The Non-Christian Cross | Page 4

solar wheel, {image
"solarwheel1.gif"} or {image "solarwheel2.gif"}; while the so-called
cross which Constantine and his troops are said to have seen above the
midday sun was admittedly the monogram of Christ, {image
"monogram1.gif"} or {image "monogram2.gif"}, which was admittedly
an adaptation of the solar wheel, as will be shown further on; and it was
as tokens of the conquest of Rome by his Gaulish troops, that
Constantine, as their leader, erected one of these symbols in the centre
of the Eternal City, and afterwards placed upon his coins the crosses
{image "solarwheel1.gif"}, {image "solarwheel2.gif"}, {image
"monogram1.gif"}, {image "monogram2.gif"}, {image "asterisk.gif"},
{image "monogram3.gif"}, {image "monogram4.gif"}, the cross of
four equal arms {image "x.gif"}, and several variations of that other
cross of four equal arms, the right-angled {image "plus.gif"}. And it
was not till long after these crosses were accepted as Christian, and
Constantine was dead and buried, that the cross with one of its arms
longer than the other three (or two), which alone could be a
representation of an instrument of execution, was made use of by
Christians.
Another point to be remembered is that when Constantine, apparently
conceiving ours, as the only non-national religion with ramifications
throughout his world-wide dominions, to be the only one that could

weld together the many nations which acknowledged his sway,
established Christianity as the State Religion of the Roman Empire, the
Church to which we belong would naturally have had to accept as its
own the symbols which Constantine had caused to be those of the State
in question. And it should be added that the cross of later days with one
of its arms longer than the others, if not also the assumption that the
stauros to which Jesus was affixed had a cross-bar, may have been
merely the outcome of a wish to associate with the story of Jesus these
Gaulish symbols of victory which had become symbols of the Roman
State, and therefore of its State Church.
Anyway, the first kind of cross venerated by Christians was not a
representation of an instrument of execution; and the fact that we hold
sacred many different kinds of crosses, although even if we could prove
that the stauros to which Jesus was affixed had a cross-bar but one kind
could be a representation of that instrument of execution, has to be
accounted for.
Our only plausible explanation of the fact that we hold sacred almost
any species of cross is that, as we do not know what kind of cross Jesus
died upon, opinions have always differed as to which was the real
cross.
This difference of opinion among Christians as to the shape of the
instrument upon which Jesus was executed, has certainly existed for
many centuries. But as an explanation of the many different kinds of
crosses accepted by us as symbols of the Christ, it only lands us in a
greater difficulty. For if we did not know what kind of cross Jesus died
upon when we accepted the cross as our symbol, the chances obviously
are that we accepted the cross as our symbol for some other reason than
that we assert.
As a matter of fact our position regarding the whole matter is illogical
and unsatisfactory, and we ought to alter it by honestly facing the facts
that we cannot satisfactorily prove that our symbol was adopted as a
representation of the instrument of execution to which Jesus was
affixed, and that we do not even know for certain that the instrument in
question was cross-shaped.
It need only be added that there is not a single sentence in any of the
numerous writings forming the New Testament, which, in the original
Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used in

the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary stauros; much less to the
effect that it consisted, not of one piece of timber, but of two pieces
nailed together in the form of a cross.
Taking the whole of the foregoing facts into consideration, it will be
seen that it is not a little misleading upon the part of our teachers to
translate the word stauros as "cross" when rendering the Greek
documents of the Church into our native tongue, and to support that
action by putting "cross" in our lexicons as the meaning of stauros
without carefully explaining that that was at any rate not the primary
meaning of the word in the days of the Apostles, did not become its
primary signification till long afterwards, and became so then, if at all,
only because, despite the absence of corroborative evidence, it was for
some reason or other assumed that the particular stauros upon which
Jesus was executed had that particular shape.
But--the reader may object--how about the Greek word which in