Part 10

And the Iranian prayers appear to rise above the Vedic in the enthusiasm of the idea of righteousness that pervades them, and in the conviction that the believer can aid Ahura-Mazda in the continual struggle against the {217} power of evil and in helping towards the final establishment of the righteous kingdom. He prays that, “Through the good thought and the holiness of him who offers thee the due meed of praise thou mayest, oh Lord, make the world of Resurrection appear at thy will, under thy sovereign rule.”[217.1] “May we be such as those who bring on this great Renovation.”[217.2] “May we help to bring on the good government of Ahura, which is the best for us at every present hour.”[217.3] “Be righteousness life-strong and clothed with body. In that realm which shines with splendour as the sun, let piety be present, and may she, through the indwelling of thy good mind, give us blessings in reward for deeds.”[217.4] In fact the greater number of the prayers are strikingly spiritual, and for spiritual, not material blessings. The prophet asks Ahura, “How man may become most like unto thee?”[217.5] and prays for “aids of grace, beseeching what in accordance with {218} thy wished-for aim is best.”[218.1] And the prayer is sometimes directed to abstract moral powers, emanations of Ahura: “If the Mazda-Ahura and Righteousness and Pious Concord be invokable, I implore through the good mind a kingdom for myself, through whose increase we may conquer the Lie.” The kingdom is here the “Desirable Kingdom of Righteousness.”[218.2] Certainly the Mazdean kingdom was not of this world, and the Zarathustrian religion is one of the least materialistic that the world has known; its chief moral weakness being, as we have seen, its bondage to ritualistic purity. We may note in conclusion, as showing the continuity of the national spirit, the pronouncement of a Persian Christian, Bishop Aphrahat of East Syria, that the only valid object of prayer was purity of heart.[218.3]

Many of the phenomena that we have been noting among the Aryan races confront us {219} again when we turn to the Chaldæan-Babylonian liturgies. Here also there appears no real antagonism between spell and prayer, magic and religion.[219.1] Spell-formulæ are used and accompanied with a ritual of purification to drive out the evil spirits of sickness; and the highest hymns containing real prayers can be employed as texts for magic purposes; even the gods themselves work by magic, and Marduk himself is invoked as the arch-magician.[219.2] And the idea that the prayer could in some sense exercise compulsion on the god appears in an anecdote told by Porphyry about a Chaldæan who was an expert in “purifications of the soul: but found his efforts thwarted because another man who was powerful in the same art had, by means of mystic prayers, bound over the powers he had invoked not to grant his demands.”[219.3] Yet by the side of all this we find often an exalted {220} type of prayer, with spiritual and fervent expressions of homage; and the religious law that “prayer absolves from sin” is given as part of Marduk’s revelation to man.[220.1] A large number of the records contain the liturgies used by the kings, and while victory, health, and long life, the permanence of the dynasty are the more usual objects of the petition, the deeper ethical tone is often heard. The following are a few examples of the higher aspirations of the Babylonian religion. The founder of the new Babylonian kingdom has recorded his convictions for the guidance of his successor: “Marduk sees through the lips, sees the heart: he who keeps true to Bel and the son of Bel will last for ever.”[220.2] One of the greatest prayers in this or any other liturgical collection is that which Nebukadnezar made to Marduk on his accession:[220.3] “Oh Eternal Ruler, Lord of All… lead the King by the right way… I am… the work of thy hand: {221} after thy great mercy which thou showest to all, oh Lord, grant that thy high majesty may show compassion upon me: set in my heart the fear of thy Godhead: grant me what thou deemest best: for thou it is that hast created my life.” This is scarcely the Nebukadnezar whom we once thought we knew. There is also a pathetic interest attaching to the prayer of Nabonnedos to the god Schamasch for his son Belsazar:[221.1] “Prolong the days of Belsazar, my first-born son--may he commit no sin.” The king Nabonnedos prays also to Marduk: “May I rule as king according to thy wish… let me not in my pride lose knowledge of thee, for it is thou that hast chosen me out.”[221.2] The following phrases in a prayer to Marduk of an unknown ruler are still more striking: “Oh Marduk, great Lord… let me behold thy Godhead, let me attain my heart’s desire: set righteousness on my lips and grace in my heart.”[221.3] {222} Among the attributes of the gods there is a fervent recognition of their mercy and compassionateness: Marduk is “the god full of mercy, who loves to quicken that which is dead”;[222.1] and Ischtar, the goddess, is invoked as “the helper of the oppressed, oh thou endowed with majesty; thou who raisest the fallen and exaltest the trodden under foot.”[222.2] And the same idea reappears in a hymn to another goddess of like character with Ischtar, in which we catch the tones of a high religious poetry of homage:[222.3] “Oh strong and majestic, highest of the goddesses, radiant star… strongest of the goddesses whose robe is the light: thou who dost course through heaven and engirdle the earth… dealing punishment and pleading for men, rewarding the just, leading the wanderer, overthrowing the enemy who feareth not thy Godhead, protecting the captive, taking the weak by the hand--be {223} gracious unto thy servant, who calls upon thy name with grace.”

This brief illustrative selection may close with the quotation of a prayer or hymn of praise to Marduk, perhaps the most remarkable among those that have as yet been translated:[223.1] “The Lord, peerless in might, the King of grace, the Ruler of the lands, that bringeth peace in heaven, that through his glance overthroweth the mighty. Lord, thy seat is Babylon, thy crown Borsippa. Thy thought, oh Lord, passeth over the wide heavens, and with thine eyes thou beholdest the affliction of men, through the anger of thy countenance thou spreadest lamentation, and thou takest him captive who regardeth thee not and setteth himself up against thee. Through thy gracious countenance thou showest men favour, thou lettest them see the light and they proclaim thy Righteousness. Oh Lord of the lands, Light of Izizi, thou who proclaimest grace, who is it whose {224} mouth doth not tell of thy Righteousness, who doth not praise thy majesty, and glorify thy lordship?… Look down upon the hands raised in prayer to thee. Grant favour to thy city Babylon… and turn thy countenance upon thy house, and give help to the sons of Babylon and all thy people.”

With all their spells and their magic, the higher minds of the Babylonians knew how to pray, and the fervent and exalted tones of such liturgies remind us of the religious poetry of Israel. And it is interesting to note that among the few deities of Babylon whose ideal reached to such a point of ethical development, the moon-god Sin appears, who gave his name to Sinai, and who has been thought by some to have had some original affinity with the God of Israel.[224.1]

As regards the liturgies of Egypt, so far as I have been able with very limited opportunities to examine them, the superstition of the spell lay so heavy on the Egyptian mind, {225} that prayer does not seem able to extricate itself from its prepossession. Not only do the deities work by means of spells and the magic of their names, but the worshipper uses the same means to work upon them; and the prayer that accompanies the spell seems usually to savour of self-confidence and command. At least this is the impression one gathers from what is published concerning the Book of the Dead and the ritual practised to secure the happiness of the deceased. By utterance of words of enchantment over pictures, the soul of the dead becomes divine.[225.1] The magic word helps to transfer the power of the deity into the fetich, and this with the word written upon it is placed on the body of the dead: for instance, an amulet with the words, “May the blood of Isis… and the word of power of Isis be mighty to protect this mighty one”;[225.2] a terra-cotta lamp of the Greco-Roman period, carved with the symbol {226} of the frog-headed goddess Heqt, and bearing the words, “I am the Resurrection.”[226.1] On an object placed under the head of the deceased to maintain the warmth of the body, we find the following words, supposed to be addressed by the spirit to Amen:[226.2] “I am a perfect spirit among the companions of Ra, and I have gone in and come forth among the perfect souls… grant thou unto me the things which my body needeth, and heaven for my soul and a hidden place for my mummy.” “May the god who himself is hidden and whose face is concealed, who shineth upon the world in his forms of existence and in the underworld, grant that my soul may live for ever.”[226.3] Here we have the statement of a conviction that gains its assurance from magic, followed by prayer. It seems that the Egyptian prayed to the gods, as if by such prayer he might gain immortality, but that he trusted equally to {227} magical means, to pictures and words of power from the sacred texts, and employed at once the methods of religion and of enchantment.[227.1]

Looking at the Christian religion, we should find it hard to give a succinct and accurate account of these phenomena in the various stages of its history. We may be able to set forth the theories and ritual-practices of the various churches and compare them with what we find elsewhere; but it is more difficult to analyse accurately the religious psychology, the thought and feeling which accompanies the ritual: the quality of the mental state would depend partly on the ancestral conditions and the strength of the ancestral instincts of the individual. And the teaching of the most spiritual Christian philosophy has not been able to prevent some touches of the old-world magic from contaminating the worship. The theory of the leading thinkers among the early Christian fathers agreed, as we have seen, with the {228} pronouncement of later Greek philosophy. Both for Clemens, who gives us the earliest theory of Christian prayer, without finding, however, a clear logical system, and for Origen, the final justification of prayer was communion with God, τὸ ἀνακραθῆναι τῷ πνεύματι,[228.1] ὁμιλία πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἡ εὐχή.[228.2] And Clemens maintains that the true gnostic, he who has the true knowledge of God, “works himself with God in his prayer so as to attain perfection.”[228.3] The gnostic of Clemens, then, is not purely petitionary in his prayer; by his spontaneous self-projection he contributes something himself to the attainment of the end he prays for; and, as I have ventured to suggest above, we may discern in this theory the meeting-point of the more primitive and the more exalted religious views.

Meantime the actual heretic sect of the gnostics were applying much of the old magic {229} under new names and new texts, and did not even care to discard wholly the old spell-nomenclature.[229.1] And even in the orthodox churches, as we have seen, the mystic power and liturgical use of the name has continued, being the inheritance of a different religious world from that with which we are familiar or of which we are conscious. We may also legitimately compare many of the ritual acts which accompany prayer, for instance in the earlier and later Roman Church, with the suggestive or mimetic religious actions of less advanced cults. One of the most interesting examples that may be quoted is the description of the blessing of the baptismal water on the eve of the Epiphany, a custom prevalent in the earlier Church of Rome:[229.2] the priest, while praying to God to sanctify the water, dipped a crucifix thrice into it, recalling in his prayer the miracle described in Exodus, the sweetening of the bitter water with wood; then {230} followed antiphonal singing describing Christ’s baptism in Jordan, which sanctified the water. We appear to have here a combination of the great typical forms of the immemorial religious energy, prayer pure and simple, the potent use of the spiritually charged object, the fetich (in this case the crucifix), and an intoned or chanted narrative which has the spell-value of suggestion.[230.1]

What maintained the use of the spell-prayer in full vigour throughout the earlier and medieval epochs of Christendom, even in the orthodox ritual, was chiefly the practice of exorcism and the belief in demons and demoniac possession; and the legal institution of the ordeal contributed also to its maintenance. As modern society has abandoned such institutions, and the modern mind is no longer possessed with demonology, so in the modern worship prayer has become more and more purified from the associations of the spell; the traces that remain of the latter are {231} faint and usually unintelligible to the modern worshipper. And on the other side there is a progressive tendency beginning to be felt, making for a reform of our liturgy in respect of the objects for which prayer should be proffered. But in this respect, as the comparison has shown, we cannot be said to have advanced as yet beyond many of the old-world religions.

The special subjects of these last two lectures, the history of purification and prayer, have only been presented in an inadequate sketch. The full and exhaustive treatment of either would serviceably fill a gap in the library of comparative religion. But they have served my present purpose, if they have been able to illustrate and to some extent test the value of the comparative study of the various theologies of mankind.

[The End]

INDEX

Aion, 36, 37.

Anthropology, value of, 5: occasional defects in its method of treating religious problems, 12-17: suggested improvements in method, 17-23.

Apostolic succession, 49-50.

Babylonian spells and prayers, 218-224.

Baptism, a cathartic ritual, 156-158: of infants, 56-57.

Buddhism, ideas concerning purity, 107.

Celibacy of priesthood, 154-156.

Christianity, comparison with earlier “Mediterranean” religions in mythology, 25-30; in terminology, 30-39; external symbols, 39-48; institutions and organisation, 48-58; in dogma and belief, 59-75: _vide_ Prayer.

Collideriani, 72.

Comparative religion, method of study, 81-85: short survey of its growth, 1-6.

Confession, 54-56, 158-160.

Cursing-ritual, a form of spell, 196-198.

Eschatological beliefs, 63-64.

Fasting, a cathartic ritual, 153-154.

Festivals, influence of pagan on Christian, 58.

Fetichism, 44-47: in Hellas, 44-45: in Christianity, 45-47.

Hellenism, influence on Christianity, 23.

Hero-worship, 75-76.

Hilaria, 62.

Homicide, cathartic origin of law concerning, 140-152.

Human incarnation of divinity, 59-60.

{233}

Human sacrifice, legends concerning, 27-28.

Idolatry, 40-44.

Indo-Germanic spell, 193.

Ischtar, legend of, 29.

Kalevala, 184, 191.

Kore, 33: gnostic-pagan worship of, 34-35, 65.

Mariolatry, 65, 69, 72.

Mexican religion, 3.

Montanism, 67.

Mother of God, 38, 66.

Names, religious influence of, 32, 184-192.

Parthenos, 37-38: _cf._ 65, 69, 70.

Peruvian religion, 3.

Phrygian religion, 24, 62, 66-68.

Prayer (_vide_ Spell) definition of, 165: distinction between prayer and spell, 167-169: antagonism between them, 193-194: objects of prayer, progress from material to spiritual, 173-174: prayer a form of communion with the deity, 174: Christian theory of prayer, 227-228: survival of spell in Christian liturgy, 228-230: Egyptian prayer, 188; dominated by spell, 224-227: English, earliest example of spell-prayer, 194: Eleusinian spell-prayer, 194: Hellenic prayer, 187, 200-205, 207; Hellenic spells, 196; spell prayer, 199-200; theory of prayer in Hellenic philosophy, 206: Iranian liturgical magic, 199; prayers and spells in Zarathustrian ritual, 213-218: Latin prayer, 185: Roman spell-prayer, 195: Peruvian prayer, 183 n. 3: savage examples of real prayer, 182-183: Umbrian prayer, 186: Vedic spell-formulæ combined with prayer, 208-213.

Purification: primitive ideas concerning pure and impure substances, 89-91: analysis of primitive sensation of impurity, 92-98: purification after battle, 94; after funerals, 96: logical development of idea of purity, 98-101: psychological effect of impure contact, 102-103: purity connected with belief in spirits, 103-104; dualism of good and evil spirits, 105: with belief in gods, 106: earliest concept non-moral, 110-111: evolution of idea of “pure heart,” 111-115: cathartic sacrifice, 120-122: opposition between spiritual and ritualistic {234} purity, 123: Iranian ideas, 97, 101, 107, 115, 127-132: Jewish, 124, 126: Hellenic, 132-139; influence on Hellenic law, 140-152: influence of idea of purity on religious institutions, 152-160.

Rebirth, mystic sense of, 57.

Resurrection, belief in, 60-62: resurrection of divinity, 68.

Sacrifice, 64, 120-122.

Saint-worship, 77.

Savagery, survival of, in higher religion, 10, 11, 15, 17.

Scapegoat, cathartic use of, 119, 120.

Spell, examples of spell-prayer, 169, 170, 175, 180: spell-value of the name in lower and higher religions, 184-192: use of narrative as a spell-form of suggestion (Navajo prayer), 181-182: knowledge of origin of person or substance useful for spell-purposes, 190-193: progress from spell to prayer, 171-173.

Teutonic religion, 41, 51, 53, 55, 57, 78-80: ideas of purity, 107-109.

Thiasoi, 48-49.

Totemism, 13.

Transference of sin, 116-119.

Trinitarian ideas, 73-74.

Virginity, exaltation of, 70-71.

ENDNOTES

LECTURES I AND II NOTES

[3.1] Garcilasso de la Vega, _Royal Commentary of the Incas_ (Hakluyt Society): Sahagun--transl. Jourdanet et Siméon.

[3.2] Jacob Laskowski, _vide_ Usener, _Götternamen_, p. 82, etc.

[6.1] _Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., vol. iii. p. 186.

[13.1] For instance, an ancestor may for certain reasons be worshipped in the form of a snake, and yet this need not imply a snake-tribe or any tribal worship of snakes in general.

[26.1] _Vide infra_, pp. 192, 193.

[26.2] _E.g._ _De Civ. Dei._, bk. 2, ch. 6: deos paganorum nunquam bene vivendi sanxisse doctrinam.

[27.1] Plutarch, _Parallela_, 35. _Vide_ my _Cults of Greek States_, vol. i. p. 93.

[28.1] Servius, _Æn._ iii. 121.

[28.2] _Ibid._, ii. 801.

[29.1] _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. iv. (ed. Mills), p. 211.

[29.2] _Vide_ account of these in _Revue des Études grecques_, xiii. (1900), p. 233, and _Annuaire de l’Association pour l’encouragement des Études grecques_, 1871, p. 92.

[31.1] _Protrept._, 12, § 120 (p. 92 P).

[33.1] I have noticed the evidence of this in my forthcoming third volume of the _Cults of the Greek States_.

[34.1] _C.I.G._, 4697.

[34.2] _Haeres._ 51, 22; Dindorf, vol. ii. p. 483, 12-29: _vide_ Philologus, 16, p. 354. I find that the view I have taken of this important text agrees on the whole with that of Usener in his _Untersuchungen_, p. 27.

[37.1] That Aion was a real figure of Mithraic religion has been finally proved by the _Mithras-Liturgie_, published by Dieterich, p. 4, l. 21.

[37.2] Usener quotes a few examples from the liturgy of the Greek Church and one or two from patristic literature, _Religionsgesch_. _Untersuchungen_, 1, p. 28, n. 5: some of these are poetical.

[38.1] _Vide_ Artemis R. 37, in my _Cults of the Greek States_, vol. ii. p. 567.

[38.2] Paus. 4, 33, 4: inscription in Dittenberger, _Sylloge_(2), 653.

[38.3] Vide _Report of American School at Athens_, vol. i., inscr. No. xxvi.

[39.1] _Vide_ chapter on Cybele in the forthcoming third volume of my _Cults of the Greek States_.

[42.1] _Anth. Pal._ xi. 269, “I am Heracles, the triumphant son of Zeus; I am not Luke, but they compel me.”

[42.2] _Ephemeris Archaiologiké_, 1900, πίν. 5.

[43.1] Theocritus, _Id._ 7, 106.

[43.2] _Cults of Greek States_, vol. ii. p. 735: R. 25b.

[44.1] _Cf._ the method of Greco-Egyptian magic of strangling birds before the idol of Eros, in order that their breath may animate it, mentioned in an Abraxas papyrus, _Class. Rev._ 1896, p. 409.

[45.1] _Vide_ Schrader, _Real-Lexikon_, _s.v._ Eid.

[45.2] _Ad Nat._ i. 12.

[47.1] The _Tatu_, _Tat_, or _Ded_ pillar erected in the ritual of Osiris, perhaps as a symbol of the resurrection of the god, had the form of a cross: _vide_ Frazer, _Golden Bough_(2), ii. p. 141.

[48.1] Vide _Palace of Knossos_: Provisional Report for year 1903, p. 92: the writer quotes Babylonian and Assyrian examples.

[49.1] Epist. 395: the doctrines of the Orphic sects from the fourth century B.C. onwards also emphasised the kinship of man with God, as the well-known Orphic tablets, found in South Italy and Crete, reveal (_Hell. Journ._ 3, p. 112: Miss J. Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_: Appendix by Prof. Murray, p. 660). In the pseudo-Platonic _Axiochus_, p. 371 D, the sick man is assured of salvation as being “of the family of God” γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν.

[50.1] _E.g._ a priest of Megalopolis, a hierophantes of the Great Goddesses, is spoken of as descended from “those who first established the mystic worship of the Great Goddesses among the Arcadians,” _Eph. Archaiol._ 1896, p. 122: the priests of Poseidon at Halikarnassos traced their descent from those who brought his cult from Troezen at the foundation of the city, _C.I.G._ 2655.

[50.2] At Cos, _vide_ Paton and Hicks, _Inscriptions of Cos_, No. 103 (Roman Imperial period).

[51.1] _E.g._ the priest of Cybele at Pessinus, and the priest of Ma in the two Comanas.

[52.1] _Vide_ Golther, _Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie_, p. 612, 617.

[53.1] _Vide_ my paper in the _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, 1904, on “The Position of Women in Ancient Religion.”

[54.1] _Vide infra_, p. 72.

[54.2] See King, _Babylonian Religion_, p. 211.

[55.1] _Vide_ chapter on “Apollo Cult” in my forthcoming fourth volume of _Cults_.

[55.2] Plutarch, _Apophtheg. Lacon._ p. 229 D: Lysander is told by the priest that before initiation he must confess his worst sin: he asks if this was the gods’ command or the priests’, and on hearing that it was the gods who enjoined it, he replied, “Then do you stand aside and I will tell the gods if they ask me.”

[55.3] _Opp. Ep._ 96.

[55.4] _Vide_ Herzog, _Real-Encyclopädie_, _s.v._ _Beichte_.

[56.1] Jourdanet et Siméon, p. 24.

[57.1] Heszch, _s.v._ Ἀμφιδρόμια.

[57.2] _Vide_ Golther, _op. cit._ p. 555.

[57.3] _Polit._ p. 1336 B.

[57.4] In the Attis Mysteries the reborn and initiated were fed on milk--Sallustius, _De Diis et Mundo_, 4: for a careful treatment of the whole question, _vide_ Dieterich, _Eine Mithras-Liturgie_, pp. 157-178: for various savage parallels showing the prevalence in primitive societies of the idea of death and rebirth at initiation, _vide_ Frazer, _Golden Bough_, vol. iii. pp. 424-446.

[58.1] _Vide_ Herzog, _Real-Encycl._, xii. p. 319.

[58.2] _Vide_ Trede, _Das Heidenthum in der römischen Kirche_, vol. i. p. 280, “Neue und alte Fest-Lust.”