Widely various are the things wished for. Their character is the test of religions. In primitive faiths and in uncultivated minds, prayers are confined to the nearest material advantages; they are directed to the attainment of food, of victory in combat, of safety in danger, of personal prosperity. They may all be summed up in a line of one which occurs in the Rig Veda: “O Lord Varuna! Grant that we may prosper in _getting and keeping_!” Beyond this point of “getting and keeping,” few primitive prayers take us. Those of the American Indians, as I have elsewhere shown, remained in this stage among the savage tribes, and rose above it only in the civilized states of Mexico and Peru. Prayers for health, for plenteous harvests, for safe voyages and the like are of this nature, though from their familiarity to us they seem less crude than the simple-hearted petition of the old Aryan, which I have quoted. They mean the same. The more thoughtful votaries of the higher forms of religion have, however, frequently drawn the distinction between the direct and indirect fulfilment of the wish. An abundant harvest, restoration to health, or a victory in battle is the object of our hopes, not in itself, but for its results upon ourselves. These, in their final expression, can mean nothing else than agreeable sensations and pleasurable emotions. These, therefore, are the real though indirect objects of such prayers; often unconsciously so, because the ordinary devotee has little capacity and less inclination to analyze the nature of his religious feelings. A recent writer, Mr. Hodgson, has said: “The real answer to prayer is the increase of the joyful emotions, the decrease of the painful ones.”[126-1] It would seem a simpler plan to make this directly the purport of our petitions; but to the modern mind this naked simplicity would be distasteful. Nor is the ordinary supplicant willing to look so far. The direct, not the indirect object of the wish, is what he wants. The lazzarone of Naples prays to his patron saint to favor his choice of a lottery ticket; if it turn out an unlucky number he will take the little leaden image of the saint from his pocket, revile it, spit on it, and trample it in the mud. Another man, when his prayer for success is not followed by victory, sends gifts to the church, flogs himself in public and fasts. Xenophon gives us in his _Economics_ the prayer of a pious Athenian of his time, in the person of Ischomachus. “I seek to obtain,” says the latter, “from the gods by just prayers, strength and health, the respect of the community, the love of my friends, an honorable termination to my combats, and riches, the fruit of honest industry.” Xenophon evidently considered these appropriate objects for prayer, and from the petitions in many recent manuals of devotion, I should suppose most Christians of to-day would not see in them anything inappropriate.