only when he made this discovery did he take to religion and prayer, is a suggestion which cannot be maintained in view of the fact that savage man is much more at the mercy of accidents than is civilised man. The suggestion, in fact, tells rather against than in favour of the view that magic preceded religion, and that spells preceded prayer. The Australian black fellows might have been expected to present us with the spectacle of a people unacquainted with prayer. But in point of fact we find amongst them both prayers to Byamee and formulæ which, though now unintelligible even to the natives, may originally have been prayers. And generally speaking the presumption is that races, who distinctly admit the existence of spirits, pray to those spirits, even though their prayers be concealed from the white man's observation. Gods are there for the purpose of being prayed to. Prayer is the essence of religion, as is shown by the fact that gods, when they cease to be prayed to, are ignored rather than worshipped. Such gods--as in Africa and elsewhere--become little more than memories, when they no longer have a circle of worshippers to offer prayer and sacrifice to them. The highest point reached in the evolution of pre-Christian prayer is when the gods, as knowing best what is good, are petitioned simply for things good. Our Lord's prayer is a revelation which the theory of evolution cannot account for or explain. Nor does Höffding's "antinomy of religious feeling" present itself to the Christian soul as an antinomy . . . 138-174 {xix} SACRIFICE Prayer and sacrifice historically go together, and logically are indissoluble. Sacrifice, whether realised in an offering dedicated or in a sacrificial meal, is prompted by the worshippers' desire to feel that they are at one with the spirit worshipped. That desire manifests itself specially on certain regularly occurring occasions (harvest, seed time, initiation) and also in times of crisis. At harvest time the sacrifices or offerings are thank-offerings, as is shown by the fact that a formula of thanksgiving is employed. Primitive prayer does not consist solely in petitions for favours to come; it includes thanksgiving for blessings received. Such thanksgivings cannot by any possibility be twisted into magic. Analogous to these thanksgivings at harvest time is the solemn eating of first-fruits amongst the Australian black fellows. If this solemn eating is not in Australia a survival of a sacramental meal, in which the god and his worshippers were partakers, it must be merely a ceremony whereby the food, which until it is eaten is taboo, is "desacralised." But, as a matter of fact, such food is not taboo to the tribe generally; and the object of the solemn eating cannot be to remove the taboo and desacralise the food for the tribe.