THE PASSION OF CHRIST ON THE CROSS AS A TREE WITH BRANCHES
Mediæval Bible Illustration

recognized as past. The cross is the emblem, not of any one sect, but of all Christendom, and belongs as fully to the Protestant as to the Roman Catholic.

Contrary to popular supposition, the cross was not the earliest of Christian emblems; that, probably, was. the fish. Nor was Christianity the only religion that used the cross. It was in use as an emblem by several cults, and had various mystic meanings. The Spanish conquerors of America were amazed to find the emblem of their own faith in use among some of the Indian tribes.

Another interesting fact is that when the cross was first used in Christian art, it had a very remote relation to the actual uses of that instrument for crucifixion. The resurrection, not the crucifixion, was the great doctrine of the early Church. When the cross first appears, it is not as a memorial of the dead Christ, but as a confession of faith in the living Christ. It was the initial in Greek of the name of Christ, the letter X or Chi, which first determined the use of the cross in Christian art. Very often it was with the letters

Alpha and Omega on either side, Christ the first and last, a symbol still frequently seen and used.

It was Constantine, who, in 333 A. D., made the cross a popular emblem. He saw a vision of the cross in the heavens, with the legend "In Hoc Signo Vinces," "By this sign you shall conquer."

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THE CHRISMA
MONOGRAM.

THE LABARUM

OF CONSTANTINE.

THE EGYPTIAN

CRUX ANSATA.

The Passion of our Lord, as a theme in Christian art, may almost be said to date from the Council of Constantinople, 692. None of the early crosses represent Christ as suffering upon them. Not a single picture of a haggard or tortured Saviour appears, so far as we know, in early Christian art. In 586 we have the first assured picture of the Crucifixion, and this was exceptional, in a manuscript of the Gospels in Syriac, preserved in the Laurentian Library in Florence. A picture of Christ upon the cross would have horrified the early Christians. When it became at all common to depict Christ upon the cross, he was not nailed to it. Either he appeared above it, or he was placed painlessly upon it, not nailed nor suffering, but looking benignly down, with the cross behind him.

Such pictures we have, as late as the eighth century, of a living Christ, looking down from a cross with no sign of pain or suggestion of wound. It was a sad day for Christianity when men counted it a religious duty to do all imaginable violence to the picture of the Christ, and for the joyous, triumphant figure so common in the early Church, that of the Good Shepherd bringing

home with rejoicing the sheep that had been lost, substituted the weak and helpless Christ, agonized and bleeding, helpless in the hands of his enemies.

With the vision of Constantine the cross became the emblem of the church. It was not, however, the Latin cross, but the Chrisma symbol, the initials of Christ, the Greek letters X, P, Chi, Rho.

This early form of the cross, the Labarum of Constantine, the handled cross with the ring of the P at the top, made easier another adaptation, and a beautiful one. Christianity grew strong in Egypt. One of its chief centers was at Alexandria. Christian schools and churches dotted the banks of the Nile for hundreds of miles. Egypt had its cross. It was not the cross of punishment, but the key of life. For millenniums the Egyptians had inscribed all over their monuments this crux ansata, the cross with a round handle at the top. As the key of life it appears in the hands of the innumerable deities of Egypt, and as a confession of faith in immortality it is inscribed on papyrus and sarcophagus. In Egypt this symbol was adapted to the uses of the church. Sometimes the crux ansata was borrowed without change, sometimes it appeared alternately with the Christian cross, and, when it became common to represent the Christ upon the cross, the round loop at the top was sometimes filled in with a head of Christ, and the key of life became the crucifix. The use of this symbol was not wholly confined to Egypt, but found its way to Rome and appeared sometimes on the tombs of martyrs with the handle of the key transformed, to a wreath of immortality.

But the Chrisma symbol is older than Constantinenot, however, as a cross, but as a monogram. We find this sign in use in the catacombs from the second century. It may be doubted whether any Christian sym

It was prob

bol is older or more widely disseminated. ably in popular use before any other form of the cross became common. Soon it became common to place on the sides of it in smaller letters the Greek Alpha and Omega and the symbol stood complete, "Christ the first and the last.'

This was the cross which Constantine made popular. The Labarum, as he called it, displaced the Roman eagles and appeared on the banners of the kingdom. By this sign he conquered. But while this cross, as a symbol of the crucifixion, became popular in his day, it was widely known and loved as a symbol of Christ, though not of the crucifixion, a century, perhaps two centuries, before.

The Jerusalem cross is another interesting symbol. It was that blazoned on the arms of Godfrey de Bouillon, conqueror of Jerusalem in the Crusades. Godfrey

would not wear a crown of gold, because his Lord wore one of thorns; and his cross, singularly, was not the militant banner of Constantine, who adopted the badge of defeat as the symbol of victory, but the cross potent, the crutch cross, the supporting cross, with each of its four arms terminating in a transverse beam. It is the symbol of one who trusts for upholding in the virtue and power of Christ. Almost all souvenirs of Jerusalem now bear this cross, quartered with four smaller ones. The emblem is held to mean "Christ for the

four quarters of the world."

In heraldry the crosses
This was

are of gold upon a background of silver. contrary to heraldric law, as blazoning metal upon metal, and was suggested by Psalm 48:13, "Ye shall be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, with feathers of yellow gold."

One of the most interesting forms of the cross is the Swastika, now very popular as a souvenir of visits to the Navajo Indians, among whom it is found as a pottery emblem, and as an ornament beaten out of silver. They are believed to have determined its form from the Pole Star with the constellation Ursa Major, and to have used it as a symbol of the mystery of the regular progress of the four seasons. It would be difficult to name the nations that at one time or another have used this, perhaps the oldest extant symbol of good luck and prosperity.

The Celtic Cross is familiar, the cross with the circle joining the arms to the upright, and is beautiful both in outline and suggestion, the Cross for the World.

There is a modification of this same idea which constitutes one of the most beautiful of Christian emblems. It is not one of the earliest, but is one of the most elaborate of them all, the Rex-Lex-Lux-Dux symbol, which is found upon the tomb of Longfellow in Mount Auburn, and in many places in the old world. It is first of all a Greek Cross in a circle, the cross that reaches to the bounds of the world. In its center is the letter X, the initial of the name of Christ. In the four arms are four Latin words of three letters each, terminating in this X common to them all. The four words Rex, Lex, Lux, Dux, mean King, Law, Light, Leader; and the Christ, who is all these, is for all the world. It would be difficult to imagine an emblem which, while perfectly simple and intelligible, was also more