PRAYER, 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 predominates the mood and in tention of reverent entreaty (from Lat. precari, entreat; Ital. pregaria; Fr. priere).
Prayer and its Congeners.—Prayer in the latter sense is a characteristic feature of the higher religions, and we might even say that Christianity or Mohammedanism, ritually viewed, is in its inmost essence a service of prayer. At all stages of religious development, however, and more especially in the case of the more primitive types of cult, prayer as thus understood occurs together with, and shades off into, other varieties of observance that bear obvious marks of belonging to the same family.
Confining ourselves for the moment to forms of explicit ad dress, we may group these under three categories according as the power addressed is conceived by the applicant to be on a higher, or on much the same, or on a lower plane of dignity and authority as compared with himself. (r) Only if the deity be regarded as altogether superior is there room for prayer proper, that is, reverent entreaty. Of this we may perhaps roughly dis tinguish a higher and a lower type, according as there is either complete confidence in the divine benevolence and justice, or a disposition to suppose a certain arbitrariness or, at any rate, con ditionality to attach to the granting of requests. In the first case prayer will be accompanied with disinterested homage, praise, and thanksgiving, and tends to lose its distinctive character of entreaty or petition, passing into a mystic communing or con verse with God. In the second case it will be supported by plead ing, involving on the one hand self-abasement, with confession of sins and promises of repentance and reform, or on the other hand self-justification, in the shape of the expression of faith and reci tation of past services, together with reminders of previous fa vour shown. (2) If the worshipper place his god on a level with himself, so as to make him to some extent dependent on the service man contracts to render him, then genuine prayer tends to be replaced by a mere bargaining, often conjoined with flattery and with insincere promises. This spirit of do ut des will be found to go closely with the gift-theory of sacrifice (q.v.) and to be especially characteristic of those religions of middle grade that are given over to sacrificial worship as conducted in temples and by means of organized priesthoods. So when the high gods are kind for a consideration, the lower deities will likewise be found addicted to such commerce ; thus in India the hedge-priest and his familiar will bandy conditions in spirited dialogue audible to the multitude (cf. W. Crooke, Things Indian, s.v. "Demonology,"
PP. 132, (3) Lastly, the degree of dependency on human goodwill attributed to the power addressed may be so great that, instead of diplomatic politeness, there is positive hectoring, with dictation, threats, and abuse. Even the Italian peasant is said occasionally to offer both abuse and physical violence to the image of a recalcitrant saint ; and antiquity wondered at the bully ing manner of the Egyptians towards their gods (cf. Iamblichus, De mysteriis, vi. 5-7). Westermarck supplies many instances from Morocco of 'dr the "conditional curse," applied to saints in order to make them attend, on pain of disaster if they are re calcitrant (History and Development of the Moral Ideas, passim). This frame of mind, however, is mainly symptomatic of the lower levels of cult. Thus the Zulu says to the ancestral ghost, "Help me or you will feed on nettles"; whilst the still more prim itive Australian exclaims to the "dead hand" that he carries about. with him as a kind of divining-rod, "Guide me aright, or I throw you to the dogs." So far the forms of address are explicitly directed towards a power that, one might naturally conclude, has personality, since it is apparently expected to hear and answer. At the primitive stage, however, the degree of personification is, probably, of ten far slight er than the words used would seem to suggest. The verbal employ ment of vocatives and of the second person may have little or no personifying force, serving primarily but to make the speaker's wish and idea intelligible to himself. When the rustic talks in the vernacular to his horse he is not much concerned to know whether he is heard and understood; still less when he mutters threats against an absent rival, or kicks the stool that has tripped him up with a vicious "Take that!" These considerations may help towards the understanding of a second class of cases, namely, forms of implicit address shading off into unaddressed formulas. Wishings, blessings, cursings, oaths, vows, exorcisms, and so on, are uttered aloud, partly that they may be heard by the human parties to the rite, but in many cases that they may be heard, or at least overheard, by a consentient deity, perhaps represented visibly by an idol or other cult-object.