ABSTRACT
Man needs for his God just so many attributes as at the stage of his progress he perceives to be Divine. The clergy vehemently refuse it entrance, and thereby do their uttermost to make the Reform a Revolution. The Church of Rome was disturbed by the popular outcry for the authorisation of a doctrine which, in fact, amounted to the apotheosis of a Feminine Divinity. Designing priests, politic Popes, fanatic monks and nuns have not made Mariolatry, only fostered it. The relation of the devotee to the Madonna is simply a repetition of the sweet and tender drama of infancy, acted in after life with a mother crowned with stars and able to grant all entreaties. Mary is addressed as “Parent of God,” but she is felt rather to be the Universal Mother of Mankind. The Incarnate Deity had a mortal Mother; but for other human ties, they were either non-existent, or explained away by the story.
