That the symbol of the cross was widely venerated in Europe long before our era, is well known to archÆologists. Of Britain in those days we know next to nothing, history being almost silent upon the subject and relics conspicuous by their absence. The cross is however a conspicuous feature upon certain funeral urns which are said to date back to the period in question. And it is noteworthy that both it and the solar wheel occur upon several of the earliest British coins; which whether issued as some say before, or as others aver after, the advent of Julius CÆsar, were admittedly of pre-Christian date. Evidences of the veneration of the cross in France before our era are so numerous and easily ascertainable, that it will only be necessary to refer the reader to the Collection Roujou, the pages of the Revue de Numismatique, and the writings of Messieurs De la Saussaye, Lenormant, De Saulcy, E. Lambert, and other French authorities.

If, continuing our journey eastwards, we pass over the border into the northern provinces of Italy, we find equally striking evidence of the pre-Christian veneration of the symbol in question.

Let us take for example the evidence furnished by the remarkable discoveries made in the pre-Christian cemetery unearthed at Gola-Secca. For upon a very large proportion of the articles discovered in the ancient tombs of the cemetery in question, a cross of some kind is the prominent feature.

Particulars of these articles can be found recorded in the literary and scientific journals of France. And the conclusion arrived at by the authorities upon such matters cannot be better put than in the revised edition in book form of an article in the Revue ArchÉologque by Monsieur G. de Mortillet.

After referring to the relics of so much of ancient Gaul as is comprised in modern France, a subject he takes leave of in the words—
"But the pre-Christian cult of the cross was not confined to Savoy and the environs of Lyons. A glance at the coins of ancient Gaul is sufficient to show that it existed in nearly every part"—
M. de Mortillet, crossing the frontier and dealing with the said tombs of Gola-Secca near Milan in Italy, sums up as follows
"One sees that there can be no doubt whatever concerning the use of the cross as a religious sign for a very long time before Christianity. The cult of the cross was well spread over Gaul before its conquest and already existed in Emilia in the Bronze Age, more than a thousand years before Jesus Christ."

Let us pass on to yet another country, Switzerland. Here also we find unexceptional evidence of the general recognition of the cross before our era as a symbol which should above all others be venerated.

The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland may be said to have been brought to light by the extraordinary drought experienced in the years A.C. 1853-4; for though piles and ancient remains were found upon the shores of various lakes before that date, no great heed was paid to them till the drought in question lowered the waters of the lake of Zurich and of other lakes to an unprecedented extent, and certain discoveries due thereto led to the matter being thoroughly investigated by antiquarians.

The result was that many relics of the Lake Dwellers were found. And, placed upon those relics by this forgotten race of hoary antiquity as the sign they venerated, was the symbol of the cross.

These relics, preserved for us by the sediment carried into the lakes by various rivers, cannot be less than 3,000 years old, are not improbably 4,000 years old, and may quite possibly be 5,000 years old; some authorities—Monsieur Morlot for instance—estimating their age at from 6,000 to 7,000 years. Suffice it to record the fact that these relics are admittedly pre-Christian.

Upon the articles in question, as on those discovered in the pre-Christian tombs of Gola-Secca, the cross is stamped as a symbol of life, of good omen, and of salvation. Even dies for stamping articles with the cross have been discovered among the remains of the Lake Dwellers. And the crosses are of three kinds; (1) the right-angled cross of four equal arms, of which so many variations, some enclosed in circles and some with the extremities widened and rounded, are used as Christian symbols; (2) the other cross of four equal arms, known as the St. Andrew's cross or Chi cross; and (3) the Fylfot or Svastika cross.

The last named cross is a peculiar one of quite unmistakeable design; and there are two varieties, Svastika1, and Svastika2, of which one is obviously an impression or reverse view of the other.

The names Fylfot and Svastika are very generally applied to both these symbols. The term Svastika, an Indian one, is however applied by the inhabitants of Hindostan to one only; they calling the other Sauvastika. And it is curious to note that the meanings attached to these names, though, like the symbols allied in nature, are, also like them, the reverse or negative or complement of each other.

For instance we are told by Sir G. Birdwood that the right handed Svastika signifies the Male Principle, the Sun on its daily journey from East to West, Light and Life; and that the left-handed Svastika signifies the Female Principle, the Sun in Hades or the Underworld on its journey from West to East, Darkness and Death.⁶⁴

This more or less official pronouncement may be taken as a fairly accurate one, although it is obvious that the annual as well as the diurnal movement of the Sun should have been referred to; the half year between the Vernal Equinox and Autumnal Equinox representing Light and Life, and that between the Autumnal Equinox and Vernal Equinox Darkness and Death, just as clearly as do the half days between sunrise and sunset, sunset and sunrise. But it is to be feared that even those who remember how often Death and Darkness are referred to as periods of Gestation, will have some difficulty in seeing how a sign or symbol of the Female Power of Generation can have signified Death.

The fact of course is that the symbol in question represented both Life and Death, and represented the latter only in a minor sense and owing to the fact that the Female Principle of Life was regarded as the necessary reverse, negative, or complement of the Male Principle; which latter, having of the two the better claim to be considered the starter of life, was the one more particularly identified with Life and therefore with the vernal Sun-God.

It would also appear that the two symbols in question to some extent signified Fire and Water; Fire being of course the Male Principle, Day, Summer, Light, and Life; and Water the Female Principle. This still further illustrates the point dealt with above; for though Water is the negative of Fire, yet Fire cannot produce Life without the aid of Water.

Returning however to our consideration of the cross as a symbol of Life of pre-Christian date and origin, and having already dealt with the lands now known as Britain, France, Italy, and Switzerland, let us now consider the evidence of Greece.

At MycenÆ and elsewhere Dr. Schliemann discovered, among other relics of a bygone age, not only articles marked with the Svastika cross and the cross of four equal arms, but even seals and dies giving impressions of such crosses; thus demonstrating how large and prominent a part the symbol of the cross played in pre-Christian times among those in whose classic tongue the earliest known copies of the Christian Scriptures were written centuries later.

It is also remarkable that Dr. Schliemann found golden crosses in the previously unopened tombs he discovered and explored at MycenÆ; as many as five such crosses having in some instances been placed with a single body by those who sealed up the vaults in question thousands of years ago and many centuries before the commencement of our era.

As few if any unrifled tombs of so ancient a date have been discovered in Greece and first explored by a trustworthy investigator, and as, moreover, it would only have been with the bodies of important personages that crosses of so valuable a material as gold would have been buried, these discoveries, coupled with the self-evident fact that crosses of more perishable material may have been buried with the bodies of less distinguished people, and by this time, like both the bodies and the tombs which enclosed them, have gone to dust, are most remarkable. And they entirely corroborate the testimony borne by the coins of ancient Gaul, the contents of the tombs of Gola-Secca, and the remains of the Lake Dwellers of Switzerland, to the veneration paid long before our era by the inhabitants of Europe to the cross as the recognised symbol of Life. Nor as the symbol only of the life which ends in the grave, but also of the glorious hope that as the Sun, from whom we derive that life, whether considered from a daily or yearly point of view sinks but to rise again, even so we who owe our brief lives to the Sun-God, may, like the Giver of Life and only Saviour, rise from one life to another.

For whether the ancients were or were not unphilosophic enough to believe in the resurrection of bodies whose constituent atoms are continually changing and in time form part of other bodies, it is absurd to assume that they did not at times like ourselves conceive and dwell upon a hoped-for, if unexpected and improbable, Life-to-come.

Moreover it is with us, as it was with them, a hope; and it is disingenuous to label as Christian what was pre-Christian, and to claim as ours what has been common to the reasoning minds of suffering men and women of all eras.

It is equally disingenuous on the part of us Christians to keep in the background the noteworthy fact that even in pre-Christian ages the symbol of that hope was—the cross.