The Non-Christian Cross Part 14

And what is the moral of the real, as distinguished from the imaginary, history of the symbol of the cross but this: that from the beginning nought has caused the beliefs of men to a.s.sume an appearance of radical difference, save the difference in the name or dress with which this or that set of men have clothed similar ideas?

For, as has already been hinted, Humanity has ever had but one G.o.d and but one Religion. And as from one point of view Life is but another term for the Real Presence, and Death but another term for the withdrawal of Deity, it may be said that that G.o.d is Life, and that Religion the desire for Life, more Life, and fuller Life. Moreover, as has been said before, this universal worship of Life is discernible even in the willingness of some to sacrifice what remains to them of mortal life in the hope of thus being enabled to lay hold of a life immortal which is not for all.

The worship of Life is natural, and must of necessity continue. Let us however render it n.o.bler by recognising its catholicity; and by contemptuously refusing to either seek or accept a life of bliss hereafter which any of our brothers and sisters are, either in our imagination or in reality, to be debarred from sharing.

CHAPTER XXI.

SUMMARY.

At the commencement of this work it was shown that, as the Greek text of the writings forming the New Testament testifies, not one of the Apostles or Evangelists ever stated that Jesus was executed upon a cross-shaped instrument of execution. The circ.u.mstances under which the figure of the cross became the symbol of our religion, were then made clear. And, having since demonstrated the existence in pre-Christian ages of a widespread veneration of the figure of the cross as the symbol of Life and of the Sun-G.o.d, which may have given rise to the desire to a.s.sociate Jesus therewith, little remains for the author to do save draw the notice of the reader to the admissions of other writers concerning the rise of the cross as the symbol of Christianity; for the sake of brevity more or less confining his attention to two well known works upon the history of religious art.

It should first however be pointed out that though we Christians affirm that crucifixion was a form of capital punishment made use of in days of old, and abolished the fourth century after Christ by Constantine because Jesus was so executed, we cannot exactly prove that the _staurosis_ thus abolished was crucifixion, or even that it included crucifixion. For various as are the different forms of 'death by the stauros' of which descriptions have come down to us from pre-Christian ages and the first three centuries of our era, no relic of that date bears a representation of an instrument of execution such as we cause to appear in our sacred pictures, and even if, regardless of the more exact meaning of the word stauros, we suppose the term staurosis to have included every form of carrying out the extreme penalty by means of affixion or suspension, we meet with no description of such an instrument of execution as we picture. Therefore even if we were to exclude from the staurosis abolished by Constantine all forms of transfixion by a stauros, we could not, upon the evidence before us, fairly say that what that astute Emperor abolished was what is usually understood by the term crucifixion.

It will not be necessary to quote again the admission of the Reverend S. Baring-Gould, M.A., to the effect that the so-called Cross of Constantine or monogram of Christ was but the symbol of the Sun-G.o.d of the Gauls with a loop added by their crafty leader to please the Christians, but it may be pointed out that this fact is also admitted in _Chambers's Encyclopaedia_; where we read that

"The so-called cross of Constantine was not really a cross but a circle containing the X P I, the first three letters of the name of Christ in Greek; and was merely an adaptation of a symbol of a Gaulish solar deity."

And it may be added that the fact that the Monogram of Christ and the ordinary cross so frequently used as symbols by Constantine upon his coins and elsewhere, and thus made symbols of the Roman Empire in the first half of the fourth century, were at first Pagan rather than Christian symbols, also seems to be borne out by Dean Burgon in his _Letters from Rome_, where he states

"I question whether a cross occurs on any Christian monument of the first four centuries."[70]

Pa.s.sing on however to the representative works on Christian Art already referred to, we first come to Mrs. Jameson's famous _History of Our Lord as exemplified in works of art_.

Upon page 315 of Volume II. the gifted auth.o.r.ess, after confessing that the cross was venerated by the heathen as a symbol of Life before the period of Christianity and referring to St. Chrysostom, who flourished half a century after Constantine, admits that

"It must be owned that ancient objects of Art, as far as. .h.i.therto known, afford no corroboration of the use of the cross in the simple transverse form familiar to us at any period preceding or even closely succeeding the words of St. Chrysostom."

That is to say, although Constantine introduced the Monogram of Christ and the cross of four equal arms before St. Chrysostom was born, and, making them symbols of the Roman Empire, would, whether a Sun-G.o.d worshipper or a Christian, in any case have imposed them upon what he established as his State Religion, it was not till after these solar symbols of the Gauls were accepted as Christian that such a cross as could possibly have been a representation of an instrument of execution was introduced.

As to the crucifix, we are told that though this is said by some to be referred to in the works of St. Gregory of Nyssa--a Bishop of Tours who lived in the sixth century, and also in the injunctions of the often quoted council of Greek bishops A.C. 692 called the "Quini-s.e.xtum" or "in Trullo," the evidence is

"Insufficient to convince most modern archaeologists that a crucifix in any sense now accepted was meant."

In other words, not only is it clear that the cross as a representation of the instrument of execution upon which Jesus died was not introduced till after the days of Constantine, but it is also evident that the crucifix, the earliest known representation of that execution, was not introduced till centuries later.

Other noteworthy admissions are made in the work above quoted from, but we must pa.s.s on to the Dean of Canterbury's comparatively recent work upon the same subject.

Dean Farrar states upon page 11 of his _Life of Christ as represented in Art_ that "Of all early Christian symbols the _Fish_ was the most frequent and the favourite."

The Fish; and not the Cross.

Moreover the Dean significantly adds upon the next page, that the Fish

"Continued to be a common symbol down to the days of Constantine."

And the significance lies in the fact that the introduction by Constantine of the solar symbols venerated by the Gauls, may account for the displacement of the symbol of the Fish from favour.

Upon page 19 Dr. Farrar goes on to say that

"Two symbols continued for ages to be especially common, of which I have not yet spoken. They were not generally adopted, even if they appeared at all, until after the Peace of the Church at the beginning of the fourth century. I mean the cross and the monogram of Christ."

Here again, it will be seen, the Dean admits that the cross, as the symbol of our religion, came in with Constantine.

Directly after the pa.s.sage last quoted Dean Farrar very misleadingly remarks: "It must be remembered that the cross was in itself an object of utter horror even to the Pagans." For the exact reverse is the truth, inasmuch as in almost every land a cross of some description had been for ages venerated as a symbol of Life.

The fact of course is that the Dean here and elsewhere, like other Christian writers, does not take the trouble to distinguish between the symbol of the cross and the death caused by execution upon a stauros; which instrument, by the way, was, as has been shown, not necessarily in the shape of a cross, and appears to have been in most cases a stake without a transverse rail. What the Pagans held in utter horror was the awful death caused by transfixion by or affixion to a stauros, whatever its shape; the symbol of the cross was, upon the contrary, an object of veneration among them from time immemorial.

On page 23 Dr. Farrar, alluding to the use of the transient sign of the cross by the Christians of early days, makes the admission

"That it did _not_ remind them of the Crucifixion only or even mainly is proved alike by their literature and other relics."

Exactly so: for the non-material sign traced by them (and by us) upon the forehead in the _non-Mosaic_ initiatory rite of baptism and perhaps also upon the breast or in the air at other times, seems to have been the survival of a Pagan and pre-Christian custom.

Upon page 24 Dean Farrar admits that

"The cross was only introduced among the Christian symbols tentatively and timidly. It may be doubted whether it once occurs till after the vision of Constantine in 312 and his accession to the Empire of the East and West in 324."

Further on upon the same page the Dean of Canterbury, pa.s.sing without notice from symbols to instruments of execution and making no distinction whatever, states that

"Crosses were of two kinds. The _Crux Simplex_, 'of one single piece without transom,' was a mere stake, used sometimes to impale, sometimes to hang the victim by the hands."

Exactly so.

But, to bring this work to a conclusion with what is the crux of the whole matter, is it not disingenuous in the extreme upon the part of those of us Christians who know better, to hide the fact that it may have been upon some such cross as the Dean here refers to, that is, upon no cross at all, that Jesus was executed? Is it not dishonest of us to place before the ma.s.ses Bibles and Lexicons wherein we ever carefully translate as "cross" a word which at the time the ancient cla.s.sics and our sacred writings were penned did not necessarily, if indeed ever, signify something cross-shaped? Is it not gross disloyalty to Truth to insist, as we do in our versions of the Christian Scriptures, upon translating as "crucify" or "crucified" four different words, not one of which referred to anything necessarily in the shape of a cross?

Another point which should be mentioned, though such matters cannot be discussed here, is that the questions whether Jesus did not prophesy that the final Day of judgment would come before those whom he addressed should die, and did not solemnly declare that his mission was to the descendants of Jacob or Israel and to them alone, undoubtedly affect our story.

As to the Gospel of the Cross, have not we Christians by, in our imaginations, limiting its saving effects to the few who are able to believe in it, all the centuries that we have re-echoed the cry "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" _forced_ upon the same the unutterably selfish meaning that the kingdom at hand for the many who simply cannot believe is that of h.e.l.l? Was _that_ what Jesus meant, and all that the so-called cross effected?

Moreover, whether the message of Jesus which we proclaim and variously interpret was or was not a gospel--that is, "glad tidings "--to all men, and from an unselfish point of view, what possible good purpose can be served by insisting upon supplementing the simple story of his stressful life, his magnificent love for the afflicted and suffering, his equally magnificent hatred of qualities not altogether dissimilar from that which enables some of us to claim to be not only admirers but also genuine followers of a Communist who declared that those who would follow him must first sell all their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor;--what good purpose can be served by supplementing this, and the account of the final conflict of Jesus with the officials of his native land and his subsequent execution upon a stauros or stake not stated to have had a cross-bar attached, by the adoption and culture of a partisan and misleading fiction regarding the origin and history of the symbol of the cross?

THE END.