Another truth incidentally appears, and furnishes the root of Mariolatry.  We come to appear to the world what we really are.  Mary was tempted to place herself above Christ, and so we are not surprised that those who have turned against Christ should join the tempter in placing Mary above her Son.  The refutation is the life of Christ, who died for man, and the life of Mary, who never forgot herself in thinking of others.  The triumph of Mary was won by submission.  Had she revolted against Christ, she had lost all.  In the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, the apostle speaks of the glory of the women as of a thing distinct from the glory of the men.  They are the two opposite poles of the sphere of humanity.  “Their provinces are not the same, but different.  The qualities which are beautiful when predominant in one are not beautiful when predominant in the other.  That which is the glory of the one is not the glory of the other.”  The glory of true womanhood is a combination of various qualities, many of which were illustrated by the life of Mary.  She was considerate of others.  She was submissive.  As has been said, “In the very outset of the Bible, submission is revealed as her peculiar lot and destiny.  If you were merely to look at the words as they stand declaring the results of the fall, you would be inclined to call that vocation of obedience a curse but in the spirit of Christ it is transformed, like labor, into a blessing.”  The origin or root of Mariolatry has been accounted for in the following manner:  “In all Christian ages the especial glory ascribed to the Virgin Mother is purity of heart and life.  Gradually in the history of the Christian church, the recognition of this became idolatry.  The works of early Christian art commonly exhibit the progress of this perversion.  They show how Mariolatry grew up.  The first pictures of the early Christians simply represent the woman.  By and by we find outlines of the mother and the child.  In an after age, the Son is seen sitting on a throne, with the mother crowned, but sitting, as yet, below him.  In an age still later, the crowned mother is on a level with the Son.  Later still, the mother is on a throne above the Son.  And, lastly, a Romish artist represents the Eternal Son, in wrath, about to destroy the earth, and the Virgin Intercessor interposing, pleading by significant attitudes her maternal rights, and redeeming the world from his vengeance.  Such was, in fact, the progress of virgin worship.”

First, the woman reverenced for the Son’s sake, then the woman reverenced above the Son and adored.  This is the history.  To account for it, various theories have been advocated.  One, assuming it as a principle that no error has ever spread widely that was not the exaggeration or perversion of a truth, finds in the influence exerted by Christ the germ out of which Mariolatry springs.  But surely nothing could be farther from what Christ taught.  By word, by look, and by action, Christ opposed the debasing