to accept it,
and to grant the help that is needed. The prayers of the earliest
stage are offered on emergencies, and often appear to be intended to
attract the attention of the god who may be engaged in another
direction. The requests they contain are of the most primary sort.
Food is asked for, success in hunting or fishing, strength of arm,
rain, a good harvest, children, etc. The prayers have a ring of
urgency; they state the claims the worshipper has on the god, and
mention his former offerings as well as the present one; they praise
the power and the past acts of the deity, and adjure him by his whole
relationship to his people (and also to their enemies) to grant their
requests. As life grows more secure, the note of immediate urgency
fades out of prayer; being a feature not of an occasional worship
arising from some pressing need, but of a worship statedly offered at
set times, it tends to run into forms, and to become fixed and to
have the nature of a liturgy. Then it comes about that the words
themselves are regarded as sacred, and that the efficacy of the
sacrifice is supposed to be partly dependent on them. They are
incantations which the deity cannot resist,--charms which in
themselves have virtue to secure the desired result.

Sacred Places, Objects, Persons.--The early world had no temples, nor
idols, nor priests. The worship of nature does not suggest the
enclosing of a space for religious acts. The natural object itself
being the sacred thing, worship is brought to it where it stands; the
gift is carried to the tree or to the well, and if the deities are
conceived as being above the earth, then the tops of hills are the
spots where man can be nearest to them. High places are sacred in all
lands. Groves and remote spots are also sacred. When man was carrying
on his struggle with the wild beasts he would regard with terror the
places where they had their lairs and strongholds; it was in this
form that the feeling of mystery with which moderns regard places
where they are cut off from all human intercourse, first appealed to
man. After this earliest stage had passed, and the grove had come to
be regarded as the dwelling of a deity, it became a place man did not
dare to approach except with the necessary precautions. We may here
explain a notion which plays a great part in early religion, but is
not specially connected with any one institution of it, the notion,
namely, of taboo. Taboo is a Polynesian term