her than the highest point
which it reaches in the lower levels of religion. That is the point
reached by the Khond prayer: "We are ignorant of what it is good to ask
for. You know what is good for us. Give it us." That is also the
highest point reached by the most religious mind amongst the ancient
Greeks: Socrates prayed the gods simply for things good, because the
gods knew best what is good (Xen., _Mem._, I, iii, 2). The general
impression left on one's mind by the prayers offered in this stage of
religious development is that man is here and the gods are--there. But
"there" is such a long way off. And yet, far off as it is, man {172}
never came to think it was so far off that the gods could not hear.
The possibility of man's entering into some sort of communication with
them was always present. Nay! more, a community of interests between
him and them was postulated: the gods were to promote the interests of
the community, and man was to serve the gods. On occasions when
sacrifice was made and prayer was offered, the worshippers entered into
the presence of God, and communion with Him was sought; but stress was
laid rather on the sacrifice offered than on the prayers sent up. The
communion at which animal sacrifice aimed may have been gross at times,
and at others mystic; but it was the sacrifice rather than the prayer
which accompanied it that was regarded as essential to the communion
desired, as the means of bridging the gap between man here and the gods
there. If, however, the gap was to be bridged, a new revelation was
necessary, one revealing the real nature of the sacrifice required by
God, and of the communion desired by man. And that revelation is made
in Our Lord's Prayer. With the most earnest and unfeigned desire to
use the theory of evolution as a means of ordering the facts of the
history of religion and of enabling {173} us--so far as it can enable
us--to understand them, one is bound to notice as a fact that the
theory of evolution is unable to account for or explain the revelation,
made in Our Lord's Prayer, of the spirit which is both human and
divine. It is the beam of light which, when turned on the darkness of
the past, enables us to see whither man with his prayers and his
sacrifices had been blindly striving, the place where he fain would be.
It is the surest beacon the missionary can hold out to those who are
still in darkness and who show by the fact that they pray--if only for