interpretation of the Australian custom has been put forward by Dr. Frazer. He treats the Australian ceremony as being a piece of pure magic, the purpose of which is to promote the growth and increase of the plants and animals which provide the black fellows with food. But if we start from this point of view, we must go further and say that amongst other peoples than the Australian the killing of the representative animal of the spirit of vegetation is, in Dr. Frazer's words, "a magical rite intended to assure the revival of nature in spring." And if that is the nature of the rite which appears in northern Europe as the harvest supper, it will also be the nature of the rite as it appears both in our second group of instances, where the corn is eaten "as the body of the corn-spirit," and in the first group, where the dough image or paste idol was eaten in Mexico as the flesh and bones of the god. That this line of thought runs through Dr. Frazer'sGolden Bough, in its second edition, is indicated by the fact that the rite is spoken of throughout as asacrament. That the Mexican rite as described in our first group is sacramental, is clear. Of the rites which form our second group of instances, Dr. Frazer says that the corn-spirit, or god, "is killed in the person of his representative and eaten sacramentally," and that "the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally; that is, as the body of the corn-spirit" (p. 318). Of the North European rites, again, he says, "the animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken of by the harvesters"—"these customs bring out clearly the sacramental character of the harvest supper"—"as a substitute for the real flesh of the divine being, bread or dumplings are made in his image and eaten sacramentally." Finally, even when speaking of the Australians as men who have no gods to worship, and with whom the rite is pure and unadulterated magic, he yet describes the rite as a sacrament.
Now if, on the one hand, from its beginning amongst the Australians to the form which it finally took amongst the Mexicans the rite is, as Dr. Frazer systematically calls it, a sacrament; and if, on the other, it is, in Dr. Frazer's words, "a magical rite intended to assure the revival of nature in spring," then the conclusion which the reader cannot helpdrawing is that a sacrament, or this sacrament at least, is in its origin, and in its nature throughout, a piece of magic. Religion is but magic written in different characters; and for those who can interpret them it spells the same thing. But though this is the conclusion to which Dr. Frazer's argument leads, and to which in the first edition of hisGolden Boughit clearly seemed to point; in the preface to the second edition he formally disavows it. He recognises that religion does not spring from magic, but is fundamentally opposed to it. A sacrament, therefore, we may infer, cannot be a piece of magic. The Australian sacrament, therefore, as Dr. Frazer calls it, cannot, we should be inclined to say, be a piece of magic. But Dr. Frazer still holds that the Australian rite or sacrament is pure magic—religious it cannot be, for in Dr. Frazer's view the Australians know no religion and have no gods.
Now if the rite as it occurs in Australia is pure magic, and if religion is not a variety of magic but fundamentally different from it, then the rite which, as it occurs everywhere else, is religious, cannot be derived from, or a variety of, the Australian piece of magic; and the spring and harvest customs which are found in Australia cannot be "based on thesame ancient modes of thought or form part of the same primitive heathendom" as the sacramental rites which are found everywhere else in the world. The solemn annual eating of the totem plant or animal in Australia must have a totally different basis from that on which the sacrament and communion stands in every other part of the globe: in Australia it is based on magic, elsewhere on that which is, according to Dr. Frazer, fundamentally different and opposed to magic, viz. religion. Before, however, we commit ourselves to this conclusion, we may be allowed to ask, What is it that compels us thus to sever the Australian from the other forms of the rite? The reply would seem to be that, whereas the other forms are admittedly religious, the Australian is "a magical rite intended to assure the revival of nature in spring." Now, if that were really the nature of the Australian rite, we might have to accept the conclusion to which we hesitate to commit ourselves. But, as a matter of fact, the Australian rite is not intended to assure the revival of nature in spring, and has nothing magical about it. It is perfectly true that in spring in Australia certain proceedings are performed which are based upon the principle that like produces like; andthat these proceedings are, by students of the science of religion, termed—perhaps incorrectly—magical. But these spring customs are quite different from the harvest customs; and it is the harvest customs which constitute the link between the rite in Australia and the rite in the rest of the world. The crucial question, therefore, is whether the Australian harvest rite is magical, or is even based on the principle that like produces like. And the answer is that it is plainly not. The harvest rite in Australia consists, as we know it now, simply in the fact that at the appointed time a little of the totem plant or animal is solemnly and sparingly eaten by the headman of the totem. The solemnity with which the rite is performed is unmistakable, and may well be termed religious. And no attempt even, so far as I am aware, has been made to show that this solemn eating is regarded as magic by the performers of the rite, or how it can be so regarded by students of the science of religion. Until the attempt is made and made successfully, we are more than justified in refusing to regard the rite as magical; we are bound to refuse to regard it as such. But if the rite is not magical—andà fortioriif it is, as Dr. Frazer terms it, sacramental—then it isreligious; and the ancient mode of thought, forming part of primitive heathendom, which is at the base of the rite, is the conviction that manifests itself wherever the rite continues to live, viz. that by prayer and sacrifice the worshippers in any community are brought into communion with the god they worship. The rite is, in truth, what Dr. Frazer terms it as it occurs in Australia—a sacrament. But not even in Australia is a sacrament a piece of magic.
In the animistic stage of the evolution of humanity, the only causes man can conceive of are animated things; and, in the presence of any occurrence sufficiently striking to arrest his attention, the questions which present themselves to his mind are, Who did this thing, and why? Occurrences which arrest the attention of the community are occurrences which affect the community; and in a low stage of evolution, when the most pressing of all practical questions is how to live, the occurrences which most effectually arrest attention are those which affect the food supply of the community. If, then, the food supply fails, the occurrence is due to some of the personal, or quasi-personal, powers by whom the community is surrounded; and the reason why such power so acted is found in the wrath whichmust have actuated him. The situation is abnormal, for famine is abnormal; and it indicates anger and wrath on the part of the power who brought it about. But it also implies that when things go on in the normal way,—when the relations between the spirit and the community are normal,—the attitude of the spirit to the community is peaceable and friendly. Not only, however, does the community desire to renew peaceable and friendly relations, where pestilence or famine show that they have been disturbed: the community also desires to benefit by them when they are in their normal condition. The spirits that can disturb the normal conditions by sending pestilence or famine can also assist the community in undertakings, the success of which is indispensable if the community is to maintain its existence; for instance, those undertakings on which the food supply of the community depends. Hence the petitions which are put up at seed time, or, in the pre-agricultural period, at seasons analogous to seed time. Hence, also, the rites at harvest time or the analogous season, rites which are instituted and developed for the purpose of maintaining friendly relation and communion between the community, and the spirit whose favouris sought and whose anger is dreaded by the community. Such sacrificial rites may indeed be interpreted as the making of gifts to the gods; and they do, as a matter of fact, often come so to be regarded by those who perform them. From this undeniable fact the inference may then be drawn, and by many students of the science of religion it is inferred, that from the beginning there was in such sacrificial rites no other intention than to bribe the god or to purchase his favour and the good things he had to give. But the inference, which, when properly limited, has some truth in it, becomes misleading when put forward as being the whole truth. Unless there were some truth in it, the rite of sacrifice could never have developed into the form which was denounced by the Hebrew prophets and mercilessly exposed by Plato. But had that been the whole truth, the rite would have been incapable of discharging the really religious function which it has in its history fulfilled. That function has been to place and maintain the society which practises it in communion with its god. Doubtless in the earliest stages of the history of the rite, the communion thus felt to be established was prized and was mainly sought for the external blessings which were believedto follow from it, or, as a means to avert the public disasters which a breach of communion entailed. Doubtless it was only by degrees, and by slow degrees, that the communion thus established came to be regarded as being in itself the end which the rite of sacrifice was truly intended to attain. But the communion of the worshippers with their god was not a purpose originally foreign to the rite, and which, when introduced, transformed the rite from what it at first was into something radically different. On the contrary, it was present, even though not prominent or predominant, from the beginning; and the rite, as a religious institution, followed different lines of evolution, according as the one aspect or the other was developed. Where the aspect under which the sacrificial rite was regarded was that the offering was a gift made to the deity in order to secure some specified temporal advantage, the religious value of the rite diminished to the vanishing point in the eyes both of those who, like Plato, could see the intrinsic absurdity of pretending to make gifts to Him from whom alone all good things come, and of those who felt that the sacrificial rite so conceived did not afford the spiritual communion for which they yearned. Where even thesacrificial rite was regarded as a means whereby communion between the worshipper and his god was attained or maintained, the emphasis might be thrown on the rite and its due performance rather than on the spiritual communion of which it was the condition. That is to say, with the growth of formalism attention was concentrated on the ritual and correspondingly withdrawn from the prayer which, from the beginning, had been of the essence of the rite. By the rite of sacrifice the community had always been brought into the presence of the god it worshipped; and, in the prayers then offered on behalf of the society, the society had been brought into communion with its god. From that communion it was possible to fall away, even though the performance of the rite was maintained. The very object of that communion might be misinterpreted and mistaken to be a means merely to temporal blessings for the community, or even to personal advantages for the individual. Or the punctilious performance of each and every detail of the rite might tend to become an end in itself and displace the spiritual communion, the attainment of which had been from the beginning the highest, even if not the only or the most prominent,end which the rite might subserve. The difference between the possibilities which the rite might have realised and the actual purposes for which it had come to be used before the birth of Christ is a difference patent to the most casual observer of the facts. The dissatisfaction felt alike by Plato and the Hebrew prophets with the rite as it had come to be practised may be regarded, if we choose so to regard it, as the necessary consequence of pre-existing facts, and as necessarily entailing the rejection or the reconstitution of the rite. As a matter of history, the rite was reconstituted and not rejected; and as reconstituted it became the central fact of the Christian religion. It became the means whereby, through Christ, all men might be brought to God. We may say, if we will, that a new meaning was put into the rite, or that its true meaning was now made manifest. The facts themselves clearly indicate that from the beginning the rite was the means whereby a society sought or might seek communion with its god. They also indicate that the rite of animal sacrifice came to be found insufficient as a means. It was through our Lord that mankind learned what sacrifice was needed—learned to "offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, oursouls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto thee." That is the sacrifice Christ showed us the example of; that is the example which the missionary devotes himself to follow and to teach.