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It is altogether beside the mark to groan over human depravity that set up such an image so long ago. Somehow or other, pictures and images continue to have kneeling devotees before them in the churches of three-fourths of Christendom, and there is a growing inclination to honour them in part of the so-called Protestant fourth. It is no more likely that the intelligent Egyptian regarded the image of Isis apart from a symbolism of something, than that the late Pope himself worshipped his favourite bronze image of St. Peter,—or Jupiter,—at the Basilica, Rome.

We may be surprised that, as Europe has Black Madonnas, Egypt had black images and pictures of Isis. At the same time, it is a little odd that the Virgin Mary copies most honoured should not only be black, but have a very decided Isis-cast of features. The Black Isis is supposed to symbolize not only the Mother of the gods, but the primeval darkness, preceding light, that gave birth to all things.

The word Isa is said to be woman, or the female principle, the Sacti of India, the Rhea, the Cybele, the Hecate, the Demeter, etc. She is the Ishtar of Nineveh, the Astarte of Babylon, the Friga of Saxons, the Isa or Disa of Teutons, the Mylitta of Sidon, the Maia of Greece, the Semele of Boeotia, the Idoea of Crete, the Davcina of Chaldea, etc. In short, she is the Universal Mother, the Bona Dea.

She is styled "Our Lady," the "Queen of Heaven," "Star of the Sea," "Governess," "Earth Mother," "Rose," "Tower," " Mother of God," "Saviour of Souls," "Intercessor," "Sanctifier," "Immaculate Virgin," etc.

To account for gods, men, and animal and vegetable life, it was essential to create the idea of a divine mother, the tabernacle or resting-place of all existences. Diodorus puts the question in that shape: "The father, according to the common belief, being the author of the birth of the child, to whom the mother only gives nourishment and a home." She is, then, with her full breasts, the passive principle of creation.

Unlike the Juno of the Greeks, she is not a vindictive and jealous goddess. She has no scenes with her husband. She indulges in no infidelities, as do the classical ladies of Olympus. In the story of her love and devotion to Osiris, there is a pathos and a tenderness that speaks well for the domestic virtues of the Egyptian people who invented and cherished the myth. Only those who believed in faithful wives and honoured women could have exhibited so noble a specimen of female goodness as seen in their chief divinity. Even the one weakness she evinced in her career has a touch of womanhood about it which commands our regard, while calling for blame. When Typhon, the murderer of her husband, was at last captured, he was secretly released by Isis. If the most cruel of her foes, was he not her own brother?

A loving wife, and a gentle sister, she was a tender mother. The look of maternal affection she casts upon the babe Horus at her breast attests the feeling. Sometimes, like Diana of the Ephesians, she is Multimammea, or many breasted, to denote that her motherly provision for the world was without bounds. She is the universal Providence. Her ample development is still witnessed in that modern type of Isis, our own revered Britannia, who bears still more than one mark, besides the Sais shield, of her Isiac origin.

Dr. Barlow, treating of symbolism, sees some one else in Isis. "The doctrine of the Mother of God," he observes, "was of Egyptian origin. It was brought in along with the worship of the Madonna by Cyril (Bishop of Alexandria, and the Cyril of Hypatia) and the monks of Alexandria in the fifth century. The earliest representations of the Madonna have quite a Greco-Egyptian character, and there can be little doubt that Isis nursing Horus was the origin of them all. The pictures of the Madonna and child, commonly called Byzantine, I have long thought would be more correctly called Alexandrine. At Alexandria there was an established school for their production from an early period."

They who maintain the opinion, that Egyptian belief was but a series of types foreshadowing the coming of the Messiah, will have no difficulty in retaining the worship of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, believing the Mother of God idea was typified long before.

In an ancient Christian work, called the "Chronicle of Alexandria," occurs the following: "Watch how Egypt has consecrated the childbirth of a virgin, and the birth of her son, who was exposed in a crib to the adoration of the people; King Ptolemy having asked the reason of this usage, the Egyptians answered him that it was a mystery taught to their fathers." The author of Divinites Egyptiennes says: "The legend of the Virgin, by its minute details, and by the ambitious aspirations of which it provokes the demonstration in Catholic worship, seems to leave nothing to be desired on the part of the Virgin Mary to the thousand-named Isis of the Egyptians."

We read the name of Isis on monuments of the fourth dynasty, and she lost none of her popularity to the close of the Empire. Winking Madonnas had their type in the winking and nodding Isis; while certain images of the Egyptian goddess were celebrated for their miraculous movements, or their discharge of tears.

She even appeared to her worshippers on rare but special occasions. The Coptic Christians of Egypt very naturally carried on this miraculous work of "Our Lady." When under the Mahometan rule, however, they had to exercise some caution. Once, a certain picture of the Virgin was seen to drop milk at a festival, when the church was crowded with worshippers, and there arose a great excitement about the miracle. But the Mahometans, who bowed to no image or picture, regarded this display as a public scandal, and that particular picture was removed. After some years, the patriarch of the church obtained its restoration; though, upon an understanding that no more milk miracles were to be performed.

The enthusiasm for Isis was from a natural impulse. Osiris, good as he was, could not be an object of affection; as men feared him who was to be their future judge. But Isis was the mother, gentle as well as good, and, therefore, much nearer the human heart. Besides, was she not all-prevailing with Osiris and her son Horus? Did she not weep with the mourner, having once lost her own beloved? Had not the dead himself a friend in the gloomy passage of the hells, when she led him by the hand? How effectual her appeals for him when weighed in the balance before Osiris, or when exposed to the terrible lance of Horus!

Every maiden told her love to Isis. Every mother found sympathy in Isis. Every young man gave his secrets to his heavenly mother, Isis. Every man bowed before that type of conjugal fidelity, and of matronly purity. The very qualities which endear the Virgin Mary to the Roman and Greek Catholics, and constitute the essence of her popularity, were those which bound the hearts of Egyptians to their beloved Isis. Theodore Parker struck the chord of human sympathies when he addressed the Deity as "Mother!"  With Protestants, generally, the Christ-idea, in all its tenderness, is assumed to supply this natural craving for the feminine element of the Godhead.

The word Isis, Hebrew Isha, Greek H'isha or Hesi, is the name of her throne. She also, according to Plato, "feeds and receives all things." She bore the throne of dominion, the hieroglyphic of her name, on her head. She was Myrionymus, having ten thousand names. It was said in the Edda of the goddess Freyja, who wept tears of gold in her grief: "She has a great variety of names, from having gone over many countries in search of her husband, each people giving her a different name."  Here is what Isis said of herself, according to Apuleius:—

"I am Nature, the mother of all things, the mistress of the elements, the beginning of the ages, the sovereign of the gods, the queen of the dead, the first of the heavenly natures, the uniform face of the gods and goddesses. It is I who govern the luminous firmament of heaven, the salutary breezes of the seas, the horrid silence of Hades, with a nod. My divinity, also, which is multiform, is honoured with different ceremonies, and under different names. The Phrygians call me the Pessinuntian mother of the gods; the Athenians, the Cecropian Minerva; the Cyprians, the Paphian Venus; the Cretans, the Diana Dietyuna; the three-tongued Sicilians, the Stygian Proserpine; the Eleusinians, the old goddess Ceres; some Juno, some Bellona; others, Hecate, and others again, Rhamnusia. The Oriental Ethiopians, the Arii, and those where the ancient doctrine prevails, the Egyptians, Siman, honour me with ceremonies peculiar to me, and call me by my true name, Isis."