n, at some
early period, had been considered by the Egyptians as a beneficent and
powerful God."

Wilkinson says that the character given to Seth, who was called
Baal-Seth and the God of the Gentiles, "is explained by his being the
cause of evil." We are assured that formerly "Sin the great serpent," or
Apophis the giant, was distinct from Seth who was a deity and a part
of the divine system. But after the recondite principles underlying
sun-worship were lost or forgotten; when cold and darkness, or the
sinking away of the sun's rays, which are necessary to the reappearance
of light and warmth, came to be regarded as the destructive element, or
the evil principle, woman became identified with this principle. She was
the producer of evil, and came to be represented in connection with
a serpent as the cause of all earthly or material things. She is
Destruction, but not Regeneration. She is in fact matter. The cold of
winter and the darkness of night, which are necessary to the return
of the sun's warmth and which were formerly set forth as a beneficent
mother who brings forth the sun, became only the evil principle--that
which obscures the light. In fact Darkness or absence of the sun's heat
has become the Devil. It is the "cause of evil in the world."

With woman blinded by superstition, with every instinct of the female
nature outraged, and with her position as the central figure in the
Deity and in the family usurped, her temples were soon profaned,
her images defiled, and the titles representing her former greatness
transferred to males.

There is no doubt but this doctrine was the legitimate outcome of the
decay of female influence. Through the further stimulation of the lower
nature of man its absurdity gradually increased, until under the system
calling itself Christian it finally reached its height. This subject
will be referred to later in these pages.

When we remember that the original representation of the Deity among the
nations of the earth consisted of a female figure embracing a child,
and when we observe that subsequently in the development of the god-idea
woman appears associated with a serpent as the cause of evil in the
world, the history of the God Seth, who, as we have seen, represented
the processes of Nature, namely Destruction and Regeneration, seems
quite significant as indicating some of the actual processes involved in
this change.

There can be little doubt that the facts relating to thi