insignificance, sometimes overlaid by formalism, sometimes maintained firm and vigorous in the inmost life, has its place without as well as within the Jewish-Christian scheme. The ancient Aryan prayed: 'Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy! ... Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly host, whenever we break the law through thoughtlessness, have mercy, almighty, have mercy!'[1] The modern Parsi prays: 'Of my sins which I have committed against the ruler Ormazd, against men, and the different kinds of men. ... Deceit, contempt, idol-worship, lies, I repent of. ... All and every kind of sin which men have committed because of me, or which I have committed because of men; pardon, I repent with confession!'[2] As a general rule it would be misleading to judge utterances of this kind in the religions of classic Greece and Rome as betokening the intense habitual prayerfulness which pervades the records of Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity. Moralists admit that prayer can be made an instrument of evil, that it may give comfort and hope to the superstitious robber, that it may strengthen the heart of the soldier to slay his foes in an unrighteous war, that it may uphold the tyrant and the bigot in their persecution of freedom in life and thought. Philosophers dwell on the subjective operation of prayer, as acting not directly on outward events, but on the mind and will of the worshipper himself, which it influences and confirms. The one argument tends to guide prayer, the other to suppress it. Looking on prayer in its effect on man himself through the course of history, both must recognize it as even in savage religion a means of strengthening emotion, of sustaining courage and exciting hope, while in higher faiths it becomes a great motive power of the ethical system, controlling and enforcing, under an ever-present sense of supernatural intercourse and aid, the emotions and energies of moral life.
