378 



PRAIRIE HEN 



PRAYER 



merely utilised a* a t<>in|>orary hilling-place. The 

 Prairie Marmot i* r nther larger than a large rat, 

 anil in of a brownish-gray colour, the under surface 

 grayish white. 



Prairie Hen. See GROUSE. 



Prakrit u the collective name of thorn lan- 

 guages or dialects which are immediately derived 

 from, or stand in an immediate relation to, Sans- 

 krit (q.v.). See also INDIA, Vol. VI. p. 102. 



Prase, a rarish green variety of Quartz (q.v.). 



Pratique is, strictly, a limited quarantine. A 

 ship is said to have performed pratique when her 

 captain has convinced the authorities of a port that 

 his ship is free from contagions disease ; and he is 

 thereujion permitted to open trade and. communica- 

 tion with the shore. 



PrittO (often called Prato in Tpgcana), a 

 walled town of Italy, by rail 10A miles SE. of 

 Pistoia and 11 N\V. of Florence. It has a citadel 

 and a cathedral with frescoes by Filippo I.ippi, 

 though the see has been united with that of Pistoia 

 since 1653. There are manufactures of straw-plait, 

 cloth, and |>aper and brass works. Pop. 15,510. 



Prawn, a name applied indiscriminately to 

 crustaceans belonging to the genera Paliemon, 

 Pandalus, and Hippolyte. They are nearly allied 

 to shrimps and lobsters, are mostly but not ex- 

 clusively marine, and vary in size from a couple of 

 inches to over a foot in some tropical forms. There 

 are many species; thus, Paltetnon tquilla, Pandalus 

 annulicornu, and Hippolyte spintts are common in 

 the Firth of Forth, while others abound elsewhere. 

 Many of them are semi-transparent, and exhibit 

 very fine colours ; they are also very active 

 creatures, and most interesting inmates of an 

 aquarium, but are excessively voracious, and apt 

 to make great havoc among it- other inhabitants. 

 They are common on the British cousin, although 

 not so abundant as shrimps, and are generally 

 taken in the vicinity of rocks at a little distance 

 from the shore. They may be caught in putt in;,' 

 nets or in osier baskets, like those used for trap- 

 ping lobsters. They are esteemed for eating even 

 more highly than the shrimp. For illustration, see 

 CRUSTACEA. 



Praxinoscope. See ZOETROPK. 



Pmxit'eles, one of the greatest sculptors of 

 ancient Greece, of whose life little is known. 

 except that he was a citizen of Athens, and lived 

 in the 4th century B.C. His principal works 

 nearly all of which have perished were statues of 

 Aphrodite (at Cos, ('nidus, Thespiie, and elsewhere, 

 of which that of Cnidus was the most famous ), 

 Era* (at Thespin*), Dionysus (at Elis, Athens, 

 Megara, and other places), Apollo (the best 

 representing Apollo as the Python -slayer), and 

 Hermea carrying Dionysus (found at Olympia in 

 1877). Feminine beauty and Bacchic pleasures 

 were his favourite subjects; and in his treatment 

 of these he displayed unrivalled sweetness, grace, 

 and naturalness. HU gods and goddesses were not 

 very divine, but they were ideal figures of the 

 fairest earthly loveliness. 



Prayer is a universally acknowledged part of 

 the worship due to God ; not merely petition, 

 but according to the New Testament models 

 and Christian usage, praise, adoration, confes- 

 sion of sin, and thankful acknowledgment of 

 mercies received. It is a simple ami natural 

 expression of dependence, which seems almost 

 necessarily to follow from a belief in the existence 

 of a god. Accordingly we And it both where the 

 object of worship is one Supreme Being and in 

 systems of polytheism. According to the Christ i.-m 

 ystem, however, prayer is not the mere spon- 

 taneons approach of man to God in the endeavour 



to appease his wrath, to win his favour, or to 

 obtain from him any blessing ; hut the right to 

 approach him in prayer, and the warrant to expect 

 advantage in doing so, rest on the revelation of his 

 own wiji. Nor is any truth more indisputably 

 taught in the Bible, or more frequently brought 

 into view, both in the Old and in the New Testa- 

 ment, than that God is the hearer of prayer. 



But a difficulty presents itself in respect to what 

 may be called the theory of prayer. How can 

 prayer be supposed to intlm-in-,- tin- ilivine mind or 

 will? How can a belief in ita power be reconciled 

 with any view of the divine decrees, from the most 

 absolute doctrine of predestination to the most 

 modified scheme which recognises the Creator aa 

 supreme in the universe? Such questions bring up 

 the same difficulty which attends all other questions 

 of the relations between the human will and the 

 divine, the freedom of man and the sovereignty of 

 God. But whatever seeming inconsistencies may 

 be implied in speculation concerning them, the 

 necessity of prayer and the power of prayer are 

 acknowledged equally by men of the most opposite 

 views; and generally with an acknowledgment of 

 the inability of the human mind to solve some of 

 the problems which are thus presented to it. The 

 extreme predestinarian includes prayer among the 

 means decreed of God along with the end to which 

 it contributes. And whilst prayer is regarded by 

 all Christians as of great value in its reflex influence 

 on the feelings of the worshipper, this is scarcely 

 ever stated as its whole value. It is held by 

 Christians in general that the only true way 

 of access to God is through the mediation of 

 Jesus Christ ; and that prayer can be truly 

 mode, in faith and for things agreeable to God s 

 will, only by the help of the Holy Spirit. The 

 Protestant cnurches all hold that prayer is to be 

 mode to God alone ; but in the Human Catholic 

 Church, and to some extent in the oriental churches, 

 prayer of a kind is made also to saints, the Virgin 

 Mary, and angels. But as the worship (douleia) 

 of the saints differs from that (latreia) offered to 

 God, so the invocation of saints and angels is not 

 for the purpose of obtaining mercy or grace from 

 them directly, but in order to ask their prayers or 

 intercession with God on our behalf. For this 

 practice Catholics rely not on the direct authority 

 of Scripture, but on the unwritten word of Gixl 

 conveyed by tradition from very early times. The 

 inscriptions in the catacombs prove that the church 

 of the first centuries invoked the saint s ; and the 

 famous fathers of the 4th century expressly insist 

 on such invocation. Protestants hold that prayer 

 ought to be conducted in a language known to the 

 worshippers. The Church of Rome has, on the 

 contrary, maintained the general use of the Latin 

 language, even though that language is unknown M 

 most of the worshippers. 



Forms of prayer for public use grew up in the 

 earliest times, naturally and inevitably : the Lord's 

 Prayer being doubtless regarded as a warrant and 

 a model. Apparently the most primitive collection 

 is that in the eighth book of the pseudo Clementine 

 Apostolic Constitutions (n.v. ). The prayers in con- 

 nection with the celebration of the eucharist in the 

 k and Roman communions are dealt with at 

 LITURGY. The most important post-Reformat ion 

 collection of prayers, that of the Anglican Church, 

 is dealt with in the next article. But most of the 

 leading reformers prepared prayer-books. Luther's 

 date from 1523 and 1526, Calvin's from 1538 (from 

 Strasburg) and 1541 (from Geneva), John K mix's 

 for the Church of Scotland (bawd on that of 

 Geneva) from 1554. The growth of Puritan feeling 

 in Britain led the Nonconformist-. Presbyterians, 

 and others to underrate the advantages of set forms 

 of prayer, and to exalt the value of what is assumed 



