prayers, and as such are intelligible. Where they are mere verbal forms, producing their effect on nature and man by some unexplained process, may not they or the types they were modelled on have been originally prayers, since dwindled into mystic sentences?
The worshipper cannot always ask wisely what is for his good, therefore it may be well for him to pray that the greater power of the deity may be guided by his greater wisdom — this is a thought which expands and strengthens in the theology of the higher nations. The simple prayer of Sokrates, that the gods would give such things as are good, for they know best what are good,[1] raises a strain of supplication which has echoed through Christendom from its earliest ages. Greatest of all changes which difference the prayers of lower from those of higher nations, is the working out of the general principle that the ethical element, so scanty and rudimentary in the lower forms of religion, becomes in the higher its most vital point; while it scarcely appears as though any savage prayer, authentically native in its origin, were ever directed to obtain moral goodness or to ask pardon for moral sin. Among the semi-civilized Aztecs, in the elaborate ritual which from its early record and its original characteristics may be thought to have a partial authenticity, we mark the appearance of ethical prayer. Such is the supplication concerning the newly-elect ruler: 'Make him, Lord, as your true image, and permit him not to be proud and haughty in your throne and court; but vouchsafe, Lord, that he may calmly and carefully rule and govern them whom he has in charge, the people, and permit not, Lord, that he may injure or vex his subjects, nor without reason and justice cause loss to any; and permit not, Lord, that he may spot or soil your throne or court with any injustice or wrong, &c.'[2] Moral prayer, sometimes appearing in rudiment, sometimes shrunk into
