As a matter of fact it is by no means certain that the Creator is not represented as being androgynous even in our Bible. For in the account of the Creation which the Jews brought
with them from Babylon, the Creator is represented as saying "Let us make man in our image"; and a race which like the Jews solemnly declared that there was but one God, could only, it would seem, have accepted such a declaration as a divine revelation if they conceived the God supposed to be speaking to be androgynous, and addressing the other part of himself. This would account for the emphasis laid upon the statement that man was created "male and female," like, or in the image of, the Creator.
In any case it is clear that if God be not female as well as male, Man was not created in the likeness of God.
The theory of the ancients that Man himself was created an androgynous being, capable, like the Creator, of creating life in himself, but was afterwards divided into halves, one of which is ever seeking to find the other, need only be mentioned.
Suffice it to add that it can scarcely be said to have been altogether progress in the right direction, which has led us mortals to call the Author of all Life "Our Father," to the utter obscuration of the equally important fact that the Deity in whom we live and move and have our being must also be "Our Mother."
[CHAPTER IX.]
THE CORONATION ORB.
The fact that though we Christians fail to do the matter justice, the ancients upon the contrary recognised that the Creator and the Giver of Life cannot be rightly spoken of as belonging to one sex and one alone, is not the only fact which those who examine relics of antiquity, such as the coins of the Roman Empire, with a view to ascertaining what evidence is derivable from them that bears upon the history of the symbol of the cross, should ever bear in mind. Another point to be kept in view is the evolution of the Christian symbol now known as the Coronation Orb.
This compound symbol, which plays so prominent a part in the regalia of a Christian Monarch, also crowns the topmost height of many a Christian Temple including both St.
Peter's at Rome and St. Paul's at London. And it is noteworthy that it bears a certain resemblance to the representation of the Apex, once worn by the Salian priests and afterwards by the Pontifex Maximus and the Flamens generally, which appears upon ancient coins of the Fabia gens; the office of Flamen Quirinalis having been hereditary in the Fabia family.