may reassure us that as a religion progresses in spirituality it can purge itself more and more thoroughly of these, and the progress is from spell to prayer. Again, we may compare the phenomena from the point of view of the progress in aspiration. In the primitive period, when the struggle is to live at all rather than to live well, the objects of prayer must be material blessings, and these are still prominent in the liturgies of the civilised societies. There is a sameness in all these, and the chief distinction to note is between the prayers that look to the individual alone and those that look to the good of the community. A higher stage is reached when moral and spiritual qualities become the object of prayer; and when this is attained, the principle of prayer is likely to become more and more spiritual, and the {174} petitioner more and more diffident in the expression of his material wants, and with a growing consciousness that the Deity knows best what is good for man, may rise to the height of the formula, “Thy will be done.” It is interesting to note in how many races some such utterance has been heard; and at times men may have been helped to it by the consciousness which scientific advance had awakened, that the laws of the material universe cannot be capriciously altered to suit the temporary needs of the individual: a formula of acquiescence appears then to be the deepest and truest prayer. Finally, in the evolution of prayer we may consider that the consummation is marked by the theory, maintained by later Greek philosophy and early Christian fathers alike, that the true intention of prayer is not the mere petition for some special blessing, but rather the communion with God, to whom it is a spiritual approach. Here as often elsewhere, the highest spiritual product of human thought {175} reveals its affinity with some dimly remote primeval concept; for much of the spell-ritual at which we have been glancing implies an idea of such communion, the human agent endeavouring to charge himself with a potency drawn from a quasi-divine source.