child, ere he could
be worshipped as Divine Saviour. Latona must leave the heavens and come
to Delos ere she can give birth to Apollo; for, in order to slay the
serpent, the child must himself be earth-born,--indeed, according to one
representation, he slew the Python out of his mother's arms. Neither the
serpent of Genesis nor the dragon of Revelation can be conquered save
by the seed of the woman. From this necessity of his earthly birth,
the connection of the Saviour-Child with the _Mater Dolorosa_ becomes
universal,--finding its counterpart in the Assyrian Venus with babe in
arm, in Isis suckling the child Horus, and even in the Scandinavian Disa
at Upsal accompanied by an infant. It is from swaddling-clothes, as the
nursling of our Lady, and out of the sorrowful discipline of earth, that
the child grows to be the Saviour, both for our Lady and for all her
children.

Hence, according to the tradition, Dionysus was born of Semele of the
royal house at Thebes; and Jove was his father. A little before his time
of birth,--so the story goes,--Jove visited Semele, at her own rash
request, in all the majesty of his presence, with thunderings and
lightnings, so that the bower of the virgin mother was laid in ruins,
and she herself, unable to stand before the revealed god, was consumed
as by fire. But Jove out of her ashes perfected the birth of his son;
whence he was called the Child of Fire, ([Greek: puripais],)--which
epithet, as well as this part of the fable, probably points to his
connection with the Oriental symbolism of fire in the worship of the
Sun.

And it is worth while, in connection with this, to notice the gradations
by which in the ancient mind everything ascended from the gross material
to a refined spirituality. As in Nature there was forever going on a
subtilizing process, so that

"from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes,"--

and as, in their philosophy, from the earth, as the principle of Nature,
they ascended through the more subtile elements of water, air, and fire,
to a spiritual conception of the universe; so, as regards their
faith, its highest incarnation was through the symbolism of fire, as
representative of that central Power under whose influence all things
arose through endless grades of exaltation to Himself,--so that the
earthly rose into the heavenly, and all that was human beca