The Non-Christian Cross | Page 9

the cross, and must have approved of the
sign of the cross in the initiatory rite of baptism, that denunciation
evidently applied only to material representations of the cross.

Moreover the denunciation in question was clearly due to the fear that
such objects might degenerate amongst Christians, as they afterwards
did, into little better than idols. And if the sign or figure of the cross did
not mainly remind the early Christians of the death of Jesus, it must
have mainly reminded them of something else.

CHAPTER III
.
THE EVIDENCE OF THE OTHER FATHERS.
The works which have come down to us from the Fathers who lived
before the days of Constantine make up over ten thousand pages of
closely printed matter; and the first point which strikes those who
examine that mass of literature with a view to seeing what the
Christians of the first three centuries thought and wrote concerning the
execution of Jesus and the symbol of the cross, is that the execution of
Jesus was hardly so much as mentioned by them, and no such thing as a
representation of the instrument of execution once referred to.
Another fact worthy of special note is that, whether the Fathers wrote in
Greek and used the word _stauros_, or wrote in Latin and translated
that word as _crux_, they often seem to have had in their mind's eye a
tree; a tree which moreover was closely connected in meaning with the
forbidden tree of the Garden of Eden, an allegorical figure of
undoubtedly phallic signification which had its counterpart in the Tree
of the Hesperides, from which the Sun-God Hercules after killing the
Serpent was fabled to have picked the Golden Apples of Love, one of
which became the symbol of Venus, the Goddess of Love. Nor was this
the only such counterpart, for almost every race seems in days of old to
have had an allegorical Tree of Knowledge or Life whose fruit was
Love; the ancients perceiving that it was love which produced life, and
that but for the sexual passion and its indulgence mankind would cease
to be.
Starting upon an examination of the early Christian writings in question,
we read in the Gospel of Nicodemus that when the Chief Priests
interviewed certain men whom Jesus had raised from the dead, those
men made upon their faces "the sign of the stauros."[12] The sign of
the cross is presumably meant; and all that need be said is that if the

men whom Jesus raised from the dead were acquainted with the sign of
the cross, it would appear that it must have been as a pre-Christian sign.
Further on in the same Gospel, Satan is represented as being told that
"All that thou hast gained through the Tree of Knowledge, all hast thou
lost through the Tree of the Stauros."[13]
Elsewhere we read that "The King of Glory stretched out his right hand,
and took hold of our forefather Adam, and raised him: then, turning
also to the rest, he said, 'Come with me as many as have died through
the Tree which he touched, for behold I again raise you all up through
the Tree of the Stauros.'"[14] Some see in this peculiar pronouncement
a reference to the doctrine of re-incarnation.
In the Acts and Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Andrew we are told that
those who executed Andrew "lifted him up on the stauros," but "did not
sever his joints, having received this order from the pro-consul, for he
wished him to be in distress while hanging, and in the nighttime as he
was suspended to be eaten by dogs." There is nothing to show that the
stauros used was other than an ordinary stauros.
In the Epistle of Barnabas are various references to the stauros; mixed
up with various passages from the Hebrew Scriptures, quoted--without
any justification--as referring to the initiatory rite of baptism; a rite, be
it noted, that was admittedly of Gentile rather than Israelitish origin,
and not unconnected with the Sun-God worship of the Persians and
other Orientals of non-Hebrew race.
The references in question commence with the enquiry, "Let us further
ask whether the Lord took any care to foreshadow the Water and the
Stauros?"
Afterwards we have a quotation of Psalm i. 3-6--which likens the good
man to a tree planted by the side of a river and yielding his fruit in due
season--and the pronouncement, "Mark how he has described at once
both the Water and the Stauros. For these words imply, Blessed are
they who, placing their trust in the Stauros, have gone down into the
Water."
This further reference to the non-Mosaic initiatory rite of baptism is
followed by a quotation of Ezekiel xlvii. 12, which speaks of a river by
whose side grow