tablishment of Christianity in the West, the cross
was undoubtedly one of the commonest and most sacred of
symbolical monuments. Apart from any distinctions of social or
intellectual superiority, of caste, color, nationality, or
location in either hemisphere, it appears to have been the
aboriginal possession of every people in antiquity.

"Diversified forms of the symbol are delineated more or less
artistically, according to the progress achieved in
civilization at the period, on the ruined walls of temples and
palaces, on natural rocks and sepulchral galleries, on the
hoariest monoliths and the rudest statuary; on coins, medals,
and vases of every description; and in not a few instances,
are preserved in the architectural proportions of subterranean
as well as superterranean structures of tumuli, as well as
fanes.

"Populations of essentially different culture, tastes, and
pursuits--the highly-civilized and the semi-civilized, the
settled and the nomadic--vied with each other in their
superstitious _adoration_ of it, and in their efforts to
extend the knowledge of its exceptional import and virtue
amongst their latest posterities.

"Of the several varieties of the cross still in vogue, as
national and ecclesiastical emblems, and distinguished by the
familiar appellations of St. George, St. Andrew, the Maltese,
the Greek, the Latin, &c., &c., _there is not one amongst
them, the existence of which may not be traced to the remotest
antiquity. They were the common property of the Eastern
nations._

"That each known variety has been derived from a common
source, and is emblematical of one and the same truth may be
inferred from the fact of forms identically the same, whether
simple or complex, cropping out in contrary directions, in the
Western as well as the Eastern hemisphere."[339:1]

The cross has been adored in _India_ from time immemorial, and was a
symbol of mysterious significance in Brahmanical iconography. It was the
symbol of the Hindoo god Agni, the "Light of the World."[340:1]

In the Cave of Elephanta, over the head of the figure represented as
destroying the infants, whence the story of Herod and the infants of
Bethlehem (which was unknown to all the Jewish, Roman, and Grecian
historians) took its origin, may be seen the Mitre, the Crosier, and