n the 25th of December, or at the time when the
solar orb has reached its lowest position and begins to ascend. It is
not perhaps necessary to add that he is also the Christ of Bethlehem,
the son of the Virgin.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the growing importance of the male in the god-idea
more clearly traced than in the history of the Arabians. Among this
people are still to be found certain remnants of the matriarchal
age--an age in which women were the recognized heads of families and the
eponymous leaders of the gentes or clans. Concerning the worship of
a man and woman as god by the early Arabians, Prof. Robertson Smith
remarks:

"Except the comparatively modern Isaf and Naila in the sanctuary at
Mecca where there are traditions of Syrian influence, I am not aware
that the Arabs had pairs of gods represented as man and wife. In the
time of Mohammed the female deities, such as Al-lat, were regarded as
daughters of the supreme male God. But the older conception as we see
from a Nabataean inscription in De Vogue, page 119, is that Al-lat
is mother of the gods. At Petra the mother-goddess and her son were
worshipped together, and there are sufficient traces of the same thing
elsewhere to lead us to regard this as having been the general rule when
a god and goddess were worshipped in one sanctuary."(38)

38) Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, ch. vi., p. 179.

As the worship of the black virgin and child is connected with the
earliest religion of which we may catch a glimpse, the exact locality
in which it first appeared must be somewhat a matter of conjecture,
but that this idea constituted the Deity among the Ethiopian or early
Cushite race, the people who doubtless carried civilization to Egypt,
India, and Chaldea, is quite probable.

If we bear in mind the fact that the gods of the ancients represented
principles and powers, we shall not be surprised to find that Muth,
Neith, or Isis, who was creator of the sun, was also the first emanation
from the sun. Minerva is Wisdom--the Logos, the Word. She is Perception,
Light, etc. At a later stage in the history of religion, all emanations
from the Deity are males who are "Saviors."

That the office of the male as a creative agency is dependent on the
female, is a fact so patent that for ages the mother principle could
not be eliminated from the conception of a Deity, and the homage paid
to Athene or Minerva, even after women had become only sexual slaves and
h