involved all the natural powers, attributes, and possibilities of
human nature, it was portrayed by a pure Virgin who was also a
mother. According to Herodotus, the worship of Minerva was
indigenous in Lybia, whence it travelled to Egypt and was carried
from thence to Greece. Among the remnants of Egyptian mythology,
the figure of a mother and child is everywhere observed. It is
thought by various writers that the worship of the black virgin
and child found its way to Italy from Egypt.

The change noted in the growth of the religious idea by which the
male principle assumes the more important position in the Deity
may, by a close investigation of the facts at hand, be easily
traced, and, as has before been expressed, this change will be
found to correspond with that which in an earlier age of the
world took place in the relative positions of the sexes. In all
the earliest representations of the Deity, the fact is observed
that within the mother element is contained the divinity adored,
while the male appears as a child and dependent on the
ministrations of the female for existence and support.
Gradually, however, as the importance of man begins to be
recognized in human affairs, we find that the male energy in the
Deity, instead of appearing as a child in the arms of its mother,
is represented as a man, and that he is of equal importance with
the woman; later he is identical with the sun, the woman,
although still a necessary factor in the god-idea, being
concealed or absorbed within the male. It is no longer woman who
is to bruise the serpent's head, but the seed of the woman, or
the son. He is Bacchus in Greece, Adonis in Syria, Christna in
India. He is indeed the new sun which is born on the 25th of
December, or at the time when the solar orb has reached its