The sense of the necessity for appeasing justice reveals itself in sacrifices.  There are sacrifices which are merely offerings of gratitude, and freewill gifts of love.  But when you see the blood of animals flowing in the temples, and not seldom human blood gushing forth upon the altars, you will be unable to escape the conviction that man, in presenting himself before the Deity, feels constrained to appease a justice which threatens him.

The sense of the need of help shows itself in prayer; and this must be the especial object of our study, because it is in the fact of religious invocation that we shall encounter the idea, obscure perhaps, but real, of the goodness of the First Cause of the universe.

Prayer is a fact of the universal religion.  Whence is it that we derive a large part of what knowledge we have of the ancient civilizations of India and Egypt?  From ruins:  and the chief of these ruins are the ruins of temples, that is to say, of houses of prayer.  Would we go further back than these monuments of stone?  I interrogate those pioneers of science who are searching for the traces of antiquity in old languages,—­in the ruins of speech.  I inquire, for example, of my learned fellow-countryman, M. Adolphe Pictet:  “You who have studied, with patient care, the first origins of our race—­what have you discovered in the way of religion?” He replies:  “When I have gone as far back as historical speculations can carry us by the aid of language, it appears to me that I no longer see temples built by the hand of man, but, beneath the open vault of heaven, I see our earliest ancestors sending up together the chant of prayer and the flame of sacrifice."[174]

And now, from this remote antiquity, I come down to the paganism, in which modern civilization had its beginning.  Tertullian teaches us that the pagans, seeming to forget their idols, and to offer a spontaneous testimony to the truth, were often wont to exclaim—­Great God!  Good God!  What in their mind was the order of these two thoughts, the thought of greatness and that of goodness?  The pediment of a temple at Rome bore this famous inscription, Deo optimo maximo; and Cicero explains to us that the God of the Capitol was by the Roman people named “very good” on account of the benefits conferred by him, and “very great” on account of his power.[175] It is the idea of goodness which here appears to be first.  But let us go more directly to the root of the question:  What do we gather from the universality of prayer?  What is it to pray?  To pray is to ask.  Prayer may be mingled with thanksgivings, and with expressions of adoration, but in itself prayer is a petition.  This petition rises to God:  and when does it so rise?  In distress, in anguish.  It is misery, weakness, the heart cast down, the failing will, which unite to raise from earth to heaven that long cry which resounds across all the pages of history:  Help!—­I analyze this fact, and inquire what it means.