Parsons, John Denham / 2008-06-11 00:00:00

EBOOK THE NON-CHRISTIAN CROSS ***


THE NON-CHRISTIAN CROSS
An Enquiry Into The Origin And History Of
The Symbol Eventually Adopted As
That Of Our Religion
BY
JOHN DENHAM PARSONS
LONDON
1896

"O CRUX, SPLENDIDIOR CUNCTIS ASTRIS, MUNDO
CELEBRIS, HOMINIBUS MULTUM AMABILIS, SANCTIOR
UNIVERSIS."
[_BREVIARIUM ROMANUM,_
_Festival of the Invention of the Holy Cross._

PREFACE.
--------
The history of the symbol of the cross has had an attraction for the
author ever since, as an enquiring youth, he found himself unable to
obtain satisfactory answers to four questions concerning the same which
presented themselves to his mind.
The first of those questions was why John the Baptist, who was beheaded
before Jesus was executed, and so far as we are told never had anything
to do with a cross, is represented in our religious pictures as holding
a cross.
The second question was whether this curious but perhaps in itself
easily explained practice had in its inception any connection with the
non-Mosaic initiatory rite of baptism; which Jesus accepted as a matter
of course at the hands of his cousin John, and in which the sign of the
cross has for ages been the all-important feature. And it was the
wonder whether there was or was not some association between the facts
that the New Testament writers give no explanation whatever of the
origin of baptism as an initiatory rite, that this non-Mosaic
initiatory rite was in use among Sun-God worshippers long before our
era, and that the Fathers admitted that the followers of the Persian
conception of the Sun-God marked their initiates upon the forehead like
the followers of the Christ, which finally induced the author to start
a systematic enquiry into the history of the cross as a symbol.
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