The moral value of
religions can be very precisely estimated by the human or the brutal
character of their gods. The worship of Quetzalcoatl in the city of
Mexico was subordinate to that of lower conceptions, and consequently
the more sanguinary and immoral were the rites there practised. The
Algonkins, who knew no other meaning for Michabo than the Great Hare,
had lost, by a false etymology, the best part of their religion.
Looking around for other standards wherewith to measure the progress of
the knowledge of divinity in the New World, _prayer_ suggests itself as
one of the least deceptive. "Prayer," to quote again the words of
Novalis,[296-2] "is in religion what thought is in philosophy. The
religious sense prays, as the reason thinks." Guizot, carrying the
analysis farther, thinks that it is prompted by a painful conviction of
the inability of our will to conform to the dictates of reason.[296-3]
Originally it was connected with the belief that divine caprice, not
divine law, governs the universe, and that material benefits rather than
spiritual gifts are to be desired.
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