says: "Few words and much meaning is Christian; many words and little meaning is heathen."

Jesus teaches us to pray in spirit and truth, to ask in faith, to ask especially for the Holy Spirit, to "ask in his name," that is in his spirit.1

Thus we see the ascent of prayer; first of all it is a magical charm, an incantation, a mere means of gaining power, wealth, pleasure, victory; then it rises higher and becomes adoration, and a form of sacrifice. Then we see it helping itself with outward aids; with images and idols; with sacrifices and incense; with holy places, holy persons, holy altars and holy books; with liturgies and litanies. At last, in the teaching of Jesus, it reaches the highest form, as a life of communion with the all-loving, ever-present father and friend.

As man ascends, his prayer also becomes more elevated. The element of fear is first partially eliminated. It is not true, as Lucretius asserted, that all religion rests on fear. But in many religions the gods were regarded as capricious, revengeful and cruel. And this view is the source of human sacrifices, of ascetic mortifications, and of a thousand devices for appeasing an angry Deity.

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1 The Concordance will show how often in the Jewish books, name "stands for the character, nature, or spirit of the person or thing.

§ 7. Imprecatory prayer in all religions. Improvement in the spirit and method of prayer.

As prayer continues to ascend, the imprecatory element drops out of it.

The imprecations of Greeks (says Potter), were very terrible, and so powerful, when duly pronounced, as to occasion the destruction, not only of many persons, but of whole cities. The imprecations of Myrtilus on Pelops brought all the dreadful sufferings which Atreus, Agamemnon, and Orestes endured. The most dreadful imprecations were those by parents, priests, kings, and prophets. Criminals were publicly cursed by the priests. Alcibiades was banished and cursed by all the priests of Athens. A single priestess (we are glad to hear) refused. Theano said her office was to bless and not to curse. Pliny says, "All men fear imprecations."

Among the Jews we read of the curse of Saul on Jonathan, and of Balaam sent for to curse the Israelites. The imprecatory Psalms are still read in many churches. And this element of imprecation survives in the Church of England; soon, let us hope, to be removed. There is a commination service still ordered to be read on the first day of Lent, in which to each of a long series of curses the people are to say Amen. But Jesus has explicitly forbidden all this. "Bless your enemies,"

he says: "bless and curse not." He tells us to be like God, who sends blessing and not cursing on his enemies.

As prayer ascends, supplications for outward blessings greatly decrease, and prayer for inward spiritual blessings takes their place; and finally, formal prayer, the prayer of place, time, routine, gives way to the prayer of the spirit, of life, of love.

We do not always notice what a step forward was taken by Christianity when it dropped the ritual of the Jewish and Pagan religions. The whole system of sacrifices disappeared; the magnificent temple worship came to an end; the priesthood was abolished; fasts and festivals were no more; there were no processions, no sacred temples, no altars or shrines; no holy mysteries; no augurs, nor auspices, nor divination; no public worship of any kind. Every Christian was a priest, having direct access to God; the rest of the soul was the true Sabbath; the true prayers were not at Gerizim or at Jerusalem, but were to be made in spirit and truth, by going into the closet of the heart and shutting the door. It is true that Ritualism afterward reappeared in the Christian Church; the old Roman calendar of sacred days was reproduced in a Christian calendar of saints' days; new festivals and fasts took the place of the old. But for three hundred years Christianity was a religion

without a ritual, or a priesthood, or temples, or altars, or public worship. And when these returned they came back in a purer form and a better type. Jesus did not put his new wine of the soul into the old bottles of Jewish or Roman ritual.

§ 8. Decay of prayer at the present time. Divine personality doubted. The Future of Prayer.

There have been times when all men prayed, from a sense of duty, a feeling of need, or as a long-established form, an unquestioned custom. We have passed into another period, when faith in prayer has been much diminished. Men no longer pray as they once did, as a matter of duty or as a form; and large numbers do not pray as a matter of conviction. They have ceased to believe in prayer, either as a duty or as a source of strength and comfort. They do not pray for outward blessings, for they believe that these come or do not come in accordance with inexorable natural law. They do not pray for inward strength and comfort, doubting whether these also may not be under the same rigorous domain of unchanging law. "Why ask for outward or inward blessings?" they say. "If it be right that we shall have them, they will be given without our asking; if wrong, they will not be given, no matter how much we pray." They do not see that this simple logic may be met

by other arguments as intelligible, that the prayer itself may enter into the nexus of things as a new element, to make that right which otherwise would not have been so. But a deeper objection still operates in our time to palsy the spirit of prayer. It is doubt concerning the personality of God, — a kind of Pantheistic view of the Deity as the unconscious soul of the universe, as the vast plastic power of nature, with no eye to see, ear to hear, or heart to pity the needs of mankind; and without a belief in the personality of God, no prayer is possible.

But what precisely is meant by denying the personality of God? Personality in man is the highest spiritual fact of which we have knowledge. We mean by it that wonderful unity of thought, love, and will, out of which centre influence radiates in all directions. The glorious distinction of the human soul is that its action is combined with its knowledge and desire, that it puts forth its power deliberately, sustained by all its knowledge, and all its hope.

If we have any distinct meaning when we use the word God, we mean the highest being of whom we are capable of conceiving. Make him impersonal, and he is not the highest; we have omitted the chief perfection. An infinitely mighty power, working blindly, chained by law, would be lower than man. Man's conscious, deliberate purpose