The reviews of my recent book, The Development of Religion, have revealed certain misunderstandings both as to the general point of view and as to the meaning which it was intended to convey in specific places. The problems discussed are fundamental ones, and the present article aims to restate some of them in the hope of making more clear the precise points at issue.

Prayer is the intercourse of the human spirit with a reality, or being, realized as greater-than-human and either conceived or treated as personal. This definition, it will be observed, leaves open the question whether the object of religion is always reflectively known to be personal; yet it regards prayer, the characteristic religious experience, as a personal and personifying consciousness, the worshipper's awareness of superhuman reality in vital connection with him, the worshipper. As William James has said, “The religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological complications has shown itself to consist, everywhere and at all its stages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse between themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related.” Or, to quote Jevons, “rites and ceremonies, sacrifices and altars exist” for the sake of “the prayer in which man's soul rises or seeks to rise to God.”

This paper considers the nature of prayer thus conceived as the expression of intercourse with God—or with the gods.

When we stand by the sea and watch a storm dash huge waves on the rocks with furious roar and tumult, the power of the ocean fills us with awe. When the storm passes by and the night comes on and the stars shine out, at first one by one and then in throngs, till the great dome is all aflame and infinite spaces open above us, lighted with innumerable fires,—while the grandeur of the scene awakens awe, the mystery and boundlessness of these evening skies awaken wonder also. But when the day dawns and we look around us and see some lovely landscape, we no longer feel either awe or wonder; both have disappeared with the shadows of the night and the mystery of the stars; we feel only admiration. Then, if we enter some home where sons and daughters gather around the chair of an aged mother, we see that they feel no awe, for she is feeble and they are strong; and perhaps there is no admiration, for her form may be bent and her features wrinkled; but when her children think of what her sweet goodness has been to them through many years, they feel a nobler sentiment. It is not mere respect, however, such as we always render to age; it is not mere gratitude and love; it is reverence.

In the account published in this Review for January, 1911, of the discovery of Hebrew ostraca at Samaria in 1910, it was suggested by me that these seemed to be of the nature of labels indicating ownership, in some cases joint ownership. A more detailed examination has led me to modify this view in favor of that held by the discoverer, Professor Reisner.

Construction rather than destruction is, in its time and place, a good motto, but to attempt a reconstruction without first clearing the ground is likely to make the resulting building unstable. In the last quarter-century we have been attacking one by one the received views in theology, and now we are ready for constructive work, but unfortunately, as many students know who are in theological seminaries, even some marked as “liberal,” there is little fundamental criticism of the general basis of theism. Theology has made use of the philosophical progress, but has made comparatively little advance in its own field. So we find the traditional arguments for God's existence repeated in only very slightly modified form. It is in the attempt to bring home to us the necessity for a thorough-going criticism that this examination of one of the traditional arguments for God's existence has been undertaken.

In 1908 Harvard University began the exploration of the large hill in central Palestine which marks the site of the ancient Hebrew capital Samaria. The chief results of the year's work were the discovery of a Roman statue of heroic size (probably representing Augustus), a well-preserved Roman altar, an imposing stairway, about eighty feet broad, and the massive foundation-walls of a large building, the connection of which with the Herodian temple to Augustus was considered possible.