Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

In this view prayer is with the Oriental, the effort by which he both forms the conception of what is good, and actually becomes good; both, of course, in accordance with the measure of what is possible for him. But why, it may be asked, should he do this? All men who have lived in organized societies have done it; though, indeed, the character of the act has not in all been so distinctly moral as it is with the Oriental. Still it has been a natural ladder by which individuals and communities, and mankind generally, have mounted from lower to higher stages of moral being. It has been the natural means by which the moral ideas, which the working of the successive stages of social progress suggested, have been brought into shape, purified, disseminated, and made universal and instinctive. As respects the community everybody understands that its peace, and order, and even that its existence, very much depend on there being a general unanimity in moral ideas and sentiments throughout all its classes and members. And it has always been perceived that the most effectual way of bringing this about is that all should have the same object of worship—that is to say, that the prayers of all should be the same. Formerly, when these things were more studied than they are now, this was regarded as the one paramount way. Fellow-citizens then were those who worshipped the same Gods in the same temples; aliens were those who worshipped other Gods. There could be no citizenship where there was a diversity of prayers; for that gave rise to, and implied, a diversity of moral standards. And with respect to the individual, the spontaneous working of what is within has pretty generally revealed to him that this moral effect of prayer is his highest personal concern. He regards it as the advancement of his truest self; for, if he is not a moral being, he cannot tell in what he differs, specifically, from the lower animals; and prayer, he knows it is, which has been the chief means for keeping alive, and nurturing, and bringing into form, his moral being. It gives birth, form, permanence, and vitality to moral aspirations.

To dwell for a moment longer on the subject, looking still at the same fact, but now from a somewhat different point of view. The object of their prayer has been the highly compound abstraction of all, but more especially in the moral order, that would, according to their ideas and knowledge, contribute towards the upholding and building up of a human society. We see indications of this elsewhere besides among Orientals. In a democracy wisdom and counsel in the general body of the community are necessary, and so at Athens was worshipped the Goddess of Wisdom. The maintenance and enlargement of Rome depended on the sword, and so the god of Rome was the God of War. The martial spirit and martial virtues were necessary to them. When concord became necessary, a temple was erected to Concord. This also explains the deification of living Egyptian Pharaohs, and of living Roman emperors. Each was in his time the “præsens deus” of society. What was done was done by their providence. Their will was the law of society, and its regulative power.

Even revealed religion is not exempt from this necessity. When the existence of the Hebrew people depended on the sword, Jehovah was the Lord of Hosts, the God of Battles. He taught the hands to war, and the fingers to fight. He gave them the victory over all their enemies round about. He it was Who made them a peculiar people—that is to say, Who brought about within them the sentiment of national exclusiveness; and Who, in short, made them zealous of all the good works that would maintain society under its existing conditions and circumstances. At the Christian epoch, when the chief hope of the world was in peace and order, He was regarded as the institutor of civil government; and as having made all people of one blood, so that there could be no ground for anything exclusive. As men’s ideas changed, the substance of their prayers changed correspondingly. To deny these facts is to deny both history, and the plain, unmistakable announcements of the Sacred Volume. And to reject the grand, simple, instructive explanation universal history thus gives is to refuse to accept that view of the working of providence in human affairs, which God submits to our consideration, just as He does the order and the mind of the visible material world. It is, in fact, to refuse to be taught of God.

But to return to the modern Egypto-Arabs. To us there appears to be very little, surprisingly little, in their minds. They have but little thought about political matters, no thoughts about history, no thoughts about the knowledge of outward nature. Their ideas, then, of God, which are the summary of their religion, obtain full sway over them. Prayer is the continual exhibition of them to their minds. It stirs and keeps alive their hearts and souls. While these ideas are acting upon them they are conscious of an unselfish, and sublime, exaltation of their moral, and intellectual being.

With us Prayer has somewhat of a different aspect, both as to its immediate source, and even, apparently, in some degree, as to its substance. It is not always primarily, or mainly, an attempt to bring our inmost thought into contact with the pure and simple idea of God. It almost seems as if something had occurred which had interposed an insulating medium between our hearts and that idea, which cannot now, as of old, directly reach our hearts, and generate within them its own forms of moral perfectness. Much of our Prayer is prompted by the thought of our own wants, and of our own sins; and so has something of a personal, and of a selfish character. Still, perhaps, this is ultimately the same thing. It may be only an indirect way of reaching the same point. It is, evidently, a perpetual reminder of our moral requirements, and a perpetual effort to form just and elevated conceptions of those requirements. This mode of culture quickens the moral sentiments, raises them to the level of their immediate purpose, and makes them distinct, vigorous, ever-present, and instinctive.

What has been said will explain why Orientals pray in set forms of words. Words represent ideas; and the Prophet, or the Saint, whose mind is in a state of extraordinary religious exaltation, and the general thought of religious teachers and of religious people, can, of course, better imagine the attributes of Deity, and clothe what they imagine in more appropriate words, than ordinary people could. It is, therefore, better to take their words than to leave the matter to the ignorant, the unimaginative, and the dead in soul. Under their system of unchangeable forms all become alike animated by the best ideas, presented in the most suitable words. This will explain why they practise repetitions. With their method it is a necessity.

Short forms, composed of as few ideas as a piece of granite is of ingredients, and as inelastic and inexpansive, and those forms incessantly repeated, could not affect us in the way of prayer; but they mightily affect the Oriental. They are both the frame in which his mind and life are set, and the spring upon which they are wound up. In short, and in truth, these ideas are the seminal germs which fecundate, legitimately, the moral capabilities of his nature, which, if unquickened by their contact, either will become aborted; or, by having been brought into contact with other illegitimate ideas, will give birth to abnormal, and more or less pernicious developments.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PILGRIMAGE.

He hath forsaken his wife and children, and betaken himself to a pilgrim’s life.—Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.