The only other form in which the Christ is presented to popular adoration is as a baby in the Madonna's arms. Out of all the life of Christ, all the varied events of that career which has left such a great mark upon the Western world, only the beginning and the end are pictured. Christ the teacher, Christ the preacher, the restorer of the dead to life, the feeder of the hungry, the newly arisen from the grave, where is He? The great masters have painted Him, but popular thought remembers nothing of all that. There is Christ the sacrificed and Christ the infant with His mother. To the Latin people these two phases represent all that is worth daily remembrance. There are crucifixes and Madonnas in every hill side, by every road, at the street corners, in every house, and of the rest of the story not a sign.

What is the emotion to which the Madonna appeals? Why do she and her Child thus live in Latin thought?

There are historians who tell us that the worship of the Madonna was introduced from Egypt. She is Astarte, Queen of Heaven, the Phoenician goddess of married love or maternity, she is the Egyptian Isis with her son Horus. It is a cult that was introduced through Spain, and took root among the Latin people and grew. There is no question here of Christ, they say; it is the goddess and her son.

It has also absorbed the worship of Venus and Aphrodite. Venus was the tutelary goddess of Rome, she was the goddess of maternity, of production. It was not till the Greek idea of beauty in Aphrodite came to Rome and became confounded with the goddess Venus that her status changed. She was the goddess of married love, she became later the emblem of lust. But it was she who purified marriage to the old Roman faith; she was the purifier, the justifier, the goddess of motherhood, which is the sanction of love and marriage.

It may be that all this is true. It may be possible to trace the worship back through the various changes to Astarte, Ashtoreth, to Isis, to older gods, maybe, than these. All this may be true, and yet be no explanation. The old gods are dead. Why does she alone survive? What is the instinct that requires her, that pictures her on the street corners, that makes her worship a living worship to-day?

And why is it that she appeals not at all to the Teutonic people? Where are her pictures in Protestant Germany, in England, in Scotland, in America? Do you ever hear of her there? Do the preachers tell of her, the picture makers paint her, the people pray to her? Such a worship is impossible. And why? What is the answer that to-day gives to that question? Is the answer difficult? I think not, for it is written in the hearts of the people, it is written in the laws they have made, in the customs they adhere to, in the oaths they take, in their daily lives.

Consider the Roman laws of two thousand and more years ago, the French laws of to-day. What is there most striking to us when we study them? It is, I think, the cult of the family.

The Roman son was his father's slave. He could not own property apart from the father, he could not marry without leave, his father could execute him without any trial. Family life lay outside the law; not Senate, nor Consul nor Emperor could interfere there. The unit in Rome was not the man, but the family.

As it was so it is. The laws are less stringent, but the idea remains. A man belongs not to himself but to his people, to his father and to his mother. In France even now he has to ask their leave to marry. The property is often family property, and his family may restrain a man from wasting it.

There is no bond anywhere stronger than the family bond of the Latin peoples. In mediÆval Rome, even often in Rome of to-day, all the sons live with their father and mother even if married. It is the custom, and, like all customs that live, it lives because it is in accord with the feelings of those who obey it.

A man belongs to his family, he clings to it; he is not an individual, but part of an organism.

And although in law it is the father who is the head, it is the father who is the lawgiver, the ruler, is it really he who is that centre, that lode-star, that holds the family together? I think it is not so. It is the mother who is the centre of that affection which is stronger than gravity. We laugh when a Frenchman swears by his mother. But he is swearing by all that he holds most sacred. No Latin would laugh at such a matter. Because he could understand, and we do not. To everyone of Latin race there comes next to God his mother, next to Christ the Madonna, who is the emblem of motherhood.

The Latins do not emigrate. They hate to leave their country. And if they do, if necessity drive them forth, are they ever happy, ever at rest till they can see their way to return? The Americans tell us that Italians are the worst immigrants because they will not settle; because they send their pay to their parents in the old country, and are never happy till they themselves can return. We call it nostalgia, we say it is a longing for their country. It is that and more. It is a longing for their family, their blood. They cling together in a way we have no idea of.

Does an Englishman ever swear by his mother, does he yearn after her as the Latins do from a far country? Does the fear of separation keep our young men at home? It is always the reverse. They want to get away. The home nest tires them, and they would go; and once gone they care not to return, they can be happy far away. The ties of relationship are light and are easily shaken off, they are quickly forgotten.

Italian labourers and servants give some of their pay always as a matter of course to their parents. It is a natural duty. And in Latin countries there are no poorhouses. They could not abide such a theory any more than could the Indians. It would seem to a Latin an impossibility that any child would leave his parents in a workhouse. Poor as they might be they would keep together. The great bond that holds a family together is the mother, always the mother. We can see this in England too, even with our weaker instinct. The mother makes the home and not the father.

And now are we not finding that sanction we were searching for? If the Madonna, the type of motherhood, appeals to all the people, men and women, is there not a reason? It is an instinct. These images and pictures of the Madonna sound on their heart-strings a chord that is perhaps the loudest and sweetest; if second to any, second only to that of God. God as father, God as mother, God as son and sacrifice, here is the threefold real Godhead of the Latins.

But with us the family tie is slight, the mother worship is faint. Our Teutonic Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, and now later God the Law. These are the realities.

For with us conduct is more and emotion is less than with the peoples of the South.