632 tProc. B.N.P.C., 



backwashes of population occurred at many different times bringing 

 fresh infusions of culture. Similar migrations extended to Europe, 

 and a horde advanced along a trade route marked by the megalithic 

 monuments, along the Atlantic coast to the British Isles and 

 Scandinavia. From the Irish and Scandinavian writings, and from 

 comparisons of excavations at different centres, they had learnt the 

 uses of these structures, the appearance of their builders, and the 

 nature of their civilisation. They found their religious ideas 

 expressed in an extended litholatry, and out of the pillar-stones 

 they saw emerging at Sinai, in France, and in Ireland, a goddess. 

 The worship of meteorites and concretions, and their development 

 into goddesses, was common all over this area. The cult of the 

 woman was the characteristic of Neolithic art. From the first 

 origin of art displayed in the drawings of animals and women on 

 the Palaeolithic sanctuary walls down to bronze times no one 

 thought of investing clay or stone with the form of a man. It 

 could not be doubted that all these goddesses were imitations and 

 variations or personified attributes of one original All-Mother, from 

 whom all gods and goddesses proceeded. The Great Mother was 

 a personification of the impersonal Divine Essence which was 

 pictured in the Egyptian idea of primal night and the Babylonian 

 watery chaos, the earth's soul or nature, which remained necessarily 

 the same whatever might be the forms and names under which it 

 displayed itself, and the gods were projections of her personality, 

 attributes personified. In that welter of religions which accom- 

 panied the decline of national life in antiquity the serene figure of 

 the Magna Mater, in her many forms, stood out like a star in a 

 stormy sky. The religion of the Great Mother, with its dignity 

 and composure, its solemnity and decorum, its immemorial and 

 mysterious sanctity, was beautiful, chaste, and kindly — a flower 

 whose beaut\- was only dimmed by comparison with a purer and 

 more reasonable religion. 



At the close of the lecture a discussion took place, in which 

 the following took part : — Canon Lett, Mr. R. J. Welch, Miss E. 



