Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/35

 EXTERNAL MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.

FIRST PART.

MEANS OF COMMUNICATION UPWARDS.

CHAPTER I.

CONSECRATED ACTIONS.

Adoration, or worship, is a direct result of one of the most universal of human instincts. After the instincts which impel us to provide for the necessities of the body, and to satisfy the passion of love, there is perhaps none more potent or more general. Men are driven to pray by an irresistible impulse. Differing widely as to the object of worship; differing not less widely as to its mode; differing in a minor degree as to the blessings it secures; they are agreed as to the fundamental ideas which it involves. In the first place it presupposes a power superior to, or at any rate different from, the power of man; in the second place it assumes a belief that this super-*human or non-human power can be approached by his worshipers; can be induced to listen to their desires, and to grant their petitions.

Of the first of the two elements thus implied in prayer, this is not the appropriate place to speak at length. In a very early and primitive stage of man's existence, he begins to feel his dependence upon powers invisible to his mortal eyes, whose mode of action he can but imperfectly comprehend. His way of conceiving these beings will depend upon his mental elevation, upon historical influences, upon local conditions, and other