ces that the human being was after
all only a progenitor. Somewhere there must be a First Cause. The
vital spark which gave to the seed its power to bring forth was seen
to be beyond and above the control of physical man, and the natural
and inevitable inference was drawn that there was some power greater
than that of human beings--a power manifesting itself in the act of
procreation. At this early stage in Man's efforts to know God, the
Female Principle was deified, because out of the womb of the woman
issued the little life. Thus the symbol of the "virgin with the child"
became the symbol of worship; the word "virgin" then having a somewhat
different meaning from that which we give it today, although we may
trace the analogy in our use of the term "virgin soil," signifying
fecundity. The virgin and child then, popularly supposed by those
whose prejudices prevail over their desire for Truth, to have
originated with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, antedates history, as
an object of worship.

Let us here again emphasize the fact that the very persistence of this
symbol as a pronounced part of our Twentieth Century traditions, and
reverence, offers proof of the fact that whatever is true is also
enduring. Truth is eternal and defies extinction. Love, although
defiled and scorned, will lift Mankind out of Hell.

The symbol of the mother with the child the very earliest of all
symbolic worship is also the truest and most consistent with the
ideals of spiritualized Man when we realize its higher significance.
At first, for the obvious reason that woman was the recipient and the
nurse of the seed, woman was regarded as a higher type than man; she
alone was supposed to possess the creative energy. This was ultimately
reversed and Man was thought to be the sole custodian of the
reproductive power.

Thus the age-long warfare between the sexes began--a warfare which, if
it had any foundation in Reality, must have resulted long since in
race-extinction. But despite this degrading warfare men and women have
continued to attract each other in varying degrees of love, until now
the future offers a golden promise of _union_. As long as primitive
man kept to nature worship, deifying earth as the mother who brought
forth the grains and fruits for her childrens' sustenance, religious
practices were devoid of sacrifice and strife. The advent of
springtime when the earth awakened from her long sleep and the period
of gestation began wh