BV 210 .M29 1922 Mahoney, Carl K. The philosophy of prayer BY THE SAME AUTHOR SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND THE DEVELOP- MENT OF RELIGION The Philosophy of Prayer C. K. MAHONEY THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 1922, by C. K. MAHONEY Printed in the United States of America To MY CONGREGATION, LOYAL AND BELOVED, AT FIRST METHODIST CHURCH, TERRE HAUTE, INDIANA CONTENTS Chapteb I. Introduction PAGE Superficiality and emotionalism — The lack of scientific method — The need of the ordinary man — Prayer the essence of religion — The naturalness of prayer — The importance of a scientific study of prayer 13 PART I PRAYER AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT Chapter II. The Meaning of Prayer Definition and definitions — Subconscious Prayer — Prayer and sacrifice — The two ideas of sacrifice — Magic and prayer — Prayer and mysticism 25 Chapter III. Prater in its Highest Development The "Lord's Prayer" as a model — The social nature of prayer — The Fatherhood of God — Prayer and praise — Petitions for material needs — The moral element in prayer — Humility 50 Chapter IV. The Subjective Effects of Prater The value of prayer recognized by an atheist — The soul unifying effect of prayer — A generator of faith — A dynamic of religious labor — A transformer of life and character 66 PART II PRAYER AS A COSMIC FACT Chapter V. Prater and the World Order Every man's need of a philosophy — The problems of prayer — The world ground — Mechanism — Teleology — Organic causation — Prayer and law — The laws of prayer 79 8 CONTENTS Chapter VI. The God of Prater FAQB The tragedy of the loss of God — Causes of this condition — Historic conceptions of God and their influence — Deism — Pantheism — Absolutism — Modern Philosophy — The kind of God the world needs — Evolutionary philosophy discovers God — The idea of God not out- worn — The God of the Bible — Personality — Prayer lifted into a cosmic significance 96 Selected Bibliography 121 Index 123 PREFACE Philosophy undertakes to explain the facts of existence. Those facts are the facts of experience, in the widest sense of the term, and the facts of necessary infer- ence deduced from the premises furnished by experience. Prayer is a real fact of human life. It ought to have a philosophy. It is the effort of the following pages to enter a little way into that philosophy.. The author recognizes the handicap of comparative loneliness in this field of study. He also recognizes the limitations of his own contribution. If it should do no more than prove an incentive to some abler writer to do better, it has been worth while. The subject is in sore need of critical study. Terre Haute, Indiana, January, 1922. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Superficiality and Emotionalism A RECENT writer on the subject of prayer has deplored the superficiaUty and over- abundance of emotionahsm on the part of most books of a devotional character. Ac- cording to this author, there is a manifest lack of intellectual thoroughness and a close approach to sentimentality in many of the books written about prayer and the devo- tional life. One might pertly ask this writer whether he expects to rescue this depart- ment of religious literature from the mire into which he says it has fallen; but one cannot get away from the conviction that the man is telling the truth, no matter what he may have done or not done for the sub- ject of prayer. There has been a proneness to take things for granted, to go on assump- tions without backing up those assumptions with proof or reasonable argument. 13 14 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER Lack of Scientific Method This class of writings, with few excep- tions, is singularly lacking in scientific method. The approach to its themes is not the intellectual approach. It is more the poetic method of drifting into things by way of meditation. It may be contended that the cold-blooded scrutiny of scientific method or the apparently colorless treat- ment of philosophical reasoning is out of place in a consideration of the subject of prayer. Prayer is a matter of the heart. It lies in the realm of feeling, of mysticism, of intuition. But just so long as such an atti- tude is taken just so long must the general thought of prayer remain vague and con- fused. What is the reason for this assump- tion? May not prayer submit to analysis and still retain its mysticism, its emotional content, its intuitional aspect, if these can be shown to be in accord with reality? Our devotional attitude will lose nothing in fervency or in sincerity by clarifying the meaning of prayer. Anything that can throw light on matters of spiritual life is of service to religion. Anything that will help us to a better understanding of what we are doing, INTRODUCTION 15 or may do, or should do, when we pray, will make our worship more worthy, more rational, and more profound. We should not be afraid of the question mark in matters of sacred concern. The man was quite right who said that the man who invented the question mark was inspired of God, inasmuch as the question is the hook by which we reach upward and pull ourselves upward to realms of higher truth and reach outward and pull ourselves from our narrow and circumscribed position into wider areas of knowledge. When we have made every possible inquiry about prayer and have learned about it all we may, there will still be left an immeasurable vastness of mystery and profundity. The Need of the Ordinary Man The poetic soul may be satisfied to go on exercising his emotions and, by impulse or inspiration, climb continually into higher realms of experience and vision. But the hard-headed, everyday citizen must have a reason for the faith that is within him. He is practical in his needs and his uses of things. He must know something of the 16 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER whyness and wherefore. Prayer has been lost out of the Uf e of many a matter-of-fact man or woman because it has failed to re- main among the substantial realities. The matter-of-fact man is daily face to face with a world of laws and principles and things that are rationally connected. He has lost prayer out of his line of cause and eflFect. He has ceased to include it among the essen- tial realities. Before prayer can ever become a vital and real thing for him, he must get it back into his universe of necessities^ He must find a place for it in a rational world order. He must come to a clearer under- standing of its nature and place of impor- tance. He must get some sort of a philoso- phy of prayer. Oh, I know that in times of stress and in moments of emergency he will pray naturally and instinctively, but I am speaking of prayer becoming a part of his program of life practice. Prayer the Essence of Religion Prayer is the very heart of religion. Prayer is the essence of worship. Religion includes belief and practice and principle and institution, but all these draw their INTRODUCTION 17 vitality from worship. A religion without worship is not a religion at all. R. R. Mar- rett says in his article on prayer in the EnqjclopwdiakBritannica that prayer is "a characteristic feature of the higher religions, and we might say that Christianity or Mohammedanism, ritually viewed, is in its inmost essence a service of prayer." He further says, ''At all stages of rehgious de- velopment, and more especially in the cases of more primitive forms of cult, prayer occurs together with and shades off into other varieties of observance that bear obvious marks of belonging to the same family." This is another way of saying that the other practices of primitive religion par- take of the nature of prayer. Professor George A. Coe, in his Psychology of Religion,^ says concerning prayer, "A history and psychology of prayer would almost be a history and psychology of religion." Dr. George Galloway says in his Philosophy of Religion,^ "Prayer is one of those religious acts which are practiced wherever religion exists." Professor William James says that * University of Chicago Press, publishers. 2 Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers. 18 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER prayer in its widest sense is the soul and essence of religion. By its "widest sense" he says that he means every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power regarded as divine, and he also says that the genuineness of religion is indissolubly bound up with the question whether the prayerful consciousness be or be not deceitful. Dr. Edward Scribner Ames is about the only dissenter from the general view of the ex- treme importance of prayer to religion that I have discovered among the thinkers in either the field of the psychology of religion or the philosophy of religion. He claims that prayer occupied a secondary and relatively subordinate place in primitive religion and that in more advanced religions prayer still occupies a relatively secondary and subor- dinate place. {Psychology of Religious Expe- rience ^ "Prayer.") But he reaches these conclusions by greatly narrowing his defini- tion of prayer, and, even on that basis, his conclusions do not seem to be warranted either by facts or strength of argument. The Naturalness of Prayer Prayer is a natural and universal thing. INTRODUCTION 19 In spite of the reasons why we should pray or should not pray, the fact remains that we do pray. And, as Professor James has said, "The reason why we do pray is that we can- not help praying." "The culture of prayer," says Dr. Fosdick, "therefore, is not import- ing an alien, but is training a native citizen of the soul."^ Prayer was a matter of the most primitive worship. Men in all ages and in all lands, since the beginning of religion, have been engaged in the practice of prayer. Man has never outgrown it and never will outgrow it. Prayer belongs to all religions, primitive or advanced. Since prayer is so important for religion, and a prayer life is so surely involved in the exercise of religion, and since a philosophy concerning the most important facts and re- lations of life is inevitable, it is diflScult to understand why thinkers in the field of religion have not gone into the subject more thoroughly and critically. If there is one single needed service outstanding for reli- gious reflection to perform, it is the proper orientation of prayer. Next in importance ^ Taken from The Meaning of Prayer, p. 17, by H. E. Fosdick. Association Press, New York. 20 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER l^ to Si discovery of God is to get on a plane of fellowship and communion with him. When man comes upon the fact of the existence of a higher order of reality than that imme- diately apparent in the matter-of-fact world about him, he does two things. He seeks to define and explain that new order of reality and he seeks to bring himself into living relation with it. The former is philosophy and the latter is religion. The most direct approach to an established relationship with that higher order of reality is by the method of prayer. It lies at the very basis of the religious attitude. When we deal with prayer, its meaning, its history, its laws, its correlary assumptions, we are in the realm of the fundamentals. Professor Jevons has shown how impor- tant it is for the missionary to be prepared to deal with the subject of prayer. He will find the heathen addicted to the habit of prayer. It is his business to teach them to whom to pray, how to pray, and what to pray for. He will not find them all sim- pletons. He must show a knowledge of this deepest thing in religion that will command their respect. "The applied science of reli- INTRODUCTION 21 gion should equip him in this respect. It should be able to take the facts and truths established by the science of religion and apply them to the purposes of the mission- ary. But it is a striking example of the youth and immaturity of the science of religion that no attempt has yet been made by it to collect the facts, much less to coordinate and state them scientifically."^ The Importance of a Scientific Study OF Prayer If this equipment is important for the missionary, it is also important for the preacher and pastor on the home field. Preachers complain of the lack of prayer in the homes of their people. In many cases, even while they are complaining of others, they are not extremely prayerful them- selves. They have not realized the impor- tance of prayer and the possibilities of prayer and have not been prepared to give their people instruction in the important and profound things that belong to the subject. 1 Reprinted, by permission of the Macmillan Company, from Introduction to the Study of Comparative Religion, p. 140, by F. B. Jevons, copyright, 1908, by the Macmillan Company. 22 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER Many prayers before the congregation are formal and perfunctory. They fail to excite interest, to find a hearing, to lead the con- gregation into the spirit of worship. If a proportionate amount of time in relation to the time given to the preparation of the sermon were given to the preparation of the prayer, it would be a different matter. The people ought to be given instruction in prayer. The disciples of our Lord felt the need of it. The Christian Church has not outgrown this need. But that which has been so obviously essential to the devotional life has been taken so much for granted and regarded as so simple and familiar that it has become a neglected subject for study. Dr. Fosdick says: 'Tf there is any element in human life to whose inestimable value we have abundant testimony, it is prayer; and to leave misunderstood and untrained a power capable of such high uses is a spiritual tragedy."^ 1 Meaning of Prayer, p. 17. Association Press, New York. PART I PRAYER AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT CHAPTER II THE MEANING OF PRAYER Definition and Definitions Recently I came upon the statement that prayer could not be defined. Then the writer of that statement proceeded to define prayer, and did it very well, did it so well that there was little room for doubt in the matter. The fashion of stating grandilo- quently that a thing is too big for definition is a fault that has crept into the thought of many men who are really clear thinkers. It is a sort of confession of humility in the presence of great truths, but often in rela- tion to the discussion which follows it is scarcely more than a rhetorical flourish. When it is followed up by a definition of the thing declared to be indefinable, it is clearly an absurdity. Dr. Olin A. Curtis used to say that entirely too much is made of the mys- teries of the Bible. He indicated that mysteries are often found when no mystery was intended. The Scripture is a revelation. It was not written for inspiring awe but for 25 26 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER revealing truth. This does not mean that the Bible is sun-clear, or that it is a book for simpletons, or that the task of interpreta- tion is a light and superficial task that any- one, however inexpert he may be, may undertake with the confidence that he may successfully unfold all its truth or may in no sense misunderstand its meaning. It does mean that the Bible is an intelligible book, and that the whole of it was given for understanding rather than for confusing and staggering the mind with mystery. To define a thing does not mean to ex- haust its meaning. It means to so state its essentials and so differentiate it from other things that it may be clearly recognized. Definition is a matter of distinction. With the meaning of definition held clearly in mind, it will be difficult to assert that any- thing is too big for definition. In fact, it is not the vast and profound thing that is so difficult of definition but the comparatively simple and familiar thing. On the other hand, I do not wish to be understood as taking the ground that prayer is a simple and obvious thing. One of the reasons given by Professor Tylor for the THE MEANING OF PRAYER 27 fact that no more attention has been paid by scholars in the study of rehgion to the sub- ject of prayer is that "so simple and familiar is the nature of prayer that its study does not demand the detail of fact and argument which must be given to rites in comparison practically insignificant" (Primitive Cul- ture, 11, 364). Professor Jevons very per- tinently remarks in a criticism of this pas- sage that familiar things are often assumed to be simple when a more thorough exam- ination of them will reveal that they are not so simple, after all.^ It is well to avoid any sort of extreme or extravagant statement in any connection. In defining a thing it is necessary to be careful that all of it shall be included, that no essential shall be left out, and that nothing shall be included which does not belong. Professor James is wise and correct when he insists on considering prayer in the widest sense. No other consideration is fair and right. Dr. R. R. Marrett in his article on prayer in the Encyclopcedia Britannica defines ^ Introduction to Study of Comparative Religion. Macmillan Co., New York. 28 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER prayer as "a term used generally for any humble petition, but more technically in religion, for that mode of addressing a divine or sacred power in which there pre- dominates the mood and intention of rev- erent entreaty." Dr. Charles L. Slattery defines prayer as talking with the Unseen, whether the Unseen be conceived of as a personal God or as a vague something out- side of oneself.^ Professor James defines prayer as "every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine."^ All these definitions are good, and in a general way rather clearly state for any of us what we mean by prayer, wherever we find the practice and with all its various phases and modifications. The definition of Dr. Marrett, scholarly and thorough as it is, may convey an overemphasis of the idea of petition and entreaty. I think that prayer is primarily an expression of desire and I believe with Professor Hoffding that, in the lowest form in which it may manifest itself. 1 Why Men Pray, p. 5. Macmillan Company, New York. 2 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 464. Longmans, Green & Co., New York. THE MEANING OF PRAYER 29 "religion appears under the guise of desire"; but an overemphasis of the idea of entreaty may obscure the ideas of communion and contemplation, worship and resignation, as found in the higher exercises of prayer. The whole matter is evidently perfectly clear in the mind of the author, but it might not be so to the mind of one who had not thought the subject through quite so thoroughly. And one of the sources of value of our defini- tions is the use that other people can make of them. Dr. Slattery's definition seems to say that language expression is necessary to prayer. If his definition should be accepted, he would have to furnish a definition of talking as used in this connection. Otherwise, it is too narrow. There are prayers in which there is no language expression, not even word images. The desires are inarticulate and simply mean a sort of yearning after the Divine Presence. It is evident from what Dr. Slattery further says on the subject of prayer that he would not limit it to lan- guage expression, but we do not gather this from his definition taken by itself. The definition by Professor James com- 30 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER pletely covers the case. It is neither too wide nor too narrow. Prayer is any sort of inner communion or conversation with the Power regarded as divine. The first part of the definition covers every kind of prayer attitude from the most primitive to the most advanced and from the simplest out- flow of rehgious desire to the most elaborate form of prayer expression. If it should be objected that the latter part of this defini- tion assumes an attitude entirely too intel- lectual for primitive prayer, the answer may be given that, while the objective of the prayers of primitive man did not have the content of what the more advanced religious consciousness labeled "divinity," it had all the potentialities of the higher conception and stood in the same relation to his prim- itive mind that the idea of divinity holds for the religious thinker. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick says that prayer may be considered as dominant de- sire. Professor Coe amends that statement by saying that prayer may be a way of securing domination over desire. "It starts," he says, "as the assertion of any desire; it ends as the organization of one's own desires THE MEANING OF PRAYER 31 into a system of desires recognized asy superior and then made one's own."^ But Dr. Fosdick is not contradicted and nothing is added to the original content of his state- ment. It is simply expressed in greater de- tail. Prayer is still a matter of dominant desire, for the desire to conform to the will of God finally dominates all other desires. Subconscious Prayer Dr. Slattery expresses a belief in the expe- rience of subconscious prayer.^ He uses the analogies of the circulation of the blood and the process of breathing to illustrate his meaning, showing that they were done un- consciously, or subconsciously, long before they were discovered. Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood in 1616, but all the years before that the heart had been sending the blood through the arteries. We are not aware of our breathing until there is some obstruction or exertion, like climbing a hill. But the breathing goes on whether we are conscious of it or not. As another illustration he used the case of the use of * Psychology of Religion. University of Chicago Press. 2 Why Men Pray, p. 6. Maemillan Co., New York. 32 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER hot oil for the treatment of wounds in the Franco-Prussian War. When the medical authorities gave out the opinion that there was no healing eflScacy in oil, the practice was stopped. The death rate became so appalling that Pasteur was led to investigate the matter and found that the heat rather than the oil was the thing that had aided in the healing of wounds by killing the germs of infection. Thus the older medical practice had been right in its method without under- standing what it was doing. So, he argues, men may pray from the inner depths of their being without realizing that they are praying. Complaint of the weather, of pain or sorrow must be com- plaint to someone outside ourselves, fate or nature, whatever or whoever is in control of the universe and to which or to whom humanity is subject. It is complaining to the Unseen. And, on the other hand, men are engaging in unconscious prayer when they become exultant. He says that Walt Whitman was subconsciously praying when he spoke of "caressing life." And subcon- scious prayer is seen in the general reverence that men now have for the laws of nature. THE MEANING OF PRAYER 33 What is on the surface a gross materiaHsm is underneath a way of outlet for spiritual longing. He says that the deepest aspect of "subconscious prayer" is when one says, "I ought" or "I ought not," whether it applies to acts of the past or future. When applied to past acts this feeling of oughtness is a subconscious prayer of repentance. When applied to the future it is an acknowl- edgment or confession to the Unseen of the realization of duty. So, according to Dr. Slattery, Kant's Categorical Imperative is a matter of subconscious prayer. This line of thought is extremely interest- ing. Its chief value lies in showing the naturalness of prayer. When Dr. Slattery takes up prayer under another head and treats it as instinctive, he is really saying the same thing over again, or, rather, he is completing the thought concerning sub- conscious prayer. Of course that which is going on within the inner being is going to come out inevitably in a clearer and more recognizable manifestation of itself. It is scarcely necessary to say that to have moral and spiritual value prayer must rise into the realm of consciousness, but it is a great 34 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER reenforcement to a cosmic view of religion to realize that prayer has its foundation in the fundamental structure of Ufe itself and is not an accretion from without. Prayer and Sacrifice Prayer and sacrifice have gone together in religion from the most primitive times. If the prayers of primitive peoples have not been preserved along with the rites of sacrifice, it is because of the greater difficulty in their preservation. They most certainly existed. Religious worship may be said to have internal and external aspects. Prayer is the internal aspect, or worship of the mind. Sacrifice is the external aspect, or worship of action. Sacrifice has very aptly been called prayer in the form of deeds. Prayer and sacrifice have all along had the same general motives and the same sort of objectives. They have the same general character. When prayer is expressed at all it is expressed in language. Sacrifice is the expression of the same thing in action. The underlying idea in each case is that of dominant desire. Prayer may be un- expressed. It may be a matter of inner THE MEANING OF PRAYER 35 thought and feehng. As such it can be studied only in our own experience. It is not a matter for general or historic study. The Two Ideas of Sacrifice Sacrifice has been found to have two motives. The original religious attitude was doubtless one of fear and the supernatural powers were not regarded as friendly. There- fore the primitive worshiper sought to ap- pease his god. The device which he fell upon for doing this was the offering up of some- thing that would please his god and turn away his anger. The gods were regarded as taking peculiar pleasure in the sacrifice of life and oftentimes it has been regarded as necessary to offer human sacrifices to ap- pease the gods. The other motive has been the desire to come into communion with the god, to share his power, to partake of his nature. The sacrifice which was pleasing to him was regarded as containing manna, a sort of supernatural potency because of the sacredness of the sacrificial animal and be- cause of its identification with the god in the rites of sacrifice. The desire to please the gods and to enter into communion with 36 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER them has not always been unselfish. The primitive worshiper sought to use his god to his own advantage, and the modern worshiper has not entirely lost the idea. In the more advanced religions these motives of sacrifice have found expression in other directions. The desire to please God finds expression in a life of service rather ^ than in the ceremonial rites of sacrifice. Saint Paul furnishes us with the language of the transition: 'T beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reason- able service." The transition is seen in both the conception of God and the idea of sac- rifice. The desire to come into communion with God finds its complete satisfaction for those who are deeply spiritual in prayer and meditation. It would not be wise in this discussion to pass over the sacrifice of Christ on the cross without giving it some consideration. And it is significant that the whole scheme of human redemption as found in the Christian religion is grounded in these age-long mo- tives in religious life and practice. The THE MEANING OF PRAYER 37 Christian doctrine of reconciliation runs parallel with the ancient idea of appeasing God in sacrifice. There has been throughout the history of religion a recognition of a tension between the human and the divine. In philosophy there has been the recognition of this tension between man and his environ- ment. In science man's life, and all life, has been regarded as a process of adaptation to environment. It is very significant that all three phases of study should make essen- tially the same discovery. Now, Christianity brings forward the doctrine of the reconcilia- tion in which the tension between the human and the divine is shown to be man's sin and rebellion against God's moral gov- ernment. Harmony can be effected only through a satisfaction for sin that gives full honor and recognition to the sanctity of the moral law, thus providing a way of forgive- ness for man, and a plan of redemption that is able to bring man back into harmony with God's moral government. Christ's sacrifice of himself on the cross, which is also God's sacrifice of his Son, accomplished the first part of the requirement. The work of his kingdom in the world to win man to 38 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER righteousness and to God is destined to accomplish the second part. The harmoni- ous conclusion of rehgion, philosophy, and science concerning the existing tension be- tween man and his world is indicative of the fact that sin is a cosmic fact and redemption a cosmic need in the evolution of life. The other idea of sacrifice is also dis- covered in the sacrifice of Christ, the idea of union with divinity. Christ in his sacrifice as a Divine Being identifies himself with the human race, uniting in his person the human and the divine, and bringing God into direct connection with man. Thus we find in the Christian doctrine of the incarnation the fulfillment, in the strictest sense of the term, of the idea of the primitive man, that in sacrifice he brings himself into union with his god. Magic and Prayer Much has been written on the relation between magic and religion. The connection seems to be found in the relation between magic and prayer. Magic is more diflScult to define than prayer. The use of the term has been more uncertain and confused. But cer- THE MEANING OF PRAYER 39 tain main ideas are clear and these happen to be the ideas that relate magic to prayer. Magic is like prayer in that it is the ex- pression of desire. It is unlike prayer in its method. Dr. Galloway states the difference. The idea of magic is control, while the idea of prayer is dependence. After the study of the various theories concerning prayer and magic, I have been able to reach some conclusions of my own. Dr. Eraser, the anthropologist, holds the well-known theory that magic and prayer are so utterly dissimilar that they never could mix, and that the failure of magic as a method of attainment of desired ends gave rise to prayer. Dr. Marrett holds that there may be a transition from magic to prayer and back again. Since both belong to the sphere of the supernatural, and "because it tends to be conceived as an affair between wills, magic, though distinct, has something in common with religion, so that interpene- tration and transfusion are possible between them." Professor Jevons finds that the supreme difference between religion and magic is that the former is social in its aims and the latter anti-social. He argues that i^ 40 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER there has been all the while a yawning chasm of irreconcilable difference between the two. There is another theory that magic is the outgrowth of religious decadence. My own conclusions are about as follows: Prayer and magic are alike in that they both recognize the supernatural and that they are matters of desire. They proceed by different methods toward the attainment of these desires. Magic employs spell, hocus- pocus, incantation, and any possible method of controlling the supernatural. It aims at bringing the supernatural under the control of the individual working the spell. Prayer, as a rule, involves a higher conception of the supernatural order and recognizes its superiority over human affairs. The method is, therefore, the method of petition and the final result the coalition of wills, either by the granting of the petition or the bringing of the will of the petitioner into submission to the will of the superior power to whom petition is made. Prayer and magic have both been used by the same persons for the attainment of desired ends, and there has been a shift from one to the other. There has been no observed decadence of magic THE MEANING OF PRAYER 41 and recognition of its failure on the part of primitive peoples such as has been assumed by Dr. Frazer. Religion has not grown out of magic, for its origin is quite as ancient as that of magic. Magic is not a result of the failure and decadence of religion, for religion was found among primitive peoples, and identified by prayer, and was certainly not decadent in that period of human life. Yet we must admit that when religion does be- come decadent and corrupt, it tends to run over into superstition and its practices into magic. The formulae of prayer are magical elements in prayer. When they are not used for the sake of definiteness and order, but are regarded as essential and efficacious, they partake of the nature of the magic spell. Repetitions, such as the use of the prayer wheel in India or the reiteration of the name of Allah in the prayers of Moham- medans, are examples of magical tendencies in prayer. And the feeling on the part of Christians that prayer is not quite right unless it closes with "Amen" preceded by other regular formulae is a leaning in the direction of magic. But on the whole, the evolutionary tendency of prayer has been 42 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER upward toward spirituality and a place of honor while magic has among enlightened peoples been relegated to the realm of legerdemain, where it is recognized as a thing of trickery and deceit and interesting only for the skill of the deception. Prayer and Mysticism Mysticism is a name for a variety of psychological experiences. Like magic, it is difficult to define, because the term has been so widely and so vaguely used. It also lies without the realm of common experiences and its content is in the very nature of the case without standards of comparison. I maintain that it is perfectly possible, by calling in the whole list of types of expe- rience that it has been used to cover, in some such way as William James defines religion, to define it beyond question or quibble. However, such a definition is un- necessary for the present purpose. All that we need to know of mysticism here is a group of sufficient facts to trace its contacts with prayer. I am aware that I am entering a realm that is held in greater or less suspicion. THE MEANING OF PRAYER 43 Nevertheless, mysticism is one of the phe- nomenal facts of religious history. All the great religions have it — Christianity, Bud- dhism, Mohammedanism, Brahmanism. Christianity, ancient and modern. Catholic and Protestant, has a long line and a great variety of mystics. Saint Paul is giving us the circumstances of a mystical experience in the first part of the twelfth chapter of Second Corinthians. Saint Francis was a mystic. Luther had mystical experiences. John Wesley and Oliver Cromwell have been called practical mystics. The writings of religious mystics are voluminous and much has been written about it. It forms an im- portant part of the psychology of religion. But not only is mysticism found in reli- gion. It is also found in poetry. Tennyson was a self-confessed mystic. Wordsworth was a mystic in his communion with nature. So was Walt WTiitman. In fact, it may be said that the mystical turn of mind is essen- tial to the poetic temperament. And mys- ticism may be found among scientists who have experiences of direct communion with nature. Mysticism is the attempt to get into 44 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER direct relation with fundamental reality by means of intuition. It professes to use a process of knowledge-getting that is beyond the process of intellection. Things must be felt in this realm rather than conceived. Intellection would be impossible, because there are no standards of comparison, and thinking is a process of comparison. The order of consciousness belonging to mysti- cism has been called cosmic consciousness. It has also been referred to as a superconscious- ness, an interesting word when placed over against the usual term of "subconscious- ness." This is the realm of inspiration. When one is lifted out of himself, so to speak, and apprehends truth by means of illumina- tion, gets hold of it directly without logical process, he is said to be inspired. And the mental state is a mystical state. In this state the mind is regarded as passive and recep- tive. Persons who have had mystical states of consciousness are emphatic in pronounc- ing them indescribable, and usually are under strong convictions produced by the truth that they believe they have appre- hended in their mystical experience. Before passing upon the authority of such THE MEANING OF PRAYER 45 consciousness as this, it will be well to note certain of its governing conditions. In the first place, these mystical states are clearly influenced by previous thinking and belief. A Mohammedan never has been known to receive Christian revelations in a mystical experience. A Protestant does not have a sense of the presence of the Virgin Mary. A Buddhist will always get reenforcement for Buddhistic thoughts. Professor James notes that the tendency of mystical con- sciousness is dominantly in the direction of monism or pantheism. But I venture to say that this is due to the influence of dominant philosophical opinions which the subjects had either espoused or absorbed. If phi- losophy in their past experience had been the philosophy of Professor James, a decided pluralistic tendency might have been ob- served in mystical experience. These expe- riences were also dependent upon the mentality of the subject. His strength of mind would be a measure of their profun- dity. And behind them there is often evident a pathological condition. This does not discredit them, but it opens them to suspi- cion and critical testing. 46 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER But great and valuable truth has come through mystical experience, especially by inspiration. A few rationalists may have the stubbornness to deny this but not many. Men have had discovery in sudden flashes out of the depths of their being. Sometimes it has gradually dawned upon them like the coming of the morning, when the sun sud- denly lifts himself over the horizon in the climax of the dawn. Both poetry and prophecy have been fruitful in this way. Frank W. Boreham in his essay on "A Woman's Reason" gets into something that is very profound. We arrive at conclusions and then find reasons for supporting those conclusions. We come to feel that things are so and find our reasons afterward. Often our conclusions are unassailable, though we have reached them by faulty logical proc- esses or none at all. We just feel that they are true. We cannot tell why. All this is closely akin to mysticism if it is not mys- ticism itself. As to the authority of specific experiences, we may take Professor James' statement that these experiences are authoritative for those who have them in so far as they THE MEANING OF PRAYER 47 produce conviction, but the one who does not have them is under no obHgation to accept their conclusions without question or criticism. But they certainly preclude ra- tionalism from taking the whole field of truth seeking. The reader may have been wondering what all this has to do with the meaning of prayer. We have gone a little wide from the path of direct dealing with the subject, but it has been rather necessary for laying our foundations. It will be remembered that prayer was defined in the outset as any sort of communion or conversation with the Power regarded as divine. Direct contact with this divine Power must be, therefore, in the very nature of the case of mystical experience. A sense of union with the Divine is mystic communion, and it is in- cluded in the very definition of prayer. The communion aspect of prayer is mystical. And religious inspiration is often arrived at as the result of prayer. Prayer is the means of inner illumination and discovery of reli- gious truth. Prayer is not only conditioned by faith but it generates faith. Prayer, therefore, in its profoundest sense and in its 48 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER highest development is a mystical expe- rience. Not only so, but prayer is usually the generating cause of the religious mysti- cal experience as a whole. Jesus on the Mount of the Transfiguration by means of prayer reached a condition of spiritual exaltation and illumination which trans- figured the whole aspect of his person and communicated itself to his attendant dis- ciples. Moses, after a long period of com- munion with God, came down from the mount with his face shining and with a new message for Israel. The state of mind in the mystical experience has been regarded as passive and receptive. But it is not so passive and receptive as it seems. The withdrawal of consciousness from mundane things and its concentration on the divine is a thing of strenuous eflFort. That effort is prayer. Here is a realm of profound significance and unlimited spiritual possibility. We need to approach it cautiously and carefully and to test its experiences as far as we can by comparison and adjustment. We need to use our intellect for what it was intended, a safety device for the living of our mental THE MEANING OF PRAYER 49 life. If we will have none of mysticism, then we shall remain cold and prayerless ration- alists, without the joy and exhilaration of inspiration and without the privilege of communion with God. If we plunge into it too freely and without bringing reason to our aid, we are in danger of becoming fanatical. We have been making a study of prayer by a sort of synthetic method. It will be profitable for us now to study it by the method of analysis, taking as our basis the most perfectly developed and most compre- hensive form of prayer. This study we reserve for another chapter. CHAPTER III PRAYER IN ITS HIGHEST DEVELOP^ MENT The Lord's Prayer as a Model In our study of prayer we have sought to arrive at its meaning by a consideration of its general character, its beginnings and its interconnection with kindred phases of hu- man development. By putting these things together we get what may be called a synthetic view of prayer. Our understand- ing of prayer will be enlarged if we approach the subject from another angle. That is to take for analysis a prayer example which will serve as an illustration of prayer in its highest and most complete development. This example is the "Lord's Prayer." It commends itself to this kind of treatment, because it was given to the disciples as a model prayer, as a prayer containing and exemplifying the essentials of prayer. Anything like a halfway thorough con- sideration of this great prayer in comparison with other prayers will serve to show that it 50 HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT 51 is the outstanding example of prayer devel- opment. Nothing in the history of rehgion has in any way measured up to its complete- ness, in principle and in profound meaning. I may go further and say that it can never be surpassed. This is a dangerous thing to say of any attainment; but its truth will be so apparent, after a study of the prayer, that it will not even be called in question. Jesus has given us the last word in prayer expression. There is no going beyond it in meaning or motive or mood. It shines forth in the splendor of self-evident perfection. No conception of God or of life can ever go beyond what it contains. And with all its completeness and perfection, it has sim- plicity. Its meaning is the utmost in pro- fundity and at the same time easy to understand. An analysis of this prayer will be the most profitable study that is possible. The Social Nature of Prayer The first word of the Lord's Prayer is significant, the plural of the first person of the possessive pronoun. The plural of the first person is used throughout the prayer. It is a recognition of the fact that prayer is 52 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER a social matter. It had been so for a long while. The practices of the Jewish religion had determined it so. The religious con- sciousness of the Jews was a social conscious- ness, so strongly so that the individual was almost lost sight of. It was a national religion. It had a doctrine of salvation, but that salvation was the salvation of a people. Jesus brought into religious thinking with no uncertain emphasis the worth of the individual, but he did not minimize the social side of religion. He established the fact that the individual is inseparable from his relations with his neighbors, and he widened the meaning of neighborliness until it swept aside all cleavages and distinctions and included all humanity. Jesus was putting the idea of brotherhood into his model prayer. He desired that his disciples, in that most sacred and significant act of religion, the direct approach to the presence of God, should carry with them an acknowl- edgment of their community of interest. There is in the word a beautiful idea of unselfishness which seeks to merge the per- sonal and individual concerns with the concerns of the group. It is laying the HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT 53 foundation for peace and harmony and brotherly love among his followers and lay- ing it out of the foundation stones of reli- gious life and practice. After all, the great social need of the present time is the need of unselfishness. It is selfish greed, selfish ambition, selfish nearsightedness that stand most in the way of the attainment of the greatest general good. The only hope of relief from social discord is for humanity to learn to think and pray in the plural. And this is a far cry from the blandish- ments of the primitive worshiper that he may move his god to the granting of per- sonal and material claims. It is a far cry from some of the prayers of the psalmist. It is a far cry from the spirit of the present. The spirit of this little word at the opening of this great prayer is the spirit of Christian perfection. Its implication of brotherhood and cooperation, of love and unselfishness, is the ultimate in Christian attainment. It is the acme of all religion. The Fatherhood of God "Our Father." Every word of this great prayer is pregnant with meaning, but none 54 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER ^ more so than the word "Father." The word indicates an assumption of friendHness on the part of the Deity. This assumption is something that had to be acquired in the process of rehgious evolution. Primitive man did not have it. George Santayana says that fear created the gods. That is one of the conclusions of an atheist, rather hasty and overdrawn; but we must recognize in the primitive religious consciousness, in so far as we have opportunity to observe it, the dominancy of the emotion of fear. It was a long while until man came to discover the friendliness of God, and it required longer to stumble on the realization that the Supreme Being was a loving Father. This notion revolutionized the whole meaning of prayer. The assumption of the Lord's Prayer is that God is solicitous on our be- half. We are led to take it for granted that God cares for us and we make our approach on that assumption. That assumption was not developed in a day. It represents a long course of religious evolution and a develop- ment of the idea of God from the very crudest notions of the supernatural to the sublime moral ideal of the Christian doctrine PIIGHEST DEVELOPMENT 55 of the divine. Some of the outstanding personaHties in the development of rehgion among the Hebrews had glimmerings of this conception of God. Abraham, Moses, the psalmists and the prophets were uplifted by moments of inspiration when they almost appropriated by faith this fundamental teaching of Jesus concerning God. But the fear motive in prayer was slow to let go and the assumption was only half made. But Christian prayer is, in the words of Dr. Fosdick, "the personal appropriation of the faith that God cares for each of us." The word "Father" also carries the idea of the essential oneness of humanity and divinity. The supernatural is not an order wholly incommensurable with the natural order. It is the extension of the natural order into the realm of higher realities. Humanity is the offspring of divinity. Jesus had these ideas in mind as he made the prayer, and he meant for his followers to get hold of them as soon as they were able to bear them. God is to be regarded as the source of all life and the Author of all being. Nothing can go beyond this in religious conception. 56 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER Heaven, as the abiding place of divinity, is to be regarded, not so much as a place of abode above the earth, but more as a state or condition of spiritual elevation. The heavenly order is the realm of spiritual superiority. The "kingdom of heaven" is to come upon the earth as a more exalted condition of righteousness and religious life than it has ever yet been possible for man to reaUze. Heaven denotes spiritual lofti- ness and supremacy. Jesus never intended to take God out of the world and put him above the stars. It is the literalistic ten- dency of Occidental interpretation that has done that. Prayer and Praise "Thy name be hallowed, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This model prayer of the Master does not begin immediately after addressing the Deity with a petition. It carries the ideas of high courtesy and good manners into the practice of prayer. It is another testimony to the fact that Jesus was a gentleman. This prayer begins with praise, and praise is the essential meaning of wor- HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT 57 ship. I think it may be contended safely that prayer in its eariiest forms and condi- tions was not worship. It had not reached the plane of worship. It could not be worship until it carried the note of praise. It could not carry the note of praise until the one making prayer could lose sight of selfish interests long enough for praise, and until he had acquired an exalted conception of the supernatural that would provoke praise. It is only in an accommodated sense that we can speak of the prayers of prim- itive people, and even many modern prayers, as worship. Worship is not present in a prayer until there is a genuine feeling of reverence and adoration for the power regarded as divine. It may be that fear passes into awe and awe into reverence, but worship is not present without reverence. Praise, to be genuine, must be emotional. There must be an outflow of feeling in the direction of the one praised. The language of praise is always the language of feeling. The fervency of prayer is largely in the praise element. Petitions may be earnest and intense, but they lack the overbubbling outflow of praise. They are often forced out 58 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER under the pressure of circumstances or under the stress of mtense desire. Praise is an overflow of the cup of feehng. Praise exalts the worshiper as well as the worshiped. The contemplation of high values, the centering of attention upon sub- lime objects of consideration, the lifting of thought and feeling into these high and exalted moods is soul-elevating. Praise is the noblest aspect of prayer. Prayer that has been too practical and utilitarian in its nature has suflFered a distinct loss in high quality. It will be remembered that in the dis- cussion of magic as related to prayer, magic was said to move the supernatural by a method of control while prayer proceeded on the basis of dependence to make request, and also that prayer assumes supremacy of the supernatural while magic does not. In the voice of praise we hear a clear acknowl- edgment of divine supremacy. It may be contended that in the Lord's Prayer what we have been treating as praise is really a petition, a petition for the realiza- tion of high spiritual values. It is entirely true that this sentence is cast in the form HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT 59 of a petition, but the spirit is that of praise — adoration, exaltation, glorification. There is a submission, but it is not a forced or reluctant submission. It is an exultant con- fession of divine supremacy. Petitions for Material Needs "Give us this day our daily bread." Our religion is not to be divorced from our physical life, the life of material needs. Our material needs are real needs, and God is as really the source of our physical life and the source of supply for our material needs as he is the source of our spiritual life and the source of supply for our spiritual needs. Our physical life is sacredly bound up with our spiritual life. There is no way of separating them and there is no antagonism between them. They simply need to be rightly related. This phase of Christ's model prayer is an acknowledgment of God's ownership of the world and all its fullness. It is also the acknowledgment of the Christian's depen- dence on God for the things of ordinary life. According to Christian teaching, there is no phase of our life that is not sacred. In the 60 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER original Christian consciousness there was Httle idea of the separation of the sacred and the secular. The religious consciousness is to be carried into all the details of the daily life. It is thus with Orientals to-day and always in all religions. It is only the Occidental who can think of divorcing his everyday life from his religion. That is per- haps the reason that religion is so vital with the Oriental that, where he is uninfluenced by Western civilization, he is never without it. There are no nonreligious persons in the great Orient. This acknowledgment of dependence upon God for the daily necessities of existence and the expression of daily trust in God in no way imply that the burden of providence is to be entirely shifted to God's shoulders. It assumes daily toil and personal effort at the attainment of ends. And I call attention to the modesty of the appeal. It does not ask for luxury. It does not pour out a request for every possible object of heart's desire. All that it asks for is that as a result of the sweat of our brow we may be granted our daily bread. There is no suggestion here that it is wrong for us to have more than HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT 61 this. The divine bounty is a wondrous thing. God is not only *'able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think," but he is willing to do this, and graciously does it. However, we are not to presume in prayer upon the goodness of God. This limitation on prayer sounds the death knell of all magic in the practices of the Christian religion. The Moral Element in Prayer "Forgive our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us '^y^ ^ not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." These are expressions that set Chris- tian prayer transcendently above the prayer of all other religions. These expressions con- tain the noblest element in prayer and in religion as a whole. That is the moral ele- ment. It appears in the prayers of other religions, but not with such clearness and loftiness of ideal. There has been a debate as to whether religion preceded morality or morality pre- ceded religion. In truth, both sides of the debate have been captured by the fallacy of "either or." The facts of evidence seem 62 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER to show that rehgion and morahty have existed together from the beginning. They are distinctions in one consciousness and hfe. The divine has always been regarded as connected with the fundamental social interests of the group and the idea of God, or of the supernatural on any plane, has been associated with the idea of moral obligation. Religion has enforced morality and morality has strengthened religion. Re- ligion on its practical side, its ethical side, is the highest development of morality. It is the inclusion of both God and man in moral ideals and relations. There has never been a real antithesis between religion and morality. Religion on its speculative side and in its ceremonials may be nonmoral. Sometimes it may be immoral. But the ideas of religion and morality have never been quite separated in human conscious- ness. Morality has been most powerful and effective when it has been undergirded with religious belief. Religion is noblest, purest, and highest in intellectual conceptions, most valuable and helpful, when it carries within its system of belief a highly developed ethics. HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT 63 Jesus taught the blessedness of hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Hunger- ing and thirsting after righteousness is the moral element in prayer. Hunger and thirst are figures of desire, and prayer is a matter of dominant desire. Therefore Jesus makes the prayer for the forgiveness of sins and preservation from temptation the emphatic note in his model prayer. The big idea of the Christian religion is redemption, or salvation from sin. The prayer^ of the Christian are naturally to be burdened with this matter of supreme concern. It will be noted that the petition for the forgiveness of sins is characterized by the same modesty that was observed in the petition for the supply of daily material needs. Also the connection of our social relationships with our relationship to God is carried forward. Forgiveness is petitioned on the basis of our own forgiveness of others. We have no moral right to ask for forgive- ness beyond that which we are willing to accord. This petition given in this manner indi- cates that God is on the same moral plane with humanity. God is not superior to his 64 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER own moral principles governing conduct. Bishop Francis J. McConnell speaks truth- fully when he says that "if God is to claim the loving self-surrender of men's wills, he can base his claims only on the ground that his mighty powers are used under a bond of responsibility." The Christian religion makes the relation between the human and the divine an ethical relation which puts humanity in the same moral world with God. Humility A characteristic that is evident through- out this model prayer, but especially evident at its close, is the attitude of humility that it assumes and teaches. Humility is an attitude toward God. Meekness is a cor- responding attitude toward man. Humility confesses man's inferiority and dependence. It also acknowledges the glory, greatness and power of God. It bows the worshiper to the divine will. This attitude at the close of the prayer means the surrender of all authority in a final way to God. It means a final leaving of all things in the hands of divine wisdom and power. HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT 65 This represents the complete overturning of the primitive prayer attitude. The prayers of man first aimed at moving the will of God in the direction of a desired end. The evolution of prayer has brought him to the effort of placing his own will in line with the divine will and his own destiny and that of others in the hands of God. When the follower of Jesus really gets hold of his Master's teaching concerning prayer, that will be his prayer motive and attitude. CHAPTER IV THE SUBJECTIVE EFFECTS OF PRAYER The Value op Prayer Recognized by AN Atheist Professor George Santayana, the ma- terialistic philosopher of Harvard, although an atheist, believes that prayer has value. For him God has no existential reality but is simply a set of values. For that matter, no part of religion has for him more than a subjective reality. Prayer is just a soliloquy, but as a soliloquy it has value. It has a poetic value. It serves the soul in the adjustment to the conditions of life and in making existence endurable. Prayer as an exercise is useful for its subjective effects. Now, it must be admitted that the average man will have little interest in such a spiritual dilettantism as this. If prayer is only a soliloquy, God only a set of values, and religious ideas purely subjective, and religious practice is valuable only as a vague poetic symbolism, he will have none of it. 66 SUBJECTIVE EFFECTS 67 He would rather turn with brutal frankness to pessimism and final despair or to the cynical epicureanism which says, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow ye die." But if he can believe sincerely in the real existence of religious objects and objectives, if he can believe that the things of religion have a reality of their own outside of and beyond his own thinking, he may be brought to the exercise of prayer, and may come to realize that in the matter of analysis prayer may have subjective effects that are distinct from objective effects and just as real. A belief in the reality of the objective facts of religion is necessary to give his prayer sincerity; but, once that prayer is uttered, his belief in the solid reality of God and the spiritual world does not shut his eyes to the purely subjective effects of prayer in his own life and to their value. It is our purpose in this chapter to discuss the subjective effects of sincere prayer, based on a faith in the substantial reality of God and other religious objects. The Soul-Unifying Effect of Prayer Much of the writing of Professor James 68 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER on matters of religious experience has been based on the theory of a divided self. By a divided self he means the inner conflict of the soul. It is a conflict of desires, of motives, of beliefs, of emotions, of convic- tions on the battlefield of the human heart. Saint Paul bears testimony to the fact of such an internal state of conflict. He speaks of it as a war between his members, and says that when he would do good, evil is present with him. The soul seeks relief from this conflict. One very effective means of ending the struggle and resolving the conflict is prayer. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in that wonderful little book, The Meaning of Prayer,^ has a chapter entitled "Prayer as a Battlefield." In this chapter he deals with prayer as an inner struggle of souls in work- ing out problems of duty and settling ques- tions of destiny. Jesus prays through to the settlement of the conflict in the temptation experience at the opening of his ministry; at the mount of the transfiguration, before making the final journey to Jerusalem; and, * Taken from The Meaning oj Prayer, by H. E. Fosdick. Association Press, New York. SUBJECTIVE EFFECTS 69 finally, in the garden of Gethsemane. Paul prayed through to victory in the struggle with the flesh, and "the biographies of praying men show us that their struggles for right desire were fought out on the battlefield of prayer." "The decisive battles of the world," says Dr. Fosdick, "are hid- den, and all outward conflicts are but the echo and reverberation of that more real and inward war." "Prayer is a fight for the power to see and the courage to do the will of God." The doctrine of modern biology is that all life is a process of adaptation to environ- ment. Psychology has taken over this assumption. The inner struggles of men, as well as the outer struggles, are efforts at this adaptation. Now, adaptation may come in two ways. It may come through a surrender to conditions and the following of the line of least resistance. This will lead to weakness and finally to extinction. Or adjustment may come through the mastery of condi- tions and the adaptation of environment to the triumph of spiritual forces. Prayer pursues the method of conquering condi- tions and conforming environment. 70 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER But this process in the spiritual world is regulated by a supreme factor, the will of God, as understood by the religious person. The struggle of prayer is the process of making the will of God supreme over all other motives. The soul of man does not surrender to the will of God as a defeated and conquered thing. The spiritual nature of man shares the triumph of the divine will over those inner forces that are evil and unsplritual. The submission of the religious soul to the will of God is a triumphant sub- mission, the submission that recognizes it- self as the appropriation of power, the sur- render that sees itself as victory. The end of the struggle is peace. Men have often spoken of prayer as restfulness and quietude. Jeremy Taylor called it "the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of our recollection." Peace comes after conflict and calm after storm, but prayer is in the conflict and storm as well as in the peace and calm. The peace and the calm are the achievements of prayer. The struggle of prayer and the resultant peace leave a permanent deposit in the soul SUBJECTIVE EFFECTS 71 of patience and poise and sweetness of spirit. The oftener the experiences of prayer and the more profound, the more refined and steadier and more serene becomes the soul of the man of prayer. A Generator of Faith Prayer is made on the basis of faith. Prayer without an underlying basis of faith is an absurdity. It can have no substance and no sincerity. But this is not the end of the connection between faith and prayer. Prayer generates faith. It may seem a curious paradox that we make faith the basis of our praying and also that we come to believe in God all the more strongly be- cause we pray to him ; and that we come to have faith in the realization of ends because we have made them the subjects of prayer. Yet such is the case. Experience has proved it. Men have often prayed through to a steadfast faith in God, when they scarcely believed in him at all when first they began praying. Prayer discovers God to men. We come to know men by talking with them, by holding fellowship with them. We come to know God in the same way. When men 72 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER pray to the power they regard as divine, the positing of the ideal of God in their minds tends to give the Divine Being a reality that no amount of philosophizing could do, and certainly far more than inaction or in- diflference could do. Professor Coe says that a prerequisite of prayer is not so much faith as a particular direction of attention. The unconvinced have often been overwhelmed by the exercise of attention toward the things for which they have distrust or an- tipathy. So he says that in prayer faith is often born or reborn. Many a man has started into prayer troubled with uncer- tainty and burdened with doubt to emerge from his prayer experience grounded in certainty and firmly settled in his convic- tions and beliefs. His prayer has begun as a struggle with doubt. It has ended with the possession of a triumphant, confident, victorious faith. Whether or not it is certain that faith is a prerequisite of effective prayer, it is cer- tain that prayer is essential to a living faith. No man can maintain a vital religious faith without a steady exercise of prayer. Faith will die away without prayer in the same SUBJECTIVE EFFECTS 73 way that an organ of the body will suffer atrophy without exercise. The power that can generate religious faith and keep it alive in the heart of man is a thing of infinite service. We have men- tioned the fact that Professor Santayana, the atheist, has paid tribute to the value of prayer as a subjective exercise. He claims that religion is good for mankind, though he cannot bring himself to believe in the exis- tential reality of the spiritual world. But religious faith gives life substance and stability and steadies the soul with consola- tion and assurance. A Dynamic of Religious Labor Prayer produces action. We cannot pray with any real sincerity and earnestness without getting hold of serious convictions of duty. These convictions become the spur of endeavor. The prayer for the realization of ends suggests action in the direction of the attainment of those ends. The con- templation of high values suggests effort toward the realization of those values. Prayer has often been the origin of mission- ary zeal or moral passion for reforms or 74 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER schemes for the organization of rehgious forces. The zealots in any moral cause are usually men of prayer. Prayer produces what Carlyle called Oliver Cromwell, the "practical mystic." This is the man who goes from the place of communion with his God into the world of action. Some men are able, or seem able, to give themselves in passionless contemplation of the true and good and beautiful, but they are the excep- tion. More often they break away from their cloistered place of prayer filled with the passion for service and reform. Saint Francis and Augustine, Savonarola and Luther are examples. And prayer brings fresh inspiration and renewed strength for flagging energies and faltering feet. The prophet discovered that in the long ago and sang of his discovery: "They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint." How often did the Great Galilsean go apart into the quiet place, after virtue had gone out of him in ministry, and weary with the burden of the sin of the world, to find the SUBJECTIVE EFFECTS 75 restoration of spent forces and the recupera- tion of weakened vitality in the exercise of prayer! And he went from the place of prayer and with new strength back to his task of service. In the facing of trying ordeals and the assumption of heavy re- sponsibilities the Master set the example of preparing himself by prayer. A Transformer of Life and Character A thing that was hinted at in another connection deserves fuller consideration in this connection. That is the character- making and life-transforming power of prayer. One cannot hold in contemplation sublime interests and high spiritual ideals without undergoing a sea-change into the likeness of these things. That is doubtless the reason that Paul wrote that wonderfully expressive admonition to one of the churches, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatso- ever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." There is no 76 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER more effective method of idealization and of the subhmation of things lofty and spiritual than the method of prayer. One cannot pray earnestly and sincerely for spiritual ends without becoming spiritual. One can- not contemplate his own ideal of God with- out being lifted to a higher plane ot character and life by that very contempla- tion. These subjective benefits may arise from the exercise of prayer whether God has a real existence or not. All that is necessary for the realization of these effects is a belief in God on the part of the one who does the praying. It is my conviction that this belief is necessary to give prayer substance and sincerity. Later we shall take up the con- sideration of the existence of a God to whom prayer may be made and the character of that God. We have been paving the way for that discussion. PART II PRAYER AS A COSMIC FACT CHAPTER V PRAYER AND THE WORLD ORDER Every Man's Need of a Philosophy Professor Borden P. Bowne had a say- ing that "philosophy is not everybody's business." That may be true when we think of the matter in terms of the general quali- fication for a study of the subject; but everybody has a philosophy, just the same, however crude and loose jointed it may be. Also it is true that the dominant moods of thought of any given time exert a profound influence upon the whole life of that time, even upon the people who have little under- standing of these dominant opinions or any direct interest in them. Not only must men have a philosophy of religion, but the cur- rent and dominant philosophies, and even outworn philosophies of another day, will leave their mark upon their religious think- ing and religious life. Philosophy is there- fore not so far removed from the realm of the practical as is popularly supposed. 79 80 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER The Problems of Prayer The problems of prayer are problems of philosophy. The questions that are raised are beyond the subjects that have been con- sidered in making a study of prayer as a psychological fact. This study is a matter of philosophy in a certain sense, but only the outer court of philosophy, the way of ap- proach to the heart of the subject. Com- paratively no real problem or serious diffi- culty has presented itself. We have been seeking to interpret the data of experience, and questions have arisen here and there; but, in comparison with the questions we have been approaching, they are simple and even superficial. They are within the whole scope of prayer philosophy, but, in a sense, introductory to the main questions. The main questions are these: What kind of a universe will have a place for prayer? How can there be a place for prayer in a universe of law.? What is God like? Has God any power of response? If God is all-wise and knows better than we do what we ought to have, and is lovingly willing to give us everything we need, why pray at all? If God foreknows all things and has planned all PRAYER AND WORLD ORDER 81 things according to his wisdom, how can prayer change anything? Can prayer be anything more than reverent submission or surrender to the inevitable? Has prayer any further meaning than a subjective meaning or any further eflFects than subjective effects? These are the questions of difficulty that inevitably arise and the answers we give to these questions will determine our subsequent religious attitude. The World Ground The main category of human thinking is the category of cause. This is the main question of philosophy. What is the nature of the cause of all things? The answer to that question will have a great deal to do with our notion of prayer as a means for accomplishing results in the world outside our own minds. The materialists hold that all causation is mechanical. The universe consists of matter in motion. The sum total of all reality is matter in motion. Causation is linear, the action of part on part. Consciousness has no efficiency. It is a sort of accompaniment to the process of reality, an unexplained and 82 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER inexplicable appearance in the process. It has no more to do with the ongoing of the universe than the squeaking of wagon wheels or the rattle of those wheels on the pavement has to do with the propelling of the wagon. Consciousness is always an effect and never a cause. It is an epiphenom- enon. It is a curious and troublesome fact for the mechanistic explanation of the universe. In linear causation the effect in turn becomes the cause of the next step in the mechanical process, the connecting link in the chain of causation. Here is an effect that does not enter into the process, though it may seem to itself to do so. The epiphe- nomenon is an invention for the purpose of ex- plaining this overbubbling aspect of nature. It is a desperate expedient. The explanation has never quite explained. The effort is to keep the power of intelligence from having a place in the processes of nature. The moment intelligence becomes a causal force the mechanical explanation of things is smashed. Something else than matter in motion has been admitted as a factor in the process and as a part of basic reality. PRAYER AND WORLD ORDER 83 Mechanism It is easily seen that the only place for a God to act upon a mechanical process is at the beginning, to set the process going. God could be conceived as starting the process in the same way that a mechanic would start a clock and let it go until it should run down. The thoroughgoing materialist would not acknowledge such a causative power over and above the material universe. And if this causative power were anything dif- ferent from the factors in the mechanical process making up the universe and its movement — if it be thought of as intelli- gence — he could not admit it into his sysr tem. Therefore there is no chance for intel- ligence to bring about any changes in the ongoing of the universe. Our desires and our purposes might seem to enter into the scheme of things, but it would be only a seeming. In a universe governed by me- chanical causation the efficacy of prayer or of any other effort of intelligence could be nothing more than an illusion. Teleology The conception that is usually thought of 84 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER as being in direct contrast with the concep- tion of the world as a mechanism governed by an indifferent mechanical impulse is the teleological conception, which regards the world process as the working out of a pur- pose. The antithesis is not so complete as it seems to be, for a machine is normally explained in terms of purpose. The ma- terialist simply refuses to think of an ante- cedent cause back of the world of matter in motion. But the emphasis of the teleological conception is on the future, the realization of an end toward which all things are tend- ing, rather than an emphasis upon the source from whence all things proceed. Modern philosophy has been greatly in- fluenced, even revolutionized, by the evolu- tionary hypothesis, which regards the world process as a process of development. It is a perfectly natural corollary to regard this process as a process of the realization of values. This means that the world is pulled forward in the direction of the achievement of ends. It becomes a living world in the process of the realization of life's values. Intelligence and purpose cannot be left out of this sort of philosophy. PRAYER AND WORLD ORDER 85 Things are more favorable to prayer in this sort of world. But let us not proceed too rapidly and draw an unwarranted con- clusion. A world purpose, grounded in a Cosmic Mind, does not guarantee us a ra- tional basis for the objective efficacy of prayer. Such a purpose might shut the world process against change just as effec- tively as the inexorable laws of mechanical causation. If the purpose is complete in every respect, if the whole scheme has been laid out to the last detail, nothing we can do will change anything about it. Every- thing is predetermined. We must make our prayers, however futile they may be, be- cause they are ground out as details of a world plan. We must proceed further in our thinking than mere teleology if we find a place for the cosmic efficacy of the human will. The only kind of universe that will give prayer or any other human eflPort a real meaning for the realization of values is the universe that admits us as real factors into the world process. This idea suggests an- other kind of causation, that which Pro- fessor Hobhouse calls organic causation. 86 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER The causal energy is generated within the cosmic process. Hobhouse regards the cos- mic process as the development of Mind. Professor Bowne stated the matter another way when he said that the world is funda- mentally personal and is about the business of the development and realization of per- sonal life. He regards the world ground as personal and all the meanings of the uni- verse as centering in personal existences. Organic Causation According to this view of causation, the personal being, such as you or I, with a thinking mind may generate fresh energy and make original and unpredetermined contributions to the cosmic process. Per- sonal life has that power. It is not fastened down by the limits of mechanical necessity. This is the creative capacity. Bergson puts the idea of life's creative function into his philosophy in Creative Evolution, without the emphasis that Bowne puts on personal- ism. If creation is admitted anywhere, then the whole world process may be grounded in the creative energy of a Supreme Personal Being, PRAYER AND WORLD ORDER 87 Now, experience seems to show that we do have causative force within us, that our personal lives are fountains from which pro- ceed fresh streams of creative energy. And the tendency of modern philosophy is to take the testimony of experience very seriously. The old dialectic method is dying hard, but it is very surely giving way under the influence of the evolutionary hypothesis. The supreme contribution of this doctrine is the idea of life as the fundamental fact of existence. Making the world process the process of harmonizing living beings with environment, it puts life at the very heart of reality. In the tendency of evolutionary theory to regard the cosmic process, in its higher phases and more advanced develop- ment, as a process of realizing values, we find the suggestion of intelligent purpose. It is leading us out of the dreary wastes of static monism, while at the same time it brings us to see that all things are held to- gether in the unity of a world process. We shall not come to a larger knowledge of our world by adopting some guiding notions and seeking to make all things conform con- sistently with these notions. We shall, 88 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER rather, take the world as we find it and by experience, by reflection, by constant criti- cism of our own methods of procedure gain what knowledge we may of the world in which we find ourselves. The world which we see about us, as far as we are able to form an opinion, is a world that has some things fixed and some things changing, a world that has some mechanism and some teleology, some necessity and some freedom, some order and some confu- sion, some law and apparently some caprice. And experience gives us the testimony that we are in the world and have something to do with its ongoing. We have been able to modify it, and it has modified us. No phi- losophy has been able successfully to refute this testimony of our own consciousness. And any philosophy that starts out to ignore it labels itself in the outset as un- satisfactory. If we are personal factors in a world proc- ess, human effort and human desire have a cosmic significance. We cannot do every- thing. Our desires are not omnipotent. But we are not mere helpless spectators watching the wheels of the world go round. This is PRAYER AND WORLD ORDER 89 where a place for prayer may be found in philosophy. In a personal world prayer may conceivably be a cosmic factor. Prayer and Law The opponents of religion have made an miwarranted use of the scientific discovery of the practically universal reign of law. Popular thinking has given way entirely too far to some of the assumptions that have discredited many of the precious tenets of rehgious faith. Too much has been admitted of these assumptions. Nothing has been more chilling and deadening to the faith of the common man in the power of prayer than this teaching of the reign of universal law. It should not have had that effect at all. The modern man thinks of the vast out- reach of the universe about him, the vast multitude of solar systems with their myriads of planets, the seemingly infinite distances that stretch from star to star, and thinks of the whole as under the sway of inexorable law. Then he asks, "WTiat is the use to pray?" He feels lost with his little desires in a vast indifferent universe. It is 90 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER the old question, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" The modern man takes his microscope and studies the uni- verse of infinitesimals, and there he dis- covers still the reign of law. Cause and effect have the same relations in that world as in the world of big things. If he turns his mind inward upon itself, he finds the laws of physiology and psychology and logic operating there. The universe gives him everywhere the impression that it is a per- fectly organized, perfectly working system. There seems to be no suggestion of the possibility of the injection of personal desire into this universe that operates with the precision of a steam roller. He loses sight of the irregularities and the exceptions. His mind becomes filled with universals. There is no encouragement for prayer. He can contemplate and admire, but he finds no direct response to his feelings or his desires. Also he has in the background of his thinking the explanations of religion almost entirely in terms of miracle. The Bible has stated religious experience in a natural way without question or explanation. It is not a scientific treatise, but a book of life. It was PRAYER AND WORLD ORDER 91 written before the reign of law was a gen- erally accepted fact. There are hints here and there that the Scripture writers have by inspiration grasped the idea. Paul has it quite clearly. But it is nowhere stated in such terms as express it in our modern day. Hence the average man is likely to jump to the conclusion that the discoveries of science have discredited the Bible and put out of date many of the fundamental practices and beliefs of religion. A belief in the efficacy of prayer has departed in this way. If the idea of the universal reign of law had been properly related to religious ideas in the popular mind, men would have seen that law is friendly, and not unfriendly, to religion. They would have seen that law is essential to the stability and reliability of the universe. Without it life could have no substantiality, truth no certainty, and mor- ality and spirituality no assured progress. Law is the manifestation of regularity and dependability in our world. It has no causative power. It is the method by which causative power operates. It is the observed order in which phenomena hang together. Without it we should have complete chaos. 92 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER Law does not bind or enslave life. It is by the use of law that living beings gain a larger and larger mastery over the world of things. By means of the laws of nature we are able to get control over the forces of nature and make them serve the human will. "One ship sails east And one sails west By the self-same wind that blows: It is the set of the sail ^ And not the gale That determines the way it goes." By means of the laws of mental development and of reason man is able to make intellec- tual progress and to accumulate the results of learning. By means of the laws of life man is able to achieve moral and spiritual progress. There is nothing in the operation of law that interferes with proper personal freedom and the development of personal life in any sphere, in relation to God or any other relation. The fact of law, however, must be taken into account. But if we have a personal relation with a personal God, the reign of law will not prevent our communion and fellowship with him any more than with other persons. It will govern our inter- PRAYER AND WORLD ORDER 93 course with God in much the same way that it governs our intercourse with other per- sons. The Laws of Prayer The last conclusion brings us to a consid- eration of the laws of prayer. Prayer must conform to law. Among the cosmic forces is the prayer force; and, as these do not operate accidentally or in obedience to whim or caprice, so we may expect prayer to have regulating principles. God is about the business of establishing a harmony of forces in the universe. Therefore we must not expect that inJSuence which deals directly and immediately with him to be left out of the realm of orderly processes and methods and out from under the sovereignty of law. The cardinal law of prayer, as Dr. Charles E. Jefferson has pointed out, is the law of limitations. There are many things included in prayer petitions that have no place there. There are things in this world that no * amount of prayer can change. Prayer will not change the operation of the law of the harvest. Prayer will not alter the courses of the stars. Prayer will not substitute for 94 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER work. Prayer will not take the place of thinking. Prayer will not operate outside its normal sphere. It is a force that operates along with kindred spiritual forces. Prayer must conform to the fundamental / laws of life; it must not try to run ahead of the working out of God's main purpose. It obeys the law of proportion. The whole course of the cosmic process will not be set aside merely to gratify the irrelevant desires of individuals. Our personal desires might never be attained by any other method than prayer, many of them might not; but those desires, whatever they are, must fit into God's main plan. / Above all, prevaiUng prayer must con- form to moral law. Many of our prayers do not do that. Sometimes they are selfish, sometimes vindictive, sometimes vicious. As such, they are pathetically futile and in- effective. Moreover, they are ignorant and unworthy. Prayer is one form of spiritual power among others. It has its normal part and portion in life. It should come into relation with the other spiritual factors of life and with the world process as a whole. Giving it PRAYER AND WORLD ORDER 95 larger powers than it rightfully possesses will discredit it, perhaps entirely, and turn men from its practice. It should be the effort of religious philosophy to give prayer its exact value. It is one form of influence that is exerted by a personal being in a world that is grounded in a personal cause that has for its main business the development of personal life and the realization of values which can have meaning only for personal minds. CHAPTER VI THE GOD OF PRAYER Nothing is so important for the religious life of men as their conception of God. No matter whether they have an adequate philosophy of the world or not, if they can retain a vital and real faith in God, their religion will remain a vital and real thing in their lives. There has been more or less tragedy connected with the whole course of human development, but none more real than the spiritual tragedy of readjustment that has been enacted with increasing in- tensity since the beginning of the Renais- sance. And it seems such a useless tragedy, as useless as the fearful carnage of the last great World War. It is the result of the lack of proportion in thinking, the one-track tendency of the human mind, the failure to keep properly related in a course of develop- ment the cardinal aspects of life. The tragedy is the loss of God out of the lives of an increasing number of thoughtful people. 96 THE GOD OF PRAYER 97 The Tragedy of the Loss of God Dr. R. L. Swain, in his new book, What and Where is God? quotes the wife of a min- ister concerning her loss of the consciousness of God. She said to him at the dinner table: *'I have no God ! They have taken him away and I do not know where to find him. My childhood conception of a Man-God on the throne of heaven is gone — and I think rightly gone ; but I have nothing to take its place. I hear them speak of an immanent God; of a God who fills all nature. And I have no objection to this except that it brings no relief. Nature is so inexpressibly vast and complex that, to my mind, a God who fills all nature is so infinitely big and spread out that I can neither know him nor love him. He is altogether too attenuated for me; besides, this makes him so much everywhere that he seems to be nowhere. Here I am without a God, working myself nearly to death in a great church; and my heart is breaking for a Father to whom I can go, as I once did, with all my hopes and fears. Moreover, all my young women friends feel as I do. We often speak of this among ourselves without knowing where to 98 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER turn for relief."^ Here is voiced the spiritual tragedy of our time. Causes of this Condition This has resulted, in the first place, from the fact that the earlier crude conceptions of , God have remained largely in an undevel- oped state or they have failed to keep pace in their development with the remainder of the intellectual life. When the average per- son has awakened to this discrepancy, he has sought to rectify matters. The easiest way is simply to lop off by a sort of intel- lectual amputation the deformed and dis- figuring religious ideas. He decides that in the whole matter of his earlier religious life he has been the victim of superstition. Another cause of the giving up of God is the fact that the early forms of picturing God's relation to man in terms of prevailing human relations, and the falling into the discard of those relations has brought a re- jection of the conception of God that has been connected with the discard. No new conception was at hand to take its place. It ^ Reprinted, by permission of The Macmillan Company, from What and Where Is God? Copyright, 1920, by The Macmillan Company. THE GOD OF PRAYER 99 has been a ease of throwing away the baby with the bath. For example, in earher the- ological thought God was represented as a monarch. He was the supreme autocrat of the universe. Hence, when autocracy be- came generally distasteful, men decided that it was time also to throw away the idea of God, never going into the question of whether their long-time conception of God might be illogical or unjust. Dr. Albert Parker Fitch has a striking quotation from Dr. Harry Allen Overstreet, which furnishes an excellent illustration of this sort of reasoning. Dr. Overstreet says: "There is no place in the future for an eternally per- fect being and no need. Society, democratic from end to end, can brook no such radical class distinction as that between a supreme being, favored with eternal and absolute perfection, and the mass of beings doomed to the lower ways of imperfect struggle."^ Having known Dr. Overstreet personally and having engaged in discussions with him, I know that he has a perfect passion for getting rid of God. I believe he has other ^Preaching and Paganism, p. 59. Yale University Press, publishers. 100 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER motives than the democratic motive. How- ever, he has discovered and made use of an idea which may not be so clearly de- fined in the popular mind, yet is certainly there. Also I think the modern man has turned from God because of the abstract character of much of the theological thought of the past, which has tended to lift God out of life and experience and preclude a growing knowledge of him by setting the barriers of a priori notions across the path of experien- tial discovery. Historic Conceptions of God and Their Influence Finally, we must take into consideration the various philosophic conceptions of God that have been the products of reflection, and each has contributed its greater or smaller portion of truth, but has failed to satisfy. And every one of them has set the stamp of its influence strongly and clearly upon religious opinion. These historic con- ceptions have given men definite ways to think about God, definite points of de- parture, turned their thoughts into definite THE GOD OF PRAYER 101 channels, and handicapped thinking with the defects belonging to each. Deism Not least in its inlfluence has been the deistic conception. This is a conception of two distinct orders, the natural and the supernatural. God is relegated to the realm of the supernatural. As related to the uni- verse, he is the Deus ex machina, an absentee God. Although many skeptics — Voltaire, Rousseau, and Ingersoll among them — ^have been champions of the deistic opinion, and although it has been generally recognized as being opposed to the theology of the church, yet it has exercised a strong influence upon religious thinking. Paley's illustration of the watch and the watchmaker has a deistic flavor. Popular thought was for many generations after the English deists literally saturated with deism. It is primitive and superficial enough to make an instant appeal to unreflective common sense. Pantheism Over against the idea of the absentee God was placed the doctrine of the divine im- 102 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER manence. In the later years it has almost swung theology into pantheism. The thought of God as immanent in all nature and in all life, constantly furnishing the energy for all movement and all growth, has led people into identifying God with nature. When they have not done this many of them have taken the reverse course and identified nature with God in an idealistic pantheism. The whole world, with all its monstrosities, is a thought world. That thought is God's thought. God as a mental fact is the sum total of existence. All else, even our own individuality, is illusory. Sin is illusory. Evil is illusory. Our own personal existence is illusory. Christian Science is a striking illustration of this sort of pantheism. Any form of pantheism is killing to the devo- tional spirit and to active religious faith. In the act of prayer the worship is no longer conceived of as communion between per- sons. In atheism you have a human world that is Godless. In pantheism you have a divine world from which the reality of hu- man life has been excluded. It is diflScult to say which is worse. There can be no prayer, in any real sense of the term, without a THE GOD OF PRAYER 103 divine and human person in intercom- munication. Absolutism Another bhghting conception, very much akin to pantheism, is the doctrine of the Absolute, that has had a large place in both philosophy and theology. The doctrine of the Absolute is found in its most extreme form in the writings of Bradley, Mansell, and Sir William Hamilton, and in the sys- tem of Hegel, but it is not without its queer twists in many of the arguments of abstract orthodox theology. The Absolute is the supreme accomplishment of dialectic acting independently of experience. It is the carry- ing forward of the Ideal until the moral world, individuality, responsive feeling and action, all definite attributes, all finitely conceived qualities of character, have been transcended. The perfections of God are so complete that he is lifted into the realm of the unthinkable, unknowable, and unap- proachable. He is lifted utterly out of con- tact with all human life. He has no rehgious utility or value. He is as intelligible as the figure representing infinity, and the figure 104 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER representing infinity is about as intelligible as the oval representation of nothing. God can mean nothing for us religiously unless he can get into our own world, the world of the same moral and intellectual laws, the world that has values conceivably realizable. "There is, however, a valid meaning which the word Absolute may have when apphed to God. God is Absolute in that he is the unconditioned Ground of all finite existences, and is only limited in so far as he limits himself in the world which he has created. God may, therefore, be appro- priately designated as the Absolute Ground of the world, for he is the sole and sufficient reason for its existence. He may also be called Absolute because he is a being har- monious and self-complete, whose con- sciousness embraces the whole universe. But Absolute in the theistic acceptation of the word is definitely distinguished from the speculative Absolute which is the sum of reality."! Modern Philosophy Modern philosophy is making an effort to 1 Galloway's Philosophy of Religion, p. 481. Scribners. THE GOD OF PRAYER 105 get away from the helplessly perfect God that has been created by the operations of theological and philosophical dialectic. An effort scarcely philosophical is that of H. G. Wells in his book that provoked a wide and somewhat acrimonious discussion, God, the Invisible King. It was a sort of bomb in the camp of absolutists. Mr. Wells was hunting for a God, groping for him in the dark, who would meet the religious needs of a hu- manity under the affliction of a World War. His God is a finite God, not perfect, but striving for perfection, not in complete control of the universe, but sufficiently strong in his influence to be regarded as a gradually prevailing power that makes for righteousness. Professor William James in some of his writings has contended for a finite God. His chief difficulty with the absolutist's concep- tion is its negation of moral responsibility. He is seeking to find a God who is not responsible for the sin and evil in the world, and he also seeks to find a place for the freedom and moral responsibility of the individual. He sees clearly the hard scheme of determinism involved in the absolutist's 106 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER conception of God. He does not like the idea of a completely perfect God's planning such a world as experience testifies that we have. He uses an illustration that reveals the working of his mind on this subject: "Suppose two men before a chess-board — the one a novice, the other an expert player of the game. The expert intends to beat. But he cannot foresee exactly what any one actual move of his adversary may be. He knows, however, all the possible moves of the latter; and he knows in advance how to meet each of them by a move of his own which leads in the direction of victory. And the victory infallibly arrives, after no matter how devious a course, in the one predestined form of checkmate to the novice's king." The relation of God to the other factors of the universe is here shown by analogy. It seems to me that Mr. Wells has made God more finite than he need be. There is not quite enough invested in his conception of God to assure us that the Invisible King may not get the worst of it in some in- calculable development of the ongoing world. The power that makes for righteous- ness is hardly big enough for his job. And THE GOD OF PRAYER 107 Professor James would not have involved himself in contradictions, denied the testi- mony of experience, or destroyed his own doctrines had he given God the basic causal power of the world process. The fault of his philosophy is the inadequacy of its doctrine of causes, a very serious fault in a phi- losophy. Aside from this, Professor James shows us in his analogy a picture of the God of the Bible. His analogy reminds one very much of Jeremiah's analogy of the potter and the clay. There is no misunderstanding the prophet's application: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and con- cerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them." Here the divine plan of action is clearly represented as contingent upon the action of human factors in the case. 108 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER It may be that Professor James had come more nearly to the bibhcal viewpoint of God as the Creator of all things and had found a way to relate that doctrine to his other teachings when he wrote, in 1915, The Will to Believe and Other Essays, His doctrine of a finite God is not so bald and blunt in these essays as in his Pluralistic Universe^ pub- lished in 1912. He is approaching the more normal theistic position of Bowne. He might make himself acceptable to the ortho- dox theologian if he had not written the following footnote to the paragraph in which he makes application of the above quoted analogy. He is showing how God may hold in abeyance certain details of his plan and make them contingent upon hu- man acts, which are generated as fresh and new contributions to the cosmic process out of the inner fountains of the human will. The footnote is as follows : "This, of course, leaves the creative mind subject to the law of time. And to anyone who insists on the timelessness of that mind I have no reply to make. A mind to whom all time is simultaneously present must see all things under the form of actuality or THE GOD OF PRAYER 109 under some form to us unknown. If he thinks certain moments in their content while future, he must simultaneously know how the ambiguity will have been decided when they are past. So that none of his mental judgments can possibly be hypothet- ical, and his world is one from which chance is excluded. Is not, however, the timeless mind rather a gratuitous fiction.^ And is not the notion of eternity being given at a stroke to omniscience only just another way of whacking upon us the block-universe and of denying that possibilities exist? — just the point to be proved. To say that time is an illusory appearance is only a roundabout manner of saying there is no real plurality, and that the frame of things is an absolute unit. Admit plurality and time may be its form."i This passage cannot be anything else than offensive to orthodox theology, for the time- less mind of the Infinite is one of its fondest possessions. But does not the God of James come nearer squaring with life and with the Bible than this time-worn notion of a time- ^ The Will to Believe and Other Essays, p. 181. Used by permissioQ of Longmans, Green & Co., publishers. 110 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER less mind, which sees things as actual rather than in the order of antecedents and conse- quences, a notion not taken from the Bible or experience but from monistic idealism? James has shunned, probably as a result of the influence of the very opinions which he abhors, the giving of sufficient initial crea- tive power to his God to furnish an adequate ground for the entire cosmic process; but his philosophy, as far as it goes, is true to life and experience and is full of a rugged reli- gious vitality. His God is personal, coming into personal relations with men. He has power to act in a world of genuine reality. He offers an objective for religious approach. One does not have the feeling that this God is an abstract idea or a set of subjective values. The influence of this philosophy, wherever it is spread abroad, will be to quicken men to a sense of religious reality. Any discovery of God for those who have lost him intellectually must be made by way of this line of approach, life first and then philosophy. The day of dialectic is done. The theology of the future must be built out of the materials of life and experience. THE GOD OF PRAYER 111 The Kind of God the World Needs It may sound like a priorism to discuss the kind of God that the rehgious and in- tellectual needs of mankind will demand, but it is not. These have been discovered pragmatically. Whether there is a God who will meet the demand is another question. And we may pragmatically assume that the need of a certain type of God has an eviden- tial bearing upon the fact of his existence. The revelations of experience are the keys to deeper reality. Dr. George Galloway has successfully stated the matter as a problem of philosophy and shown us the inevitable solution. His statement is as follows: "Those who term the all-inclusive unity of experience a personal Absolute never succeed in reconciling the Absolute Self with the multiplicity of finite selves. The form of Absolutism which reduces all reality to a single individual Being is confronted with an insoluble difficulty; either the Ab- solute Self is an illusion, or finite selves are real and the Absolute Self is a fiction. This is the dilemma of Absolute Idealism to which I have already referred. It can only be avoided by abandoning the theory that 112 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER all experience falls within the unity of the Absolute Consciousness, in other words, by admitting that finite selves have a being of their own. Hence it is necessary to be clear what we mean by saying that the Ultimate Ground unifies the elements of experience. The Ground must unify with- out thereby becoming identical with or being absorbed by the elements unified. This means that God gives unity or system to the plurality of spiritual substances or experient centers, though he is not himself the unity in which they subsist. But he is the Ground of their unity, its source and final explana- tion. Pluralism, it should be noted, on this view is not ultimate, for the multiplicity of finite centers all depend for their existence and their order on one supreme teleological will. Finite selves and the mundane system in which they develop are all sustained by God, who, by reason of his transcendent character, does not reduce the beings who depend on him to a phase of his own life. Pluralism in this way yields to a derivative system based on the divine activity, which operates through all its parts. A Ground which actually conditions experience in this THE GOD OF PRAYER 113 manner may be truly said to unify it, for it brings about in all the parts a reference to one source and a direction to one end. But while God, the Ultimate Ground, is active within the system of the world, he exists beyond it. He is transcendent as well as immanent, a Self and yet the suflScient reason of the society of selves."^ Evolutionary Philosophy Discovers God A study of the world in which we live leads ultimately and inevitably to a realiza- tion of the need of God to fulfill all the con- ditions observed in the study. There is no getting away from it unless we start out, like Haeckel, with the determination to leave God out of the case. Then we shall probably wind up with a result that is about as super- ficial and ridiculous as his Riddle of the Universe. A splendid contribution to modern phi- losophy, a study of the world from the standpoint of life and experience, is the work of L. T. Hobhouse, Development and Purpose, in which he finds the cosmic proc- ess to be a development of mind. It is ^Philosophy of Religion, p. 434. Charles Scribner's Sons. 114 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER interesting to note how inevitably he reaches the conclusion of the reasonable certainty of a Cosmic Mind. The reader does not need to agree with all his minor conclusions con- cerning the character of this Cosmic Mind to profit from the result of his study. He says (p. 364) : "The growth of harmony involves the evolution of individual minds, which con- stantly enter into deeper and wider relations with one another. But beyond this our account appears to imply a permanent activity of a Mind that is not limited to a single physical organism. For at least so far as our experience and our powers of concep- tion extend, the existence of a purpose im- plies a Mind commensurate with that pur- pose. Mind is the permanent — we may venture to say the substantive — basis of conception or activity. Where we trace germs or filaments of purpose we infer the rudiments of mind. Where a purpose of given scope is plain there is to be inferred a mind of not less scope. If, as we now con- clude, a purpose runs through the world- whole, there is a Mind of which the world- purpose is the object. Such a mind must THE GOD OF PRAYER 115 be a permanent and central factor in the process of Reality, but how in detail its relation to reality in general, and the indi- vidual mind in particular, is to be con- ceived is a question about which it is best to frankly confess ignorance."^ The last statement in the above para- graph is the only unwarranted assumption. This philosopher is shying from anything that looks like religious teaching doubtless because he fears that a leaning toward reli- gion will hinder the acceptance of his philosophy by the prejudiced minds of modern thinkers. Philosophy is a realm of strong prejudices, and we must not assume too great liberties unless we are seeking to be haled out of court. The Idea of God Not Outworn But these results of modern thinking serve to show that the idea of God is not an outworn idea. There is a rational ground for belief in God that can never be removed. More than that, there is an overwhelming presumption in favor of God's existence. If 1 Reprinted by permission of the Maemillan Co., from Development and Purpose, by L. T. Hobhouse. 116 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER the modern man can be brought to realize these facts, he will have a basis for the dis- coveries of experience. Theories about God and the experience of God are two different things, but a man who does not have a ra- tional ground for belief in God will not go forward with the experience. He must have a foothold of faith for the beginning of a new religious experience. If the modern man is to be turned toward religion again and to prayer, which is religion's most significant practice, God must be made real for him. And to overcome the sort of objection made by Dr. Overstreet there must be a restate- ment of the conception, or, indeed, a new conception must be found. The God of the Bible At the risk of being regarded as naive and simple-minded, or suspected of attempting to be facetious, I am going to suggest a fair consideration of the God of the Bible. He will be a relief from theological abstraction and monistic idealism. He will furnish in his creative capacity a ground for all other existences. He is a person, who is responsive to the seeking heart for divine fellowship. THE GOD OF PRAYER 117 He has recognized humanity as a real cosmic factor. He is, according to the Christian interpretation, which is the final conception of the Scriptures, not an autocrat but a Father. The world may get beyond think- ing of God as King, because it has ceased to think in terms of kingship; but we cannot conceivably reach a condition of existence where we may cease to think in terms of fatherhood. I venture to predict that, after much wandering and groping, the various living schools of thought will ultimately unite on what is virtually the biblical con- ception of God. Personality Emphasis has been laid upon the personal idea of God. A word as to the meaning of the word "person" is in order before reach- ing the conclusion of this discussion. The fact of the matter is that an impersonal God is no God at all. There are minds that can conceive of a fundamental reality that is impersonal, but any sort of fidelity to ac- curacy of meanings would forbid calling it God. Either there is a personal God or there is no God at all. Any object of worship that 118 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER a man might have he will endow with per- sonality. When he can no longer make the endowment, he will cease the worship. The content of the word ''personal" is very clear. It does not of necessity include bodily form and human limitations. In fact, to the ex- tent that the human make-up is physical and subject to mechanical law, to that extent it falls short of personality. Only minds are personal. The personal aspect of mind is its seK-consciousness and power of seK-direction. When we speak of the per- sonality of God, we mean that he has conscious intelligence and the power of self- direction according to principles and ideals. Prayer Lifted Into Cosmic Significance Now we are ready for our conclusions. Restore God and you restore prayer. Prim- itive man would pray instinctively. He was unreflectively credulous and superstitious. Modern man will pray instinctively in times of emergency, but he will not do so as a matter of life practice. When he can be fur- nished a be ief in God that will satisfy both his intellectual demands and the cravings of his soul, he will turn with joy to the THE GOD OF PRAYER 119 worship of his God and his rehgious interest will be supreme. When men come to feel that God really hears prayer and gives their petitions any sort of consideration, they will pray, and their religion will take on meaning and vitality. And modern science and the new phi- losophies of experience are unquestionably leading us back to the God of the Bible. They are now getting hold of what the prophets and poets had possession of long ago — the world in which we live is itself a living world, grounded in a living cause. Man has a place and a part and a high destiny in this universe. He has kinship with the divine. The world is fundamentally a world of personal beings. All else is subordinate and subservient. God relates his purposes and activities to the free lives of men. He is not forcing a harmony of forces and wills upon the universe, but is working out a harmony of forces and wills which will have at its consummation a moral foundation and which will constitute the supreme achievement of his creative will. Then, if this is a personal world, if God is personal and we are personal, if he relates 120 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER his purpose to ours, if we are partners in the cosmic scheme, our prayers do count for something. Intercourse with God is Hfted into a cosmic significance. This does not mean that all our desires shall prevail, but it does mean that they have consideration and a chance for realization. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Devotional Books Why Men Pray, Charles L. Slattery, The Macmillan Company. The Meaning of Prayer, H. E. Fosdick, Association Press. Prayer in War Time, W. Robertson Nichol, Doran Press. Old Truths and New Facts, C. E. Jefferson, Revell. Psychology The Psychology of Prayer, Anna Louise Strong, University of Chicago Press. The Psychology of Religion, George A. Coe, University of Chicago Press. The Psychology of Religious Experience, Ed- ward S. Ames, Houghton Mifflin Co. Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, Longmans, Green & Co. Religion Introduction to the Study of Comparative Re- ligion, F. B. Jevons, The Macmillan Com- pany. What and Where is God? R. L. Swain, The Macmillan Company. 121 122 PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER Public Opinion and Theology, Bishop F. J. McConnell, Abingdon Press. Social Evolution and the Development of Religion, C. K. Mahoney, Methodist Book Concern. Reason in Religion, George Santayana, Scribners. Philosophy Philosophy of Religion, George Galloway, Scribners. Metaphysics, B. P. Bowne, American Book Co. Personalism, B. P. Bowne, Houghton Mifflin Co. Theism, B. P. Bowne, Houghton Mifflin Co. A Pluralistic Universe, William James, Long- mans, Green & Co. The Will to Believe, William James, Long- mans, Green & Co. c* '^ INDEX Absolute, 104 Absolutism, 103 Adaptation, 69 Amen, 41 Ames, Edward S., 18 Atheist's view, 66 Atonement, 37 B Battlefield, prayer as, 68 Bergson, 86 Bible, God of the, 116 Bible mysteries, 25 Boreham, F. W., 46 Bowne, Borden P., 79 Buddhistic mysticism, 43 Carlyle, Thomas, 43 Catholic mysticism, 43 Causation, mechanical, 83 Causation, organic, 86 Causation, teleological, 83 Christian Science, 101 Coe, Geo. A., 17 Cosmic Mind, 114 Cosmic significance of prayer, 118 Cromwell, 43 Curtis, O. A., 25 D Definitions, 26 Deism, 101 Democratic idea of God, 99 Dependence, 64 Desire, 29, 63 Development and Purpose, 115 Devotional literature, 13 Dynamic, prayer as a, 73 E Effects, subjective, 66 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 17 Evolution of mind, 114 Evolutionary philosophy, 113 Faith generated, 71 Fatherhood of God, 53 Fear, 54 Finite God, 105 Fitch, A. P., 99 Forgiveness, 63 Fosdick, H. E., 19 Frazer, 39 Galloway, Prof. George, 17 God, loss of, 97 God's Morality, 64 God of the Bible. 116 H Haeckel, 113 Harmony, 114 Harvey, 31 Heaven, 56 Historic conceptions of God, 101 Hobhouse, L. T., 114 Humility, 64 I Imperative, categorical, 33 Infinite, 104 Introduction Comparative Religion, 21 Intuition, 46 James, William, 17, 107, 108 Jefferson, C. E., 93 Jeremiah, 107 Jevons, 20 K Kant, 33 Kingdom of heaven, 117 Kingship of God, 117 Labor, religious, 73 Law, 89 Laws of prayer, 93 123 124 INDEX Limitation, law of, 93 Lord's Prayer, 50 Loss of God, 97 M Magic, 38 Marrett, R. R., 17 McConnell, F. J., 64 Meaning of Prayer, 19 Mechanism, 83 Meekness, 63 Model prayer, 50 Modern Philosophy, 113 Mohammedanism, 17 Monism, 103 Morality, 61 Mysticism, 42 Reconciliation, 37 Repetitions, 41 Riddle of the Universe, 113 Sacrifice, 34 Santayana, 66 Sincerity, 67 Slattery, Chas. L., 28 Social appeal of prayer, 51 Soliloquy, 66 Subconscious prayer, 31 Subjective eflFects, 66 Surrender, 70 Swain, R. L., 97 N Nature of magic, 38 Naturalness of prayer, 18 Needs, material, 59 Occidental religious attitude, 60 Oriental religious attitude, 60 Organic causation, 86 Overstreet, H. A., 99 Paley, 101 Pantheism, 101 Pasteur, 32 Personality, 117 Personalism, 35 Petition, 59 Philosophy of Religion, 17 Praise, 56 Primitive Culture, 27 Problems. 80 Psychology of Religion, 17 Q Quest for God, 97 Questions, 80 Taylor, Jeremy, 70 Teleology, 83 Tennyson, 43 Theological absolutism, 103 Tylor, 26 U Ultimate Ground, 113 Ultimate in Prayer, 50 Unanswered prayer, 27 Unifying of personality, 67 Union with Deity, 38 Unseen, the, 28 Varieties of Religious Expe- rience, 28 Voltaire, 101 W Wells, H. G., 105 Wesley, 43 Whitman, 32 Woman's reason, 46 Wordsworth, 43 World Ground, 81 Worship, 57 Date Due .11 1 s -'f N IB *. Mr 1 5 "41 Ml 3 1 41 "F ^:£ 'd2 Mr 1 S '42 Bjr 9 7 w Wr3-'44 ^;r i^ 1 _ _.. ^mmmmmmt •i^i^gmmj^^' •* Wlv^.^ ...,..^.^, |k ^^^^j^tmm ) . 9