"If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper, King Varuna knows it, he is there as the third.
"This earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the king, and this wide sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (sky and ocean) are Varuna's loins; he is also contained in this small drop of water.
"He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not be rid of Varuna, the king."
The supreme power of the universe is here conceived under a political image. Conceptions of government and social order supply another line of advance, parallel with the forces of nature. On the African Gold Coast, after eighteen years' observation, Cruickshank ranged the objects of worship in three ranks: (1) the stone, the tree, the river, the snake, the alligator, the bundle of rags, which constituted the private fetish of the individual; (2) the greater family deity whose aid was sought by all alike, sometimes in a singular act of communion which involved the swallowing of the god (p.144); and (3) the deity of the whole town, to whom the entire people had recourse in times of calamity and suffering.
The conception of the deity of a tribe or nation may be greatly developed under the influence of victory. War becomes a struggle between rival gods. Jephthah the Gileadite, after recounting the triumphs of Israel to the hostile Ammonite king, states the case with the most naked simplicity: "Yahweh, Israel's god, hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess them? Wilt thou not possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever Yahweh our god hath dispossessed from before us, them will we possess" (Judges xi. 23, 24). The land of Canaan was the gift of Israel's God, but at first his power was limited by its boundaries: to be driven from the country was to bealienated from the right to offer him worship or receive from him protection. In the famous battle with the Hittites, celebrated by the court-poet of Rameses the Great (1300-1234 B.C.), the king, endangered by the flight of his troops, appeals to the great god Amen, a form of the solar deity Rê, with confidence of help, "Amen shall bring to nought the ignorers of God": and the answer comes, "I am with thee, I am thy father, my hand is with thee, I am more excellent for thee than hundreds of thousands united in one." Success thus enhanced the glory of the victor's gods. Like the Incas of Peru in later days, the Assyrian sovereigns confirmed their power by bringing the deities of tributary peoples in a captive train to their own capital: and the Hebrew prophet opens his description of the fall of Babylon by depicting the images of the great gods Bel and Nebo as packed for deportation on the transport-animals of the conqueror.
Other causes further tended to give distinction to the personality of deities, and define their spheres. A promiscuous horde of spirits has no family relationships. A god may have a pedigree; a consort is at his side; and the mysterious divine power reappears in a son. Instead of the political analogy of a sovereign and his attendants, the family conception expresses itself in a divine father, mother and child. Thus the Ibani of Southern Nigeria recognised Adum as the father of allgods except Tamuno the creator, espoused to Okoba the principal goddess, and mother of Eberebo, represented as a boy, to whom children were dedicated. The Egyptian triad, Osiris, Isis and Horus, is well known; and the divine mother with the babe upon her lap passed into the Christian Church in the form of the Virgin Mary and her infant son.
The divisions of the universe suggested another grouping. The Vedic poets arranged their deities in three zones: the sky above, the intervening atmosphere, and the earth beneath. Babylonian cosmology placed Anu in the heaven, Bel on the earth, and Ea in the great deep, and these three became the symbols of the order of nature, and the divine embodiments of physical law. Homer already divides the world between the sky-god Zeus, Poseidon of earth and sea, and Hades of the nether realm: and Rome has its triads, like Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, or again Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Whatever be the origin of the number three in this connection, it reproduces itself with strange reiteration in both hemispheres. Other groups are suggested by the sun and moon and the five planets, and appear in sets of seven. Egyptian summaries recognised gods in the sky, on earth, and in the water; and the theologians of different sanctuaries loved to arrange them in systems of nine, or three times three.
Out of this vast and motley multitude emerge certain leading types in correspondencewith certain modes of human thought, with certain hopes and fears arising out of the changes of the human lot. Curiosity begins to ask questions about the scene around. The child, when it has grasped some simple view of the world, will inquire who made it; and to the usual answer will by and by rejoin "And who made God?" Elementary speculation does not advance so far: it is content to rest if necessary in darkness and the void, provided there is a power which can light the sun, and set man on his feet. But the intellectual range of thought even in the lower culture is much wider than might have been anticipated; while the higher religions contain abundant survivals of the cruder imagination which simply loves a tale.
Sometimes the creative power (especially on the American continent) is figured as a marvellous animal, a wondrous raven, a bird-serpent, a great hare, a mighty beaver. Or the dome of sky suggests an original world-egg, which has been divided to make heaven and earth. Even the Australians, whose characteristics are variously interpreted as indications of extreme backwardness or of long decline, show figures which belong to what Mr. Andrew Lang designated the "High Gods of Low Races." Among the Narrinyeri in the west Nurrundere was said to have made all things on the earth; the Wiimbaio told how Nurelli had made the whole country with the rivers, trees, and animals. Among theWestern Bantu on the African continent Nzambi (a name with many variants over a large area) is described as "Maker and Father." "Our forefathers told us that name. Njambi is the One-who-made-us. He is our Father, he made these trees, that mountain, this river, these goats and chickens, and us people." That is the simple African version of the "ever-and-beyond." But as with so many of the chief gods, not only on the dark continent, but elsewhere, he is regarded as a non-interfering and therefore negligible deity.
Sometimes speculation takes a higher flight. The Zuñis of Mexico have remained in possession of ancient traditions, uninfluenced by any imported Christianity. After many years' residence among them Mr. Cushing was able to gather their ideas of the origin of the world. Awona-wilona was the Maker and Container of all, the All-Father-Father. Through the great space of the ages there was nothing else whatever, only black darkness everywhere. Then "in the beginning of the new-made" Awona-wilona conceived within himself, and "thought outward in space," whereby mists of increase, steams potent of growth, were evolved and uplifted. Thus by means of his innate knowledge the All-Container made himself in the person and form of the sun. With his appearance came the brightening of the spaces with light, and with the brightening of the spaces the greatmist-clouds were thickened together and fell. Thereby was evolved water in water, yea and the world-holding sea. And then came the production of the Fourfold-Containing Mother-Earth and the All-Covering Father-Sky.
With a yet bolder leap of imagination did a Polynesian poet picture the great process. From island to island between Hawaii and New Zealand is a "high god" known as Taaroa, Tangaloa, Tangaroa, and Kanaroa. The Samoans said that he existed in space and wished for some place to dwell in, so he made the heavens; and then wished to have a place under the heavens, so he made the earth. Tahitian mythology declared (the versions of priests and wise men differed) that he was born of night or darkness. Then he embraced a rock, the imagined foundation of all things, which brought forth earth and sea; the heavens were created with sun, moon, and stars, clouds, wind, and rain, and the dry land appeared below. The whole process was summed up in a hymn—
"He was: Taaroa was his name.He abode in the void; no earth, no sea, no sky.Taaroa calls, but nought answers,Then, alone existing, he became the universe."
The relations of these creative Powers to man are conceived very differently. TheMaker of the world may be continually interested in it, and may continue to administer the processes which he has begun. The Akkra negro looks up to the living sky, Nyongmo, as the author of all things, who is benevolently active day by day: "We see every day," said a fetish-man, "how the grass, the corn, and the trees, spring forth through the rain and sunshine sent by Nyongmo [Nyongmo ne= 'Nyongmo rains'], how should he not be the creator?" So he is invoked with prayer and rite. The great Babylonian god, Marduk, son of Ea (god of wisdom and spells), alone succeeds in overcoming the might of Tiamat (the Hebrewtehômor "deep"), the primeval chaos with her hideous brood of monsters, and out of her carcass makes the firmament of heaven. He arranges the stations of the stars, he founds the earth, and places man upon it. "His word is established," cries the poet, "his command is unchangeable: wide is his heart, broad is his compassion." A conqueror so splendid could not relinquish his energy, or rest on his achievements: he must remain on the throne of the world to direct and support its ways. Here is a prayer of Nebuchadrezzar to this lofty deity—
"O eternal ruler, lord of all being, grant that the name of the king thou lovest, whose name thou hast proclaimed, may flourish as seems pleasing to thee. Lead him in the rightway. I am the prince that obeys thee, the creature of thy hand. Thou hast created me, and hast entrusted to me dominion over mankind. According to thy mercy, O lord, which thou bestowest upon all, may thy supreme rule be merciful! The worship of thy divinity implant within my heart. Grant me what seems good to thee, for thou art he that hast fashioned my life."
On the other hand, the "High Gods of Low Races" often seem to fade away and become inactive, or at least are out of relations to man. Olorun, lord of the sky among the African Egbas, also bore the title of Eleda, "the Creator." But he was too remote and exalted to be the object of human worship, and no prayer was offered to him. Among the southern Arunta of central Australia, reports Mr. Strehlow, Altjira is believed to live in the sky. He is like a strong man save that he has emu feet. He created the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars. When rain-clouds come up, it is Altjira walking through the sky. Altjira shows himself to man in the lightning, the thunder is his voice. But though thus animate, he is no object of worship. "Altjira is a good god; he never punishes man; therefore the blacks do not fear him, and render him neither prayer nor sacrifice." In Indian theology the reason for the discontinuance of homage was thus frankly stated by one of the poetsof the great epic, the Mahābhārata; "Men worship Çiva the destroyer because they fear him; Vishnu the preserver, because they hope from him; but who worships Brahman the creator?His work is done."[1]
[1] Hopkins,India, Old and New, p. 113. Prof. Hopkins adds that in India to-day there are thousands of temples to Çiva and Vishnu, but only two to Brahman.
If the deity who has provided the scene of existence thus recedes into the background, it is otherwise with the powers which maintain and foster life. Among the impulses which drive man to action is the need of food; and the sources of its supply are among the earliest objects of his regard. A large group of agencies thus gradually wins recognition, out of which emerge lofty forms endowed with functions far transcending the simple energies at first ascribed to them. Even the rude tribes of Australia, possessing no definite worship, perform pantomimic ceremonies of a magical kind, designed to stimulate the food supply. The men of the plum-tree totem will pretend to knock down plums and eat them; in the initiation ceremony of the eagle-hawks two representatives will imitate the flapping of wings and the movements of attack, and one will finally wrench a piece of meat out of the other's mouth. At a higher stage of animism the Indians of British North America pray to the spirit of the wild raspberry. When the young shoots are six or eight inches high above the ground, a small bundle ispicked by the wife or daughters of the chief and cooked in a new pot. The settlement assembles in a great circle, with the presiding chief and the medicine-man in the midst. All close their eyes, except certain assisting elders, while the chief offers a silent prayer that the spirit of the plants will be propitious to them, and grant them a good supply of suckers.
Here the whole class of plants is already conceived as under the control of a single power. In ruder stages the hunter will address his petitions to the individual bear, before whose massive stature he feels a certain awe, entreating him not to be angry or fight, but to take pity on him. Pastoral peoples will employ domesticated animals in sacrifice, while the products of the field occupy a second place; the cow may become sacred, and the daily work of the dairy may rise, as among the Todas, to the rank of religious ritual. Some element of mysterious energy will even lie in the weapons of the chase, in the net or the canoe, and may be found still lingering in the implements of agriculture, such as the plough.
Among settled communities which live by tillage the succession of the crops from year to year acquires immense importance. Earth and sky, the sun, the rain, and time itself in the background, are all contributory powers, but attention is fastened upon the spirit of the grains. The Iroquois look on the spirits of corn, of squashes, and of beans, as threesisters, who are known collectively as "Our Life" or "Our Supporters." In central America each class of food-plants had its corresponding spirit, which presided over its germination, nourishment, and growth. This was called themamaor "mother" of the plant: in Peru there was a cocoa-mother, a potato-mother, a maize-mother; just as in India the cotton-spirit is worshipped as "cotton-mother." A "maize-mother," made of the finest stalks, was renewed at each harvest, that the seed might preserve its vitality. The figure, richly clothed, was ceremoniously installed, and watched for three nights. Sacrifice was solemnly offered, and the interpreter inquired, "Maize-mother, canst thou live till next year?" If the spirit answered affirmatively, the figure remained for a twelvemonth; if no reply was vouchsafed, it was taken away and burnt, and a fresh one was consecrated. In Mexico maize was a much more important food than in Peru, and the maize-deity acquired in consequence a much higher rank. She became a great harvest goddess. Temple and altar were dedicated to her; spring and summer festivals were celebrated in her honour; and a youthful victim was slain, whose vitality might enter the soil, and recruit her exhausted energies.
The ceremonies connected with the cultus of the rice-spirit in the East Indies still perpetuate in living faith beliefs once vitalin the peasantry of Europe, and surviving to this day (as Mannhardt and Frazer have shown) in many a usage of the harvest-field. Out of this group of ideas arise divine forms which express mysteries of life and time. What is it that guides the circle of the year? What power brings forth the blade out of the ground, and clothes the woods with verdure? As the months follow their constant course, are not the seasons the organs of some sacred force, lovely figures as Greek poets taught, born of Zeus and Themis (holy law); or angels of the Most High, ruling over heat and cold, summer and winter, spring and autumn, as the later Israel conceived the continuance of God's creative work? And when the fields are bare and the leaves fall, have not the energies of vegetation suffered an arrest, to come to life again when the great quickening of the spring returns? So while here and there dim speculations (as in India or Persia or the Orphic hymns of Greece) hover round Time, the generator of all things, and the recurring periodicity of the Year, more concrete imagination conceives the processes of the growth, decay, and revival of vegetation under the symbols of the life, the death, and resurrection of the deities of corn and tree.
To such a group belong different forms in Egypt, Syria and Greece, whose precise origin cannot always be traced amid the bewildering variety of functions which they came to fulfil. But they all illustrate the same general theme.In the ritual of their worship similar motives and symbols may be traced; and the incidents of their life-course were presented in a sort of sacred drama which reproduced the central mystery. Such were Osiris in Egypt, Adonis (as the Greeks called the Syrian form of the ancient Babylonian Tammuz), Attis of Phrygia in Asia Minor, and in Greece the Thracian Dionysus, and the divine pair Demeter and her daughter Persephonê blended with the figure of Korê "the Maid."
The worship of Osiris early spread throughout Egypt, and its various phases have given rise to many interpretations of his origin and nature. Recent studies have converged upon the view that he was primarily a vegetation deity. In the festival of sowing, small images of the god formed out of sand or vegetable earth and corn, with yellow faces and green cheek-bones, were solemnly buried, those of the preceding year being removed. On the temple wall of his chamber at Philæ stalks of corn were depicted springing from his dead body, while a priest poured water on them from a pitcher. This was the mystery of him "who springs from the returning waters." The annual inundation brought quickening to the seed, and in the silence and darkness of the earth it died to live.
Of this process Osiris became the type for thousands of years. Already in the earliest days of the Egyptian monarchy he is presented as the divine-human king, benevolent, wise,just. To him in later times the arts and laws of civilised life could be traced back; he was the founder of the social order and the worship of the gods. But the jealousy of his brother Set brought about his death. The ancient texts do not explicitly state what followed. But his body was cut to pieces and his limbs were scattered, until his son Horus effected their reunion. Restored to life, he ascended to the skies, and became "Chief of the Powers," so that he could be addressed as the "Great God." There by his resurrection he became the pledge of immortality. Each man who died looked to him for the gift of life. Mystically identified with him, the deceased bore the god's name and was thus admitted into fellowship with him. Over his body the ceremonies once performed upon Osiris were repeated, the same formulæ were recited, with the conviction that "as surely as Osiris lives, so shall he live also." But magic was early checked by morals, and by the sixth dynasty Osiris had also become the august and impartial judge (p.8).
Such might be the splendid evolution of a deity of the grains. But food was not, of course, the only need. The family as well as each individual must be maintained. Mysterious powers wrought through sex. Strange energies pulsed in processes of quickening, and these, too, were interpreted in terms of divine agency. They found their parallels in the operations of nature (like the Yang andYin of ancient China), and begot new series of heavenly forms. The greater gods all had their consorts. Birth must be placed under divine protection, just as the organ of generation might itself be sacred. The Babylonian looked to the spouse of Marduk, "creator of all things," to whom as Zēr-panîtum, "seed-creatress," the processes of generation were especially referred. Or with ceremony and incantation the child was set beneath the care of Ishtar, queen of Nineveh, and goddess of the planet Venus. The Greek prayed to Hera, Artemis, or Eileithyia; and all round the world superhuman powers, for good or ill, gathered round the infant life, whose aid must be sought, or whose hurt averted. Dread agencies of disease, like fever, smallpox, or cholera, were in like manner personalised. Demonic forces cut short the tale of years. From the equator to the arctic zone Death is ascribed in the lowest culture to witchcraft. Strange stories were told of his intrusion into the world, commonly through man's transgression of some divine command. And gradually the other world must be ruled like this; the multitudes of the dead need a sovereign like the living; and after the fashion of Osiris the Indian Yama, "first to spy out the path" to the unseen realm, becomes the "King of Righteousness" before whom all must in due time give their account (p.244).
Such deities, however, represent much more than the physical life. They have a socialcharacter, and have become the expression of organised morality. On this field another group of divine powers comes into view, symbols of order in the home or the city, charged with the maintenance of the family or the State. Round the hearth-fire gathers a peculiar sanctity. There is the common centre of domestic interests; there, too, the agent by which gifts are conveyed to the spirits of the dead. There, then, was a sacred force, dwelling in the hearth itself, and animating the fire that burned upon it. The Greek Hestia seems originally to have been not the goddess who made the hearth holy, nor the sacrificial fire which it sustained, but the mysterious energy in the actual stones upholding the consecrated flame. All kinds of associations were attached to it; and though her personality remained somewhat dim and indistinct, and carven forms of her were rare, and her worship was never sacerdotalised like that of the Latin Vesta, she nevertheless had the first place in sacrifice and prayer. She was worshipped in the city council-hall. Athenian colonists carried her sacred fire across the seas. The poets provided her with a pedigree, and made her "sister of God most high, and of Hera the partner of his throne." The sculptor placed her statue at Athens beside that of Peace. The family deity expanded into an emblem of the unity of government and race. But the primitive character of the ancient hearth-power still clung to her.She never rose into the lofty functions of guide and protector of moral order like the great city-gods Zeus, Athena, or Apollo.
In Rome numerous powers were recognised in early days as guardians of the home and the farm-lands. Vesta had her seat upon the hearth, which was the centre of the family worship, and afterwards became the object of an important city-cult. The store-chamber behind was the dwelling-place of the Penates, and with its contents no impure person might meddle. Where farm met farm stood the chapel of the local Lares, and there whole households assembled, masters and slaves together, in annual rejoicings and good fellowship. Brought into the home, the Lar became the symbol of the family life, and the ancestral pieties gathered round him. More vague and elastic was the conception of the Genius, a kind of spiritual double who watched over the fortunes of the head of the home, and through the marriage-bed provided for the continuity of descent. This protecting power could take many forms with continually expanding jurisdiction. The city, the colony, the province, the "land of Britain," Rome, the Emperor himself, were thus placed under divine care, or rather were viewed as in some way the organs of superhuman power. In the energy which built up states and brought peoples into order lived something that was creative and divine.
From distant times in many forms of societyit was felt that there was something mysterious in sovereignty. The king (once connected with the priest) was hedged round with some sort of divinity which expressed itself in language amazing to the modern mind. In the ancient monarchies of Egypt and Babylon the royal deity was the fundamental assumption of government, and it was represented upon the monuments beside the Nile with startling realism. In later days the Greek titleTheos(god) was boldly assumed by the sovereigns of Egypt and Syria. It was conferred, with the associated epithetSotér(Saviour or Preserver), as early as 307 B.C., on Demetrius and his father Antigonus, who liberated Athens from the tyranny of Cassander. On the Rosetta stone (in the British Museum) Ptolemy V, 205 B.C., claims the same dignity, and is described as "eternal-lived," and "the living image of Zeus." Ephesus designated Julius Cæsar as "God manifest and the common Saviour of human life."
This is something more than the extravagance of court-scribes, or the fawning adulation of oriental dependents. In the worship paid to the Roman Emperor many feelings and associations were involved. The power which had brought peace, law, order, into the midst of a multitude of nations and languages, and subdued to itself the jarring wills of men, seemed something more than human. When Tertullian of Carthage coined the strange word "Romanity," he summed up the infinitevariety of energies which spread one culture from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic, from the cataracts of the Nile to the sources of the Tyne. Of this mysterious force the Emperor was the symbol. So Augustus was saluted throughout the East as "Son of God," and in inscriptions recently discovered in Asia Minor, and referred by the historian Mommsen to the year 11 or 9 B.C., we read the startling words: "the birthday of the God is become the beginning of glad tidings (evangelia[2]) through him to the world." He is described as "the Saviour of the whole human race"; he is the beginning of life and the end of sorrow that ever man was born. An inscription at Philæ on the Nile equated him with the greatest of Greek deities, for he is "star of all Greece who has arisen as great Saviour Zeus."
[2] The word which designates our "Gospels."
This is the most highly developed form of the doctrine of the divine king, which the Far East has retained for the sovereigns of China and Japan to our own day. The language and practice of Roman imperialism called forth the impassioned resistance of the early Christians, and the clash of opposing religions is nowhere portrayed with more desperate intensity than in the Book of Revelation at the close of our New Testament, where Rome and her false worship are identified with the power of the "Opposer" or Sâtân, and are hurled with all their trappings of wealth and luxury into the abyss.
The conception of a god as "saviour" or deliverer is founded on incidents in personal or national experience, when some unexpected event opens a way of escape from pressing danger. When the Gauls were advancing against Rome in 388 B.C., a strange voice of warning was heard in the street. It was neglected, but when they had been repelled, Camillus erected an altar and temple to the mysterious "Speaker," Aius Locutius, whose prophetic energy was thus manifested. In the second Punic war, when the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, was marching against the city in 211 B.C., he suddenly changed his course near the Capena gate. Again the might of an unknown deity was displayed, and the grateful Romans raised a shrine to him under the name of Tutanus Rediculus, the god who "protects and turns back." It might be the attack of an enemy, it might be the imminence of shipwreck, it might be a desolating plague, or any one of the vicissitudes of fortune, the distresses and anxieties of the soul or of the State, in the power which brought rescue or health or peace to body or mind, or life hereafter in a better world, the grateful believer recognised the energy of some superhuman being. Just as the making of the world required a creative hand, just as the arts and laws of social life were the product of some divine initiative (p.171), just as the higher virtues belonged to a band of spiritual forces which had a kind of individuality of their own,so the shaping of affairs bore witness to the interest and intervention of wills above those of man. All through the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean the greater deities, such as Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Æsculapius, Dionysus, Isis, Zeus, bore the title of "Deliverer." And in the mysteries which drew so many worshippers to their rites in the first centuries of our era, this deliverance took the form of salvation from sin, and carried with it the promise of re-birth into eternal life.
Similar conceptions are seen in India. The founder of Buddhism, Gotama of the Sākyan clan, was believed to have attained the Enlightenment which enabled him to discern the whole secret of existence. After a long series of preparatory labours in previous lives he had appeared as a man in his last birth, to "lift off from the world the veils of ignorance and sin." He had himself repudiated all ontological conceptions; he had explained the human being without the hypothesis of a soul or self, and the world without the ideas of substance or God. But in due time the rejected metaphysics insisted on recognition; and some three hundred years or more after his death a new interpretation of his person arose. Under the stress of pious affection, the influence of philosophical Brahmanism, and the need of permanent spiritual help, he was conceived as a manifestation of the Infinite and Eternal, who for the sake of suffering humanity from time to timecondescended to seem to be born and die, that in the likeness of a man he might impart the saving truth. So he was presented as the Self-Existent, the Father of the world, the Protector of all creatures, the Healer of men's sicknesses and sins.
Over against this great figure Brahmanism placed another, that of Vishnu, with his series of "descents," in which the Buddha was formally incorporated as the ninth. The most famous of these were the heroes Rama and Krishna; and Krishna became the subject of the best-known book of Indian devotion, the Bhagavad-Gita or the "Divine Lay," which has been sometimes supposed to show traces of the influence of the Gospel of St. John. Here was a religion founded on the idea of divine grace or favour on the one part, and adoring love and devotion on the other. Krishna, also, taught a way of deliverance from the evils of human passion and attachment to the world; and Vishnu came to be the embodiment of divine beneficence, at once the power which maintained the universe and revealed himself from time to time to man.
Vishnu was an ancient Vedic deity connected with the sun; and by his side Hindu theology set another god of venerable antiquity, once fierce and destructive, but now known under the name of Çiva, the "auspicious." The great epic entitled the Mahābhārata does not conceal their rivalry; but with the facility of identificationcharacteristic of Indian thought, either deity could be interpreted as a form of the other. Çiva became the representative of the energies of dissolution and reproduction; and his worship begot in the hearts of the mediæval poets an ardent piety, while in other aspects it degenerated into physical passion on the one side and extreme asceticism on the other. But in association with Brahma, Vishnu and Çiva constituted the Trimurti, or "triple form," embracing the principles of the creation, preservation, destruction, and renewal of the world. Symbolised, like the Christian Trinity, by three heads growing on one stem,[3] these lofty figures were the personal manifestations of the Universal Spirit, the Sole Existence, the ultimate Being, Intelligence, and Bliss.
[3] Some of the Celtic deities are three-faced, or three-headed.
By various paths was the goal of monotheism approached, but popular practice perpetually clung to lower worships, and philosophy could often accommodate them with ingenious justifications. A bold and decisive judgment like that of the Egyptian Akhnaton might fix on one of the great powers of nature—the sun—as the most suitable emblem of Deity to be adored, and forbid all other cults. Or the various groups and ranks of divine beings might be addressed in a kind of collective totality, like the "all-gods" of the Vedic hymns. At Olympiathere was a common altar for all the gods; and a frequent dedication of Roman altars in later days consecrated them "to Jupiter Greatest and Best, and the Other Immortal Gods." If reflection was sufficiently advanced to coin abstract terms for deity, like the Babylonian'ilûth, or the Vedicasuratvaordevatva, some poet might apprehend the ultimate unity, and lay it down that "the greatasuratvaof thedevasis one." Both India and Greece reached the conception of a unity of energy in diversity of operation; "the One with many names" was the theme of the ancient Hindu seers long before Æschylus in almost identical words proclaimed "One form with many names." The great sky-god Zeus, whose personality could be almost completely detached from the visible firmament, brought the whole world under his sway, and from the fifth century before Christ Greek poetry abounded in lofty monotheistic language which the early Christian apologists freely quoted in their own defence. A philosophic sovereign like Nezahuatl, lord of Tezcuco, might build a temple to "the Unknown God, the Cause of Causes," where no idol should be reared for worship, nor any sacrifice of blood be offered. But other motives were more often at work. Conquest led to the identification of the deities of the victor and the vanquished; and the importance of military triumph enhanced the majesty of the successful god. In his great inscriptionon Mount Behistun Darius celebrated the grandeur of Ahura Mazda, "Lord All-Wise," in language resembling that of a Hebrew psalm, "A great God is Ahura Mazda, the greatest of the gods." Under the Roman Empire the principle of delegated authority could be invoked to explain the unity of the Godhead above inferior agencies; in the heavenly order there was but one sovereign, though there were many functionaries. Even Israel had its hierarchy of ministering spirits, and the Synagogue found it necessary to forbid pious Jews to pray to Michael or to Gabriel.
When the unity of the moral order was combined with the unity of creative might, the transition to monotheism was even more complete. It could, indeed, be deferred. In the ancient poems of the great religious reformer whom the Greeks called Zoroaster, Ahura Mazda is the supremely Good. Beside him are the Immortal Holy Ones, Holy Spirit, Good Mind, Righteous Order, and the rest. True, in the oppositions of light and darkness, heat and cold, health and sickness, plenty and want, life and death, he is for a time hampered by the enmity of "the Lie"; but the power of evil would be finally destroyed, and the sovereignty of Ahura established for ever (p.247).
From another point of view the divine purpose of deliverance must be conceived upon an equally world-wide scale. One type of Indian Buddhism looked to Avalokiteçvara(Chinese Kwanyin, Japanese Kwannon), who made the famous vow not to enter into final peace until all beings—even the worst of demons in the lowest hell—should know the saving truth and be converted. And in the Far East rises the figure of the Buddha of Infinite Light, who is also the Buddha of Infinite Life, whose grace will avail for universal redemption (p.18). The motive of creation falls away. The world is the scene of the moral forces set in motion under the mysterious power of the Deed. No praise rises to Amida for the wonders of the universe or the blessings of life. But to no other may worship be offered. Here is a monotheism where love reigns supreme, and it is content to trust that Infinite Mercy will achieve its end.
One morning, Plato tells us, as Socrates was in the Porch of the King Archon, he met Euthyphro, a learned Athenian soothsayer, on his way to accuse his father of impiety for having caused the death of a slave. Socrates, who was also expecting an accusation against himself, engaged him in a conversation, as his manner was, on the nature of impiety, and its opposite, piety. The talk leads Euthyphro to maintain that piety or holiness consists in learning how to please the gods in word and deed, by prayers and sacrifices. "Then," inquires Socrates, "sacrifice is giving to the gods, and prayer is asking of the gods?" and Euthyphro is driven to assent to the conclusion that piety is an art which gods and men have of doing business with one another. It was a satirical description of the popular Greek view.
But the argument of Socrates really corresponds to world-wide practice. However dim and confused the elements of belief may be, every tribe has some rites and ceremonies which express the desire to get the Powerswhich encompass it upon its side. And when this desire, after many ineffectual trials, has succeeded in establishing suitable methods of approach, the endeavours which produce the result tend to become fixed; they are cherished from generation to generation; they form solemn customs which must be maintained with strict inviolate order, even though their original meaning may have been long forgotten. Belief may fluctuate in a kind of fluid medium of imagination, but action cannot have this indeterminate and elastic character. Action is the mode through which feeling obtains expression, while it helps at the same time to intensify the emotion which calls it forth. The rite must be done or omitted; it cannot trail off into shadow and vagueness. And it gathers the whole weight of tribal sanction around it; so that even the simplest elements of common usage are moulded under the powerful pressure of the "weight of ages."
The active side of religion may be considered under two aspects. There is, on the one hand, the effort to enter into helpful relations with the energies which pervade nature and operate on man. Such efforts spring from manifold emotions of hope and fear, of affection and reverence. They seek to inaugurate such relations; to maintain them through the vicissitudes of experience, the phases of life, the sequences of time; and to renew them when they have suffered suddenshock or gradual decay. By such action the original emotion is reawakened when it has declined, and is raised to greater vividness and higher tension. It may be summed up in the term worship, including sacrifice and prayer, often associated with a wide range of acts cognate in purpose, as well as with manifold varieties of sacred persons and sacred products (Chap. VI).
And, secondly, apart from public or private acts of homage, thanksgiving, submission, propitiation, addressed specifically to the higher Powers, there are modes of behaviour which are believed to be pleasing or displeasing to them. Some things may be done, and others may not. Certain acts, or words, or even thoughts, are forbidden; others are enjoined. The sphere of daily conduct is thus brought into connection with what is "above." "Act," said the Japanese teacher of Shinto, Hirata, in the last century, "so that you shall not be ashamed before the Kami" (p.93). It was a universal rule. Morality is thus placed under the guardianship of religion (Chap. VII).
At the funeral of Lord Palmerston (1865), the chief mourner was observed to drop several diamond and gold rings upon the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. A little child, seeing a steam-tram advance with irresistible might along the road, offered it her bun. It may be surprising to meet with a pieceof the primitive ritual of the dead in the midst of a sophisticated and conventional society; but when strong feeling is excited something must be done to give it relief, and in parting with his rings the donor found the outlet for his emotion as irrationally as the child before the monster which excited at once her wonder and her impulse of goodwill. Out of such impulses of self-expression, it may be suggested, arises the largest class of sacrifices, when gifts are made in doing various kinds of "business with the gods."
In its widest use the word covers an extensive range of purposes, and begets a large variety of questions. On whose behalf is the offering made, a single individual, or some social group, his family or clan, a secret society, a tribe, a nation? What persons are required for the due performance of the rite, the head of the family, the village magistrate, the fetish man, the priest? A complicated Vedic sacrifice needed the co-operation of various orders of priests. What objects are effected by it, a house or city-gate to be protected, a river to be crossed, a battle to be won, a covenant or contract to be sealed? To what powers does the worshipper address himself, in gratitude, homage, or submission, seeking renewal of favour, or purging himself of some sin, or desiring actual fellowship with his god? Behind these external features lie more difficult problems in connection especially with animal sacrifices, concernedwith the victim's qualities, and the appropriation of them by the deity or the worshipper; with the peculiar sanctity of blood, and the mysterious properties which it can impart; with the notion of the transmission of the life of which it was the vehicle; and the whole set of indefinite influences capable of propagation by contact, like the clean and the unclean, the common and the holy. And why, when the victim was offered, was the god supposed to be satisfied with bones and entrails and a modest piece of meat, all wrapped in fat? Greek wonder at so strange a practice could find no better answer than the tale of how Prometheus once cheated the gods of their share, and men had ever since followed his example. These questions belong to the obscure realm of beginnings, in which various answers are possible. All that can be attempted here is to offer a few illustrations of the different motives that seem to lie behind different forms of rite.
Offerings to the dead pass through a long series of stages, from the simple provision for the wants of the dead man in the grave up to his proper equipment with all that is due to his rank and state in the next life, or the maintenance of the ties of guardianship and protection over unborn generations. The earliest human remains imply some dim belief that the grave was the dead man's dwelling (p.20), and there he must be supplied with the requisites for some kind of continuedexistence. All over the world, food, weapons, ornaments, utensils, are found deposited in barrow and tomb; and this practice culminates in the complicated arrangements of an Egyptian sepulchre, where the wealthy landowner constructed an enduring home for his double, and filled it with representations and objects which could be magically converted to his entertainment after death. When the dead man passes into another world, and enters a land resembling that which he has left (Chap. VIII), he may need wives and slaves appropriate to his rank. From ancient Japan and still more ancient China all round the globe to Mexico are traces of such ritual murder. The widow's self-devotion was exalted in India to religious duty, and cases still occasionally occur when (in spite of the British Government) she seeks to mount the pyre and immolate herself beside her husband's corpse. In West Africa the ghastly tale of the Grand Customs of Dahomey in the last century is well known; and it is supposed that thousands of lives are still annually sacrificed in the Dark Continent to this belief. Other personal needs must be supplied, and on the Gold Coast in the last century an observer saw fine clothes and gold buried with the chief; and a flask of rum, his pipe and tobacco, were laid ready to his hand. Moreover, goods of all kinds can be made over by fire; and in the funeral rites of a Chinese family a paper house with paperfurniture and large quantities of paper money may be burned for the endowment of a departed member in his next life.
Or the offering may be made for the cherishing of the dead in their former home. The simplest and the most common sacrificial act in Melanesia, Bishop Codrington tells us, is that of throwing a small portion of food to the dead. It may be nothing more than a bit of yam or a morsel of betel-nut; it is not for food, but for remembrance and affection. But sometimes it is for actual nourishment. The dead in ancient India who had none to render to them the needful sustenance, wandered as dismal ghosts round their former dwellings, or haunted the cross roads, compelled to feed themselves on the garbage of the streets. The funeral meals, continued at intervals, were celebrated for the purpose of providing the departed with new forms, and converting them into the higher rank of "Fathers." In many lands, from Europe to Japan and Central America, an annual feast for the dead has been maintained in various modes both in classic antiquity and in modern usage; and the ancient practice still survives in strangely altered fashion in the cakes and confectionery carried on All Souls' Day to the graves in the great Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise.
Such acts of recognition and fellowship pass through very different stages. They begin with a desire for self-identification with themysterious power which helps or hurts; as the power is conceived on a greater and more personal scale they turn into tribute and homage. The West African negro passing a big rock or an unusually large tree will add a stone or bit of wood or tuft of grass to the little heap of such trifles at its foot; it is for the Ombwiri, or spirit of the place. After the harvest on the plateau of Lake Tanganyika, pilgrimages are made to the mountain of Fwambo-Liamba; at the top is a sort of altar of small stones, and there scraps of calico, bits of wood, flowers, beads, are laid in honour of a vague "High God" called Lesa. The nature of such gifts may be traced through all gradations of economic advance, just as the mode of conveying it passes through various phases from the coarse to the refined. The pastoral nomad brings the firstling of his flocks; the more advanced agriculturist adds the produce of the ground. The immigrant Hebrew under Canaanite tuition adopted the festivals of harvest and vintage, and with firstlings and tithes wrought his husbandry into his religion when he went to the sanctuary "to see Yahweh's face." The daily sacrifice in the great temple of Marduk at Babylon under Nebuchadrezzar was an epitome of the whole tillage of the land; the choicest fruits, the finest produce of the meadow, honey, cream, oil, wine of different vintages, must be served. In the early ritual of an Egyptian temple, when the daily toilet of the god hadbeen performed and he had been duly robed, painted, and oiled, his table was spread with bread, goose, beef, wine, and water, and decorated with the flowers needed to adorn a meal.
In many cases such offerings carried with them the additional purpose of actually increasing the vigour of the god. Dim notions of promoting the divine vitality hovered in the background. The physical effect might be reached by divers modes. Food was at first conveyed by actual contact; it might be smeared upon the idol's mouth. Offerings to earth spirits were buried in the ground. Water deities received them when they were thrown into the well, the river, or the lake. Even in Greece Poseidon's horses were driven into the sea, just as the horses of the defeated Mallius were offered by the Gallic victors to the Rhine. Indian realism provided the Fathers who assembled for the rice-ball sacrifice with water and tufts of wool to cleanse themselves after the meal. In more refined usage fire conveyed the essence of the food to the upper airs. At Noah's sacrifice on the subsidence of the flood Yahweh smelt the sweet savour, and in the corresponding Babylonian narrative the gods, drawn by the scent, gathered together around the offerer "like flies." The American Osages invited the Great Spirit, Fire, and Earth, to smoke with them at the beginning of a new enterprise. The Sioux lighted the pipe of peace and offered itto the sun, with the invocation, "Smoke, O Sun."
Many and various are the ideals which have gathered round the offering, as magic and religion have strangely blended. The sacred tree, whether among the Celts of the West or the Syrians of the East, is hung with rags of clothing, sometimes doubtless with the same motive which prompts similar gifts at the tomb of a Mohammedan saint, for the transference of diseases from the sick. The highest value was reached among the ancient Irish, as among the Semites, in the sacrifice of the first-born; and the long tale of human victims indicates man's passionate desire to secure in divers forms supernatural aid. They have been slain in crises of national danger by plague or war, in atonement for sin,[1] or in thanksgiving for victory. They have been immured in the foundations of houses or cities that their spirits might remain as guardians of the gates. They have been done to death in the seasons of the agricultural year that their lives might fertilise the soil and quicken the grain. They have been forced to yield their entrails to the diviner that the secrets of the future might be unveiled.
[1] The sacrifices of purification and atonement are briefly considered in Chapter VII.
Brahmanical speculation carried the ideas of sympathetic magic in association with sacrifice to their highest pitch. The Vedic hymns early formulated the idea of reciprocalobligation in the crudest terms:Dehi me, dadāmi te—"Give to me, I give to thee." But this simple relation was superseded in the priestly ceremonial by elaborate parallels between the daily order of the ritual and the daily order of the skies. The earthly sacrifices were the counterparts of those offered by celestial priests. The "Fathers" accomplished the rising of the sun; and when the heavenly process was imitated in the world below, the kindling of the sacred fire came to be regarded as the actual instrument for stimulating and maintaining the activities above. From a yet higher point of view the whole world had issued from the mysterious sacrifice of a cosmic Man (described in one of the latest hymns of the Rig-Veda), out of whose person the visible universe, the Veda, and the human race in four castes, had been created. In the Brahmanical theology his place was taken by Prajāpati, the "Lord of Creatures," who underwent repeated offering in every sacrifice. And just as the primeval sacrifice effected the generation of the world, so every fresh oblation was a miniature reproduction of the cosmic event. The Lord who had been dismembered must be reconstituted that he might offer himself anew; and thus sacrifice was blended with the course of Time and the period of the Year, and the perpetual dissolution and renewal of the life that animated the mighty frame of earth and heaven. In that upper world, moreover, the sacrificer,through mystical identification with Prajāpati, was enabled to prepare a new body for the celestial abode, and out of the altar-ground below to generate his future divine self in the world above.
Along other lines the conception of fellowship with Deity may be realised through a common act. Above the personal fetish of a Gold Coast negro to which he made offerings of rum and palm-wine, oil, corn, sheep, goats, stood the patron god of the family. Before a separation which would prevent them from ever again worshipping together, they engaged in a strange kind of communion. The fetish-priest pounded up some sacred substance and mixed it with water, which was then drunk by the whole family in turn. During the rite the priest enjoined all present in the name of the deity to abstain from some particular kind of food, fish, beef, fowl, milk, or other article of diet. None of the company tasted it again. They were united by the deity within them; and obedience to his command bound them, however far apart, in common worship.
Sometimes the worshipper sat at the table of the god, who was in some sense present at the meal celebrated in his honour. In the usage of ancient Israel the householder shared with his family, kinsmen, neighbours, and guests, in the sacred feast "before Yahweh." How far the belief in Yahweh's presence was actually cherished by the participants cannotbe definitely affirmed; it does not appear, for instance, in the Babylonian ritual. But a corresponding idea may certainly be traced in Greece and Rome. From the early cult of the sacred stone or pillar as the abode of deity, some kind of divine power inhered in the altar and the image; and when the members of the clan feasted together on solemn occasions, the clan-god was present with his worshippers. The Greek ritual sometimes provided a place for the table-companions or "parasites," at sacred banquets, such as were held in the temples of Apollo at Acharnæ or Delos.
An inscription at Magnesia describes a festival of twelve gods, whose images, adorned with festal array, were carried into the marketplace, and arranged on three cushions under a canopy. When sacrifices had been offered, the priests and people partook of a common meal with the gods. The old Latins and other Italians believed the deities of the house to be present at their meals. The Penates, Mr. Warde Fowler tells us, were the spirits of the foods. Rome celebrated its solemn feast of Jove in the Capitoline temple every September on full-moon day, when Jupiter, with his face painted red, Juno, and Minerva, were present in their statues to share the meal with the magistrates and Senate of the city. To "lay a couch for the god" (as we might say "to lay a table") was a common phrase. Recently discovered papyri, illustrating somany aspects of daily life in the Eastern Mediterranean, show that such hospitalities were of frequent occurrence, alike in temples and in private houses. Among the precious remains from Oxyrhynchus are such notes as this: "Antonius son of Ptolemæus invites you to dine with him at the table of our Lord Sarapis in the house of Claudius Sarapion on the 16th at 9 o'clock."
But the worshipper might not only eat with the god, he might more rarely, and under special circumstances, even eathim. A more intimate union was thus effected. When the altar imparted its sanctity to the victim laid upon it, the holy food distributed to the worshipper had some kind of divine presence in it, and virtue passed through the meat into the eater. The late Prof. Robertson Smith, in his famous lectures on "the Religion of the Semites," endeavoured to show that sacrifice originally consisted in slaying the animal of the totem-group, of which members of the totem-kin partook so that they received into their own persons the divine power incarnated in the totem animal. Further research has failed to confirm this view; but a similar conception has been illustrated from another side. The agricultural usages of which Dr. Frazer has collected so many examples, show how out of the last sheaf, which had become the home of the corn-spirit, the grain was baked in human form as its embodiment, and solemnly eaten. In the East Indian archipelago, onthe island of Buro, the approaching rice-harvest was welcomed by a tribal meeting when each man brought some first-fruits from the fields, and the meal of inauguration was known as "eating the soul of the rice."
Twice a year was the great Mexican deity Huitzilopochtli presented in the form of dough images to his worshippers, and with elaborate ceremonies was consumed. Tezcatlipoca, in like manner, chief god of the Aztecs, represented by a handsome and noble captive wearing the divine emblems, was slain on the great altar; the body of the victim was respectfully carried down into the court below, divided into small pieces, and distributed among priests and nobles as blessed food. It is strange to find such savagery associated with prayers of exalted fervour and devotion. But ecstasy is roused by various means, and is not affronted at the most brutal rites. There were incidents in the Orphic cult of the Thracian Dionysus grouped under the name of the "Omophagy" (literally "raw-eating") of like character. In frenzied excitement the devotees flung themselves on bull or goat, rent it asunder, and devoured the bleeding flesh. Such was the condition of securing the actual entry of the god into the believer's person, so that he becameentheos, "with the god inside him." Words have strange histories, and few now remember, when they describe the welcome of a monarch by acclaiming crowds, or the excitement roused by agreat orator, what was the earlier meaning of "enthusiasm."
In the "art which gods and men have of doing business with each other," Socrates associated sacrifice with prayer (p.133). The association is world-wide, and here religion reaches its utmost inwardness. The feeling which expresses itself in action will also prompt gesture and speech; rude rhythms mould words into chant and song; and even without a definite object of address some utterance breathes a desire. "May it be well with the buffaloes, may they not suffer from disease and die ... may there be water and grass in plenty." So runs the dairy-ritual of the Indian Todas, without the direct invocation of any gods. But there is no element here of compulsion or constraint. The distinction between prayer and spell is clear; the attitude is religious, not magical. On the other hand, sacrifices are sometimes offered to a "High God," as by the Dinkas of the Bahr-el-Ghazal in Central Africa to Deng-deet, who is described as "Ruler of the universe, Creator of mankind, the actual Father of human beings"; but, adds Captain Cummins, imagine it does not occur to them to pray. Others, by contrast, make morning and evening prayer part of their daily practice; the Nandi of East Africa concludes his devotions (addressed to Asista, the ordinary word for the sun): "I have prayed to thee, thousleepest and thou goest, I have prayed to thee, do not say 'I am tired.'" Sometimes prayer is offered only to the powers of mischief. The Lepchas of the Himalayas told Dr. Hooker that they did not pray to the good spirits. "Why should we? They do us no harm; the evil spirits that dwell in every grove and rock and mountain, to them we must pray, for they hurt us." To the Australian it may seem foolishness to address Baiame from day to day: he knows, why weary him by repetitions, disturbing his rest after his earthly labours? But the impulse of prayer does not always take articulate form, any more than it always seeks a personal object; and after long residence among the Euahlayi in South East Australia Mrs. Langloh Parker pleaded that the man who invoked aid in his hour of danger, or the woman who crooned over her babe an incantation to keep him honest and true, shared, however dimly, the same spirit of devotion which elsewhere prompts elaborate litanies. It is with a pious reserve that the Khonds of Orissa pray: "We are ignorant of what it is good for us to ask for. You know what is good for us; give it to us."
Prayer in the lower culture is rarely individualised. It is almost always a social act. Common prayers for food or rain, for protection against danger, the removal of pestilence, victory over enemies, represent the wants of all. The group may be the family, as in the evening worship of theSamoan householder, who pours a little of his cup of ava on the ground, and prays for health, productive plantations, and plenty of fruit. On the Lower Niger Major Leonard found worship offered daily before an image or emblem believed to contain the spirits of more immediate ancestors: "Preserve our lives, O Spirit Father, who hast gone before, and make thy house fruitful, so that we thy children shall increase and multiply and so grow rich and powerful."
Such prayers may be traced through many expanding phases up to the higher petitions which seek to place the civic and moral life under the guidance of the heroic dead. The element of bargain or contract which Socrates so sarcastically emphasised, here drops away. "To what god or what hero shall we pray," inquired the people of Corcyra, weary of internal strife, at the oracle of Dodona, "in order to obtain concord, and to govern our city fairly and well?" Chinese statecraft well understood the significance of such worship as a social bond. The ancient author of theLî Chî, or "Book of Rites," laid it down that "the prayers of the principal in the sacrifice to the spirits, and the benedictions of the representatives of the departed, are carefully framed. The object of all ceremonies is to bring down the spirits from above, even their ancestors; serving also to rectify the relations between ruler and minister, to maintain the generous feeling between fatherand son, and the harmony between elder and younger brother, to adjust the relations between high and low, and to give their proper places to husband and wife. The whole may be said to secure the blessing of Heaven."
Attention is thus concentrated upon common sentiments and universal relationships, and prayer acquires a deeper ethical meaning. It then comes to rest upon devout experience, which seeks to interpret life in relation to the permanent forces of justice which are believed to rule the world. The hymns of Egypt celebrate in lofty terms the majesty and beneficence of the gods, and the psalmists of the Nile sang of the divine love encompassing all lands, setting every man in his place, and amid diversities of colour and speech supplying all human needs. The Babylonian poets addressed Shamash or Sin, sun or moon, as the symbols of the universal order of nature, the witnesses of thought and deed over the wide earth, the rulers on whom man could place unchanging reliance. The Vedic singer found a similar figure of moral sovereignty in Varuna (p.106). Out of the depths of her distress Hecuba (in the "Trojan Women") appeals to the mysterious Power whom she can still glorify in her anguish: "Thou deep base of the world, and thou high throne above the world, whoe'er thou art, unknown and hard of surmise, chain of things to be, or reason of our reason, God, to thee I lift my praise, seeing the silent roadthat bringeth justice ere the end be trod to all that breathes and dies." With a yet firmer confidence could the Peruvian in the sixteenth century record this prayer to the "World-animating Spirit": "O Pāchacāmac, thou who hast existed from the beginning, and shalt exist unto the end, who createst man by saying "Let man be," who defendest us from evil, and preservest our life and health, art thou in the sky or in the earth, in the clouds or in the depths? Hear the voice of him who implores thee, and grant him his petitions. Give us life everlasting; preserve us, and accept this our sacrifice."
Two or three thousand years before, the pious Egyptian had been bidden to enter quietly into the sanctuary of God, to whom clamour is abhorrent. "Pray to him with a longing heart in which all thy words are hidden, so will he grant thy request, and hear that which thou sayest and accept thy offering." Dear was this silent worship to the higher teachers. A hymn to Thoth (p.8) addresses him as "Thou sweet spring for the thirsty in the desert," adding, "It is closed for those who speak there, it is open for those who keep silence there. When the silent man cometh, he findeth the spring."
Petitions such as these, rooted in ethical sentiment, demand as their moral condition purity of heart and concentration of thought. The prophets of all ages have protested against formalism and insincerity. The Japanesegod of learning, Temmangu, was once a distinguished statesman. But he fell into unmerited disgrace (A.D. 901), and was banished. Posthumously vindicated, he was promoted to the rank of deity, and declared through his oracle, "All ye who come before me hoping to attain the accomplishment of your desires, pray with hearts pure from falsehood, clean within and without, reflecting the truth like a mirror." The disposition of prayer must be that of life also. It was with reference to similar slander to that from which Temmangu had suffered, that Pindar cried, "Never be this mind in me, O Father Zeus, but to the paths of simplicity let me cleave throughout my life, that when dead I may set upon my children a name that shall be of no ill repute." And Socrates prays, as he and Phædrus rise from the shade of the plane-tree where they have been talking, "Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods that haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the outward and the inward man be at one": to which Phædrus adds, "Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in common."
The need of righteousness begets penitence and confession. A Buddhist liturgy issued in China in 1412 with a preface by the Emperor Yung Loh of the Ming dynasty, after the opening invocations, proceeded thus: "We and all men from the very first, by reason of the grievous sins we have committed inthought, word, and deed, have lived in ignorance of all the Buddhas, and of any way of escape from the consequences of our conduct. We have followed only the course of this evil world, nor have we known aught of Supreme Wisdom, and even now, though enlightened as to our duty, yet with others we still commit heavy sins, which prevent us from advancing in true knowledge. Therefore in the presence of Kwan Yin [the Chinese form of Avalokiteçvara, p. 131], and the Buddhas of the ten regions, we would humble ourselves, and repent of our sins.... For the sake of all sentient creatures in whatever capacity they be, would that all obstacles may be removed, we confess our sins and repent."
A higher note is sounded here than in the famous penitential psalms of ancient Babylon, where the poet, smitten with various distresses, laments the unknown sins which have roused the anger of his god, and passes into fierce incantations against the demonic powers which are the instruments of the divine wrath. Here prayer makes a close alliance with magic: and its formulæ are always in danger of this degeneration. In the old Italian ritual of a guild at Iguvium the exact titles of the deity must be rehearsed, and the proper words recited. The slightest slip invalidated the entire rite, and the officiating priest was required to repeat the whole over again. To this rigid adhesion to consecratedforms we owe the preservation of antique liturgical expressions left stranded in priestly usage. Such phrases acquired a semi-magical power. The Honover (Ahuna Vairya), or most sacred verse of the ancient Persian scriptures, became a charm against evil in the fight with Ahriman and his hosts. Passages from the Koran are used by Mohammedans as amulets against danger. The Buddhist formulaOm mani padme humis a protection from mischievous influences, like the Lord's Prayer in the Middle Ages; and the prayer-wheels and prayer-mills of Mongolia, in endeavouring to enlist the aid of Nature, and harness wind and water in the service of religion, have only turned devotion into a mechanical device.
In the long story of Indian religion many notes are struck in the wide range of human want, of divine grace, and adoring faith. The Vedic poets speak with full hearts of the simple joys of earth; the happiness of home with its passionate desires for children and long life; the pleasures of wealth in horses and chariots and cows. Rescue from poverty or danger, victory over the godless enemy, influence in the assembly and superiority in debate, these are the gifts which are sought with the utmost directness of speech: "If I, O Indra, were like thee, the single sovereign of all wealth, my worshipper should be rich in kine." But other tones are not wanting: "Aditi, Mitra, Varuna, forgive us, howeverwe have sinned against you": "Before this Varuna (p.106) may we be sinless, him who shows mercy even to the sinner."
With the development of Brahmanical speculation prayer rises to more abstract ideas: "Lead me from darkness to light, from falsehood to truth, from death to the deathless." The association of prayer and magic is seen in the fact that the very termbrahmahas the double meaning of prayer and spell, something like the Greekeuchêor the Hebrew "bless," which could imply a curse as well as a prayer. But in its higher sense it gave birth to the "Lord of Prayer," Brahmanaspati, a kind of house-priest of the gods, a heavenly personification of the priesthood on earth, in whom resided the power of influencing events by prayer and incantation. Nay, just as the hymns came to be regarded as originally existing in the realm of the infinite and the undying (p.12), so prayer was said to have been born of yore in heaven. And thus the Lord of Prayer acquires a more lofty character as its generator and inspirer; he is even called the "Father of the gods"; and the very universe depends upon him, for he holds asunder the ends of the earth. In the shining company of deities, moreover, stand Sacred Speech, and Devotion, and Lovely Praise, and Holy Thought, with others of the goodly fellowship of Prayer, to attest its power, and approve its worth.