[83] Forbes, op. cit. p. 322. Cf. Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures on National and Universal Religions, p. 290.
Supernatural beings, according to the belief of many races, desire to be worshipped not only because they depend upon human care for their subsistence or comfort, but because worship is an act of homage. We have seen that sacrifice, after losing its original significance, still survives as a reverent offering. So also prayer is frequently a tribute to the self-regarding pride of the god to whom it is addressed. A supplication is an act of humility, more or less flattering to the person appealed to and especially gratifying where, as in the case of a god, the granting of the request entails no deprivation or loss, but on the contrary is rewarded by the worshipper. Moreover, the request is very commonly accompanied by reverential epithets or words of eulogy; and praise, nay even flattery, is just as pleasant to superhuman as to human ears. Gods are addressed as great or mighty, as lords or kings, as fathers or grandfathers.[84] A prayer of the ancient Peruvians began with the following words:—“O conquering Viracocha! Ever present Viracocha! Thou art in the ends of the earth without equal!”[85] The ancient Egyptians flattered their gods,[86] the Vedic and Zoroastrian hymns are full of praise. Muhammedans invoke Allah by sentences such as, “God is great,” “God is merciful,” “God is he who seeth and heareth.” Words of praise, as well as words of thanks, addressed to a god, may certainly be the expressions of unreflecting admiration or gratitude, free from all thought of pleasing him; but where laudation is demanded by the god as a price for good services, it is simply a tribute to his vanity. There is a Chinese story which amusingly illustrates this little weakness of so many gods:—At the hottest season of the year there was a heavy fall of snow at Soochow. The people, in their consternation, went to the temple of the Great Prince to pray. Then the spirit moved one of them to say, “You now address me as Your Honour. Make it Your Excellency, and, though I am but a lesser deity, it may be well worth your while to do so.” Thereupon the people began to use the latter term, and the snow stopped at once.[87] The Hindus say that by praise a person may obtain from the gods whatever he desires.[88]
[84] See Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 105.
[85] de Molina, ‘Fables and Rites of the Yncas,’ in Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas, p. 33.
[86] Amélineau, L’évolution des idées morales dans l’Égypte ancienne, p. 214.
[87] Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, ii. 294.
[88] Ward, View of the History, Literature, and Religion of the Hindoos, ii. 69.
We have different means of gratifying a person’s self-regarding pride: one is to praise him, another is to humiliate ourselves. Both have been adopted by men with reference to their gods. Besides hymns of praise there are hymns of penitence, the object of which is largely to appease the angry feelings of offended gods. Prayers for remission of sins form a whole literature among peoples like that of the Vedic age, the Chaldeans,[89] and the Hebrews, who commonly regarded calamities to which men were subject not as the result of an inexorable fate nor as the machinations of evil spirits, but as divine punishments. According to early ideas, as we have seen, sin is a substance charged with injurious energy, from which the infected person tries to rid himself by mechanical means.[90] But at the same time the effect of sin is conceived as a divine punishment, and this suggests atonement. In the Rig-Veda we not only hear of the removal of sins by magical operations, but the gods are requested to free the sufferer from his sin.[91]
[89] Zimmern, Babylonische Busspsalmen, passim. Mürdter-Delitzsch, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, p. 38 sq. Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies? p. 86. Hommel, Die semitischen Völker und Sprachen, p. 315 sqq. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i. 178.
[90] Supra, [i. 52 sqq.]