The universal prevalence of the cross as an ornament and symbol during the last eighteen centuries in the Christian church has led to some great, if not grave, mistakes. It has been supposed, and for various obvious reasons very naturally so, to be of exclusively Christian origin, and to represent materially no more than the instrument by which the founder of that religion was put to death; and, spiritually or symbolically, faith in the sacrificial atoning work he then completed. There are not a few people about who, having become imbued with this idea, rush to the hasty conclusion that wherever the cross is found, and upon whatever monuments, it indicates a connection with Christianity, and is therefore of comparatively modern origin. History, in consequence, becomes a strange and unfathomable mystery, especially when it belongs to kingdoms of well-known great antiquity, amongst whose symbols or ornaments the cross is plentiful, and the mind finds itself involved in a confusion from which it cannot readily extricate itself. Never was there a greater blunder perpetrated, or a more ignorant one, than the notion of the figure of the cross owing its origin to the instrument of Christ’s death, and the Christian who finds comfort in pressing it to his lips in the hour of devotion or of trouble must be reminded that the ancient Egyptian did a similar thing.

The fact is, there is great similarity between the cross worship, or veneration if you please, of ancient and modern times. Christians, we know, are apt to repudiate the charge of rendering worship to this symbol, but it is clear from what is printed in some of their books of devotion that some sort of worship is actually rendered, though disguised under other names. As to the veneration thus offered being right or wrong, we here say nothing; the fact only concerns us so far as it relates to the subject we have in hand.

If we open the Tablet (Roman Catholic newspaper) for the 26th of November, 1853, we read:—“Those of our readers who have visited Rome will, doubtless, have remarked, at the foot of the stairs which descend from the square of the Capitol to the square of the Campo Vaccino, under the flight of steps in front of the Church of St. Joseph, and over the door of the Mamertine prison, a very ancient wooden crucifix, before which lamps and wax tapers are constantly burning, and surrounded on all sides with exvotos and testimonies of public thanksgiving. No image of the crucified Saviour is invested with greater veneration.... The worship yielded to the holy crucifix of Campo Vaccino is universal at Rome, and is transmitted from generation to generation. The fathers teach it to the children, and in all the misfortunes and all the trials of life the first idea is almost always to have recourse to the holy crucifix, the object of such general veneration, and the source of so many favours. It is, above all, in sickness that the succour of the holy image is invoked with more confidence and more eagerness.... There are few families in Rome who have not to thank the holy crucifix for some favour and some benefit.... In the interval of the sermons and other public exercises of devotion the holy crucifix, exposed on the high altar in the midst of floods of light, saw incessantly prostrated before it a crowd of adorers and suppliants.... As soon as the holy image of the Saviour had appeared on the Forum, the Holy Father advanced on the exterior flight of steps of the church to receive it, and when the shrine had arrived at the base of the stairs of the Church of San Luca, at some paces from the flight of steps on which the Holy Father stood, in rochet, stole, and pallium of red velvet, he bowed before the holy crucifix and venerated it devoutly.”

In harmony with this, the Missal supplies us with prayers and hymns in the service for Good Friday, addressed directly to the cross.

“We adore Thy cross, O Lord, and we praise and glorify Thy holy resurrection; for by the wood of the cross the whole world is filled with joy.”

“O faithful cross, O noblest tree,
In all our woods there is none like thee.
No earthly groves, no shady bowers
Produce such leaves, such fruit, such flowers.
Sweet are the nails and sweet the wood,
Which bore a weight so sweet and good.”
“O lovely tree, whose branches bore
The royal purple of His gore,
How glorious does thy body shine,
Supporting members so divine.
Hail, cross! our hope, on thee we call
Who keep this paschal festival;
Grant to the just increase of grace,
And every sinner’s guilt efface.”There is something unusually remarkable about the popularity of the cross; we can hardly point to a time when, or to a part of the world where, it has not been in favour. It has entered into the constitution of religions of the most opposite character, has been transmitted from one to another, and though originally belonging to the rudest form of pagan idolatry, is now esteemed highly by those who profess to have adopted the loftiest ideal of civilised worship. After mentioning the fact of its popularity in the pagan world, Mr. Maurice remarks: “Let not the piety of the Catholic Christian be offended at the preceding assertion, that the cross was one of the most usual symbols among the hieroglyphics of Egypt and India. Equally honoured in the Gentile and the Christian world, this emblem of universal nature—of that world to whose four quarters its diverging radii pointed—decorated the hands of most of the sculptured images in the former country, and in the latter stamped its form upon the most majestic shrines of their deities.”

Here we may profitably glance at a few different parts of the world and at some of the past ages, in tracing out the possible origin and meaning of this symbol. In Britain there have been found monuments so ancient and with such surroundings that but for certain peculiar marks they would unhesitatingly have been put down as Druidical. They are marked with the cross, and in the estimation of some, as we have already pointed out, that is regarded as conclusive proof of Christian origin. The inference, however, is a false one, the monuments are too old for Christianity, and the cruciform etchings upon them belong to another religious system altogether. It is known that the Druids consecrated the sacred oak by cutting it into the shape of a cross, and so necessary was it regarded to have it in this form, that if the lateral branches were not large enough to construct the figure properly, two others were fixed as arms on either side of the trunk. The cross having been thus constructed, the Arch-Druid ascended and wrote the name of the Deity upon the trunk at the place of intersection, and on the extremities of the arms.

The peculiar interest attached to this idol lies in the fact that it is described by the best authorities as the Gallic or Celtic Tau. “The Tau,” says Davies in his Celtic Researches, “was the symbol of the Druidical Jupiter. It consisted of a huge grand oak deprived of all its branches, except only two large ones which, though cut off and separated, were suspended from the top of its trunk-like suspended arms.” The idol, say others, was in reality a cross, the same in form as the linga.

A few years ago, near the hill of Bardon, in the middle of Charnwood forest, in the county of Leicester, there grew and perhaps still grows, a very old tree called the Copt Oak. This tree, there is reason to believe, was more than two thousand years old, and once formed a Celtic Tau. Forty years ago, a writer who knew the tree well, said that its condition then suggested very distinctly the possibility of the truthfulness of the story. It was described as a vast tree, then reduced to a mere shell between two and three inches only in thickness, perforated by several openings, and alive only in about one-fourth of the shell; bearing small branches, but such as could not have grown when the tree was entire; then it must have had branches of a size not less than an oak of ordinary dimensions. This was evident from one of the openings in the upper part of the shell of the trunk, exactly such as a decayed branch would produce. The tree was evidently of gigantic size in its earlier days, as shown by its measurement at the date we are speaking of. The remains of the trunk were twenty feet high, the height proper for the Tau, and the circumference at the ground was twenty-four feet; at the height of ten feet the girth was twenty, giving a diameter of nearly seven feet. This tree, we have said, was called the Copt Oak; the epithet copt, or copped, may be derived from the Celtic cop—a head, and evidently indicates that the tree had been headed and reduced to the state of a bare trunk. The idol, as already described, was formed by cutting away the branches of the tree, which was always a large one, and affixing a beam, forming a cross with the bare trunk.[1]

From time immemorial the Copt Oak has borne a celebrity that bears out the tradition of its ancient sacredness. Potter, the historian of the forest of Charnwood, writes that it was one of the three places at which Swanimotes were held, always in the open air, for the regulation of rights and claims on the forest; and persons have been known even in late times to have attended such motes. “At this spot,” he says, “it may be under this tree, Edric the Forester is said to have harangued his forces against the Norman invasion; and here too, in the Parliamentary troubles of 1642, the Earl of Stamford assembled the trained bands of the district.” “These facts,” says Dudley, “mark the Copt Oak extraordinary, and show, that notwithstanding the lapse of two thousand years, the trunk was at that distant period a sacred structure, a Celtic idol; and that it is illustrative of antiquarian records.”

Still further back in history than the foregoing are we able to trace this singular figure. If we visit the Assyrian galleries of the British Museum we shall observe life-size effigies in stone of the kings Samsi-Rammanu, B.C. 825, and Assur-Nazir-Pal, B.C. 880; suspended from the necks of these monarchs and resting upon their breasts are prominently sculptured Maltese crosses about three inches in length and width; they are in a good state of preservation, and will amply repay anyone for the trouble of an inspection, should they be desirous of pursuing this enquiry. In the Roman Catholic dictionaries we find these ornaments described as pectoral crosses—crosses of precious metal worn at the breast by bishops and abbots as a mark of their office, and sometimes also by canons, etc., who have obtained the privilege from Rome. It is stated these pectorals were not generally used by the Roman ecclesiastics till the middle of the sixteenth century; however that may be, it is a fact, as proved by the Assyrian sculptures, that they are nearly, if not more than, three thousand years old, and not the least interesting feature distinguishing them is their perfect similarity of design. It is strange that we moderns—the disciples of Christ—should have had supplied to us at that remote period the pattern of an ornament or symbol which we are accustomed to regard as emblematic of essential features of our religion, but it is true.

Look across now to Egypt and we find monuments and tombs literally bedizened with the cross, and that too in a variety of shapes. Long, long before Christ, the Ibis was represented with human hands and feet, holding the staff of Isis in one hand, and a globe and cross in the other. Here we are in one of the most ancient kingdoms of the world—a kingdom so ancient that its years are lost in obscurity—yet still the cross is found. Whatever it may have represented in other countries, and whatever may be its meaning here, from the positions in which it is found and from its constant association with ecclesiastical personages and offices, it was evidently one of the most sacred of their symbols. Two forms, among others, are common, one a simple cross of four limbs of equal length, the other that shaped like the letter X; the first is generally known as the Greek cross, the second as that of St. Andrew, both however being of the same form and owing their different appearance only to the position in which they are placed.

It is well known, probably, to most of our readers that the astronomical signs of certain of the planets consist of crosses, crescents, circles, and in ancient Egypt these were precisely the same as those now used. Saturn was represented by a cross surmounting a ram’s horn, Jupiter by a cross beneath a horn, Venus by a cross beneath a circle, the Earth by a cross within a circle, Mercury by a cross surmounted by a circle and crescent, and Mars by a cross above a circle. These may still be seen in almanacs, and on the large coloured bottles in the windows of the druggist. In the hands of Isis, Osiris, and Hermes, corresponding with the Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury of the Greeks, are also found the above signs.

When the temple of Serapis, at Alexandria, was destroyed by one of the Christian emperors, it is related by several historians, Socrates and Sozomen, for instance, that beneath the foundation was discovered the monogram of Christ; and that considerable disputing arose in consequence thereof, the Gentiles endeavouring to use it for their own purposes, and the Christians insisting that the cross, being uneasy beneath the weight or dominion of the temple, overthrew it.

If we turn to India we find the cross almost as common as in Egypt and Europe, and not the least interesting feature of the matter is the curious fact that a number of the pagodas are actually cruciform in structure. Jagannath is the name of one of the mouths of the Ganges, upon which was built the great pagoda where the Great Brahmin or High Priest resided. We were told years ago, by travellers, that the form of the choir or interior was similar in proportion to all the others, which were built upon the same model, in the form of a cross. The pagoda at Benares, also, was in the figure of a cross, having its arms equal. After the above, in importance, was the pagoda at Muttra; this likewise was cruciform. One of these temples, that at Chillambrum on the Coromandel coast, is said to be four miles in circumference. Here there are seven lofty walls one within the other round the central quadrangle, and as many pyramidal gateways in the middle of each side which form the limbs of a vast cross, consisting altogether of twenty-eight pyramids. There are, therefore, fourteen in a row, which extend more than a mile in one continuous line.

What has been called, and perhaps justly so, the oldest religious monument in the world was discovered a few years ago by Mariette Bey, near the Great Pyramid. For ages it had lain there, buried in the sand—how many we cannot tell, but very many we know; enough to carry us back to a very remote past. And this, too, like the Indian temples, was in the shape of a cross. Renan visited it in 1865, and though he found it in many particulars different from those known elsewhere, he described the interior, which much recalled the chamber of the Great Pyramid, as in the form of T, the principle aisle being divided in three rows, the transverse aisle in two.

Mr. Fergusson, the architect, also saw it, and, while admiring its simple and chaste grandeur of style, with some astonishment described the form of the principal chamber as that of a CROSS. And this was the plan of both tomb and temple in the earliest ages, testifying to the great veneration paid to this symbol.

There is a remarkable resemblance between the Buddhist crosses of India and those used by the Christian Roman Church. The cross of the Buddhist is represented with leaves and flowers springing from it, and placed upon a Calvary as by the Roman Catholics. It is represented in various ways, but the shaft with the cross-bar and the Calvary remain the same. The tree of life and knowledge, or the jamba tree, in their maps of the world, is always represented in the shape of a cross, eighty-four yoganas, or 423 or 432 miles high, including the three steps of the Calvary.

From India we naturally turn to China, and, though its use there is involved in a deal of mystery, the cross is found among their hieroglyphics, on the walls of their pagodas and on the lamps which they used to illuminate their temples.

In Kamschatka, Baron Humboldt found the cross and remains of hieroglyphics similar to those of Egypt.

Passing into America, we find that what could only be described as perfect idolatry prevailed with respect to the veneration paid to the cross. Throughout Mexico and some parts of South America the emblem is constantly found, and in many instances is evidently of great antiquity. Some travellers have explained their presence by attributing them to the Spaniards, but those people found them there when they arrived, and were greatly astonished at the spectacle, not knowing how to account for it. A lieutenant of Cortez passed over from the island of Cosumel to the continent, and coasted the peninsula of Yucatan as far as Campeachy. Everywhere he was struck with the evidences of a higher civilisation, and was astonished at the sight of numerous large stone crosses, evidently objects of worship, which he met with in various places.

At Cozuma an ancient cross is still standing. Here there is a temple of considerable size, with pyramidal towers rising several stories above the rest of the building, facing the cardinal points. In the centre of the quadrangular area within stands a high cross, constructed of stone and lime like the rest of the temple, and ten palms in height. The natives regard is as the emblem of the god of rain.

The discovery of the cross amongst the Red Indians as an object of worship, by the Spanish missionaries, in the fifteenth century, completely mystified them, and they hardly knew whether to attribute it to a good or an evil origin—whether it was the work of St. Thomas or of the Devil. The symbol was not an occasional spectacle in odd places, as though there by accident, it met them on all sides; it was literally everywhere, and in every variety of form. It mattered not whether the building was old or new, inhabited or ruined and deserted, whether it was a temple or a palace, there was the cross in all shapes and of all materials—of marble, gypsum, wood, emerald, and jasper. What was, perhaps, still more remarkable was the fact that it was associated with certain other things common on the Babylonian monuments, such as the bleeding deity, the serpent and the sacred eagle, and that it bore the very same names by which it was known in Roman Catholic countries, “the tree of subsistence,” “the wood of health,” “the emblem of life.” In this latter appellation there was a parallel to the name by which it was known in Egypt, and by which the holy Tau of the Buddhists has always been known; thus placing, as has been said, any supposition of accidental coincidence beyond all reasonable debate.

In the Royal Commentaries of Peru, we have some interesting allusions to the cross and to the general sanctity with which it was surrounded. In the city of Cozco, the Incas had one of white marble, which they called a crystalline jasper, but how long they had had it was unknown. The Inca, Garcillasso de la Vega, said he left in the year 1560, in the cathedral church of that city; it was then hanging upon a nail by a list of black velvet; formerly, when in the hands of the Indians, it had been suspended by a chain of gold and silver. The form is Greek, that is, square; being as broad as it was long, and about three fingers wide. It was previously kept in one of the royal apartments, called Huaca, which signified a consecrated place. The record says that though the Indians did not adore it, yet they held it in great veneration, either for the beauty of it, or for some other reason which they knew not to assign; and so was observed amongst them, until the Marquess Don Francisco Pizarro entered the valley of Tumpiz, when by reason of some accidents which befel Pedro de Candia they conceived a greater esteem and veneration for it. The historian complains that the Spaniards, after they had taken the imperial city, hung up this cross in the vestry of a church they built, whereas, he says, they ought to have placed a relic of that kind upon the high altar, adorning it with gold and precious stones; by which respect to a thing the Indians esteemed sacred, and by assimilating the ordinances of the Christian religion as near as was possible with those which the law of nature had taught this people, the lessons of Christianity would thereby have become more easy and familiar, and not seemed so far estranged from the principles of their own Gentilism.

This cross is again mentioned in another part of the Royal Commentaries, and two travellers are described as being filled with admiration at seeing crosses erected on the top of the high pinnacles of the temples and palaces; the which, it is said, were introduced from the time that Pedro de Candia, being in Tumpiz, charmed or tamed the wild beasts which were let loose to devour him, and which, simply by virtue of the cross which he held in his hand, became gentle and domestic. This was recounted with such admiration by the Indians, who carried the news of the miracle to Cozco, that when the inhabitants of the city understood it they went immediately to the sanctuary where the jasper cross already mentioned stood, and, having brought it forth, they with loud acclamations adored and worshipped it, conceiving that though the sign of the cross had for many ages been conserved by them in high esteem and veneration yet it was not entertained with such devotion as it deserved, because they were not as yet acquainted with its virtues. Believing that the sign of the cross had tamed and shut the mouths of the wild beasts, they imagined that it had a like power to deliver them out of the hands of their enemies.On both the northern and southern continents of America the cross was believed to possess the power of restraining evil spirits, and was the common symbol of the god of rain and of health. The people prayed to it when their country needed water, and the Aztec goddess of rains held one in her hand. At the feast celebrated to her honour in the spring, when the genial shower was needed to promote fertilisation, they were wont to conciliate the favour of Centeotl, the daughter of heaven and goddess of corn, by nailing a boy or girl to a cross, and after they had been so suspended for awhile piercing them with arrows shot from a bow. The Muyscas, less sanguinary than the Mexicans in sacrificing to the god of the waters, extended a couple of ropes transversely over some lake or stream, thus forming a gigantic cross, and at the point of intersection threw in their offerings of food, gems, and precious oils.

Quetyalcoatl, god of the winds, bore as his sign of office a mace like the cross of a bishop; his robe was covered with the symbol, and its adoration was connected throughout with his worship.

There is, of course, no doubt whatever that the Spaniards took the cross with them to America, and scattered it about so much in such varied directions that their own became so intermingled with the native ones as to make it difficult to distinguish one from the other; but the fact remains that what there was of cordiality in the reception they met with from the aborigines, was due in no small degree to their use of the same emblem on their standards; when this became apparent the astonishment was mutual. Many travellers have told us of these ancient crosses, and some of them while expressing doubts as to their antiquity, have yet supplied us with evidence of the same. Mr. Stephens is one of these. In his Incidents of Travel in Central America, he supplies us with some wonderful Altar Tablets found at Palenque, the principal subject in one of which is the cross. It is surmounted by a strange bird, and loaded with indescribable ornaments. There are two human figures, one on either side of the cross, evidently of important personages; both are looking towards the cross, and one seems in the act of making an offering. The traveller says:—“All speculations on the subject are of course entitled to little regard, but perhaps it would not be wrong to ascribe to those personages a sacerdotal character. The hieroglyphics doubtless explain all. Near them are other hieroglyphics which remind us of the Egyptian mode of recording the name, history, office, or character of the persons represented. This tablet of the cross has given rise to more learned speculations than perhaps any others found at Palenque. Dupaix and his commentators, assuming for the building a very remote antiquity, or at least, a period long antecedent to the Christian era, account for the appearance of the cross by the argument that it was known and had a symbolical meaning among ancient nations long before it was established as the emblem of the Christian faith.”

Near Miztla, “the city of the moon,” is a cavern temple excavated from the solid rock in the form of a cross, 123 feet in length and breadth, the limbs being about 25 feet in width.

Other relics have been found in abundance in the same part of the world, proving how well known this emblem was before the advent of Christianity. In the Mexican Tribute Tables, we were told a few years ago by a writer in the Historical Magazine, small pouches or bags frequently occur. Appendages to dress, they are tastefully formed and ornamented with fringe and tassels. A cross of the Maltese or more ordinary form (Greek or Latin) is conspicuously woven or painted on each. They appear to have been in great demand, a thousand bundles being the usual Pueblo tax.The practice of marking the cross on their persons and wearing it in their garments was once common with some if not with all the occupants of the Southern Continent. The Abipones of Paraguay tatooed themselves by pricking the skin with a thorn. They all wore the form of a cross impressed on their foreheads, and two small lines at the corner of each eye, extending towards the ears, besides four transverse lines at the root of the nose, between the eyebrows, as national marks. What these figures signified no one was able to tell. The people only knew this, that the custom had been handed down to them by their ancestors. Not only were crosses marked on their foreheads, but woven in the red woollen garments of many of them. This was long before they knew anything of the Christian religion.

The “hot cross bun,” eaten in this country on Good Friday, is supposed by many to be exclusively Christian in its origin; whereas it is no more than a reproduction of a cake marked with a cross which was duly offered in the heathen temples to such living idols as the serpent and the bull. It was made of flour, honey and milk, or oil, and at certain times was eaten with much ceremony by both priests and people.

There was also used in the Pagan times the monogram of a cross upon a heart, the meaning of which was according to Egyptologists, “goodness.” “This figure,” says Sir G. Wilkinson, “enclosed in a parallelogram, in which form it would signify ‘the abode of good,’ was depicted or sculptured upon the front of several houses in Memphis and Thebes.”

A very ancient Phoenician medal was found many years ago in the ruins of Citium, on which were inscribed the cross, the rosary, and the lamb. An engraving of this may be seen in Higgins’ Celtic Druids and in Dr. Clark’s Travels.

The connection of the cross with Paganism originally, and its ultimate assumption by the Christian church, is curiously and strikingly brought out by Tertullian in his Apologeticus and Ad Nationes. These treatises, we may observe, are so much alike that the former has sometimes been regarded as a first draft of the latter, which is nearly double the length. Probably, however, they are entirely different productions, one being addressed to the general public and the other to the rulers and magistrates.

Charged with worshipping a cross, he says:—“As for him who affirms that we are the priesthood of a cross, we shall claim him as our co-religionist. A cross is in its material a sign of wood; amongst yourselves also the object of worship is a wooden figure. Only, whilst with you the figure is a human one, with us the wood is its own figure. Never mind for the present what is the shape, provided the material is the same; the form, too, is of no importance, if so be it be the actual body of a god. If, however, there arises a question of difference on this point, what, let me ask, is the difference between the Athenian Pallas or the Pharia Ceres, and wood formed into a cross, when each is represented by a rough stock without form, and by the merest rudiment of a statue of unformed wood? Every piece of timber which is fixed in the ground in an erect position is a part of a cross, and indeed the greater portion of its mass. But an entire cross is attributed to us, with its transverse beam, of course, and its projecting seat. Now you have the less to excuse you, for you dedicate to religion only a mutilated imperfect piece of wood, while others consecrate to the sacred purpose a complete structure. The truth however, after all, is that your religion is all cross, as I shall show. You are indeed unaware that your gods in their origin have proceeded from this hated cross. Now every image, whether carved out of wood or stone, or molten in metal, or produced out of any other richer material, must needs have had plastic hands engaged in its formation. Well then, this modeller, before he did anything else, hit upon the form of a wooden cross, because even our own body assumes as its natural position the latent and concealed outline of a cross. Since the head rises upwards and the back takes a straight direction and the shoulders project laterally, if you simply place a man with his arms and hands out-stretched, you will make the general outline of a cross. Starting then from this rudimental form and prop, as it were, he applies a covering of clay, and so gradually completes the limbs and forms the body, and covers the cross within with the shape which he meant to impress upon the clay; then from this design, with the help of compasses and leaden moulds, he has got all ready for his image which is to be brought out into marble, or clay, or metal, or whatever the material be of which he has determined to make his god. This then is the process: after the cross-shaped frame the clay; after the clay the god. In a well-understood routine the cross passes into a god through the clayey medium. The cross then you consecrate, and from it the consecrated deity begins to derive its origin. By way of example let us take the case of a tree which grows up into a system of branches and foliage, and is a reproduction of its own kind, whether it springs from the kernel of an olive, or the stone of a peach, or a grain of pepper which has been duly tempered under ground. Now if you transplant it or take a cutting off its branches for another plant, to what will you attribute what is produced by the propagation? Will it not be to the grain, or the stone, or the kernel? Because as the third stage is attributable to the second, and the second in like manner to the first, so the third will have to be referred to the first, through the second as the mean. We need not stay any longer in the discussion of this point, since by a natural law every kind of produce throughout nature refers back its growth to its original source; and just as the product is comprised in its primal cause, so does that cause agree in character with the thing produced. Since then, in the production of your gods, you worship the cross which originates them, here will be the original kernel and grain from which are propagated the wooden materials of your idolatrous images. Examples are not far to seek. Your victories you celebrate with religious ceremony as deities, and they are more august in proportion to the joy they bring you. The frames on which you hang up your crosses—these are as it were the very core of your pageants. Thus in your victories the religion of your camp makes even crosses objects of worship; your standards it adores, your standards are the sanction of its oaths, your standards it prefers before Jupiter himself. But all that parade of images and that display of pure gold, are as so many necklaces of the crosses. In like manner also in the banners and ensigns, which your soldiers guard with no less sacred care, you have the streamers and vestments of your crosses. You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship unadorned and simple crosses.”

We give this passage at length because it emphasises what we are urging in connection with this subject, viz., that the cross is common to both Christianity and Paganism, that the latter possessed it ages before the former, and is therefore more likely to have originated it. We speak with some reserve on this latter point for want of proper and full evidence. It may of course be possible that in a purer and more enlightened age the cross was known and used; we shall probably, however, find our researches stop short in Pagan times, in which we shall have to look for the generally recognised meaning of the symbol.

It is remarkable in the quotation just made, that Tertullian never attempts to refute the charge brought by the Pagans against the Christians of his time of worshipping the cross; he merely retaliates by asserting that they did the very same thing in a somewhat different manner. “As for him,” he says, “who affirms that we are the priesthood of a cross, we shall claim him as our co-religionist.... What, let me ask, is the difference between the Athenian Pallas or the Pharian Ceres, and wood formed into a cross?”

He further identifies himself and his religion with the Pagans in this particular by saying:—“In all our movements, our travels, our going out and coming in, putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down: whatever employment occupies us, we mark our forehead with the sign of the cross.” How much all this reminds us of the universality of the symbol in pre-Christian times. We can scarcely point to an age or to a century in which it did not in some way enter into its history, its theology, its social and domestic life. Again and again have monuments been discovered which put the date of its use further back than had been imagined, and some have been brought to light which carry the story back into very remote antiquity indeed. In the wilds of Central India, for instance, a little over twenty years back, the late Mr. Mulheran, C.E., discovered two of the oldest crosses ever met with. They were granite monoliths, perfect in structure, and very much like those to be found here and there in the western parts of Cornwall. One was ten feet nine inches in height, and the other eight feet six inches; each being in the midst of a group of cairns and cromlechs or dolmens, which Colonel Taylor describes as similar in character to some which he formerly surveyed near the village of Rajunkolloor, within the Principality of Shorapoor, in the Deccan. Their extreme antiquity is inferred from the fact, as stated by the European officer who first discovered them, that the vicinity of the groups of cromlechs and crosses had, at some remote period, been cultivated; that parts of the hills had been cut into terraces, and supported by large stone banks or walls; but that the country for miles in every direction was, and had been for centuries and centuries, entirely uninhabited, and was grown over with dense forests. It has been estimated that, as this elevated and long-neglected region has been the possession of the low castes, or non-Aryan helots, from time immemorial, we may confidently assume that the monoliths in question were erected by the aboriginal population of the soil—a population which was driven, not improbably three thousand years, at the least, before the advent of Christ, from the richer plains below by the first Aryan invader who had crossed the five streams, and found a temporary refuge in the nearest range of hills to the west of Chandar, until another foe—the Mogul—appeared upon the scene, and finally subdued both the conqueror and his victims. “Here then,” says a reviewer, “amongst these now fragmentary people from the dÉbris of a widely-spread primeval race (to borrow a phrase from a recent writer on the non-Aryan languages of the Continent), we find the symbol of the cross, not only expressing the same mystery as in all other parts of the world, but its erection, doubtless, dating from one of the very earliest migrations of our species.” It is impossible to adduce any clearer or stronger proof of its primitive antiquity than this.

It has been suggested by some writers, who, for some reason or other, objected to the recognition of the cross as an emblem of great antiquity, that the stone structures which were erected in the British Islands by the Druids, Saxons, and Danes, owed their cruciform character to the necessities of the situation rather than to any other cause; that the stones were placed across each other as a matter of mere convenience, and not with the view of forming a cross, and that these monuments, which served as instruments of Druidical superstition before the implanting of the Gospel in Britain, were afterwards appropriated to the use of Christian memorials by being formed in the figure of a cross or marked with this emblem. It is admitted, of course, that those cruciform structures were thus appropriated, but of what use will it be to repudiate the antiquity of examples whose age has been far surpassed in other parts of the world. The crosses of India, just alluded to, remain to be accounted for, and even when they have been as summarily disposed of as the British ones, there are the crosses suspended from the necks of the Assyrian kings, whose existence cannot possibly be accounted for by the above hypothesis. It was not necessity or convenience that designed a Maltese cross, a thousand years before the Christian era, of precisely the same form as that which is worn by men and women in this nineteenth century, nor probably was it a merely ornamental taste; we are rather disposed to believe that the secret lies in the symbolical meaning, which has ever been attached to the form.

The universality of the cross as a religious symbol is certainly a most astounding fact, and the more so because it has evidently always represented the same fundamental idea in connection with the theological systems, in all ages, of the Old and New Worlds. If but one of these mythologies possessed it, there might be little difficulty in tracing out the significance of the coincidence between its existence there and in Christian theology, but prevailing as it does universally, and destined as it is to retain its connection with the religion of man, it excites feelings of the most profound wonderment and surprise. Lipsius and other early writers, in reference to this matter, declared their sincere belief that the numerous cruciform figures to be found on the monuments of antiquity were of a typical character, and expressed a sentiment which looked forward to the cross of Christ; a few others doubted this, and suggested difficulties, while Gibbon ridiculed the whole matter, as it thus stood, from beginning to end. The belief, however, that the cross in Pagan lands was in some incomprehensible manner connected with the same object or idea as in the Christian church was not easily got rid of, and was considerably deepened by the testimony of missionaries to the New World that amongst people of apparently different origin and of altogether different attributes, the cross was common as an object of worship and veneration. So universal has the presence of this symbol and its attendant worship been found that it has been said to form a complete zone about the habitable globe, extending as it does from Assyria into Egypt, and India, and Anahuac, in their ruined temples; to the pyramidal structures of East and West, and to those in Polynesia, especially the islands of Tonga, Viti, and Easter; “as it appears upon numberless vases, medals, and coins of the earliest known types, centuries anterior to the introduction of Christianity; and as its teaching is expressed in the concordant customs, rites, and traditions of former nations and communities, who were widely separated from, and for the most part ignorant of, the existence of each other, and who possessed, so far as we are aware, no other emblematical figure in common.” Egypt, Assyria, Britain, India, China, Scandinavia, the two Americas—all were alike its home, and in all of them was there analogy in the teaching respecting its meaning.