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 God 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 nobler 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 circumstances 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-God, which may have given rise to the
desire to associate 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.
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