or to the Macedonian conquest.

There is little doubt that the early fathers and the bishops in
the Christian church recognized in the cross the ancient emblem of
fertility, but as the idea of a spiritual life had begun to take root,
it was deemed proper to conceal its real significance; hence from a
symbol representing the continuity of existence on the earth the cross
now prefigured eternal life or existence after death. Henceforward
although man was dead in transgressions, through the cross, or through
the crucified Christ, he received eternal life.

That the original signification of this symbol was understood by early
Christians is apparent from the fact that the Emperor Theodosius,
between the years 378 and 395, issued a decree prohibiting the sign
of the cross being sculptured or painted on the pavements of churches.
Tertullian also, after declaring that the devil made the sign of the
cross on the foreheads of the followers of the Persian Mithra, accused
the Christians of adoring the same emblem.

In 280, A. C. Porphyry, referring to crosses, asked why theologists give
passions to the gods, erect Phalli and use shameful language; to which
the Christian Iamblichus in the year 336 replied: "Because Phalli and
crosses are signs of productive energy, and provocative to a continuance
of the world."

It was not until the second century, or until after the days of Justin
Martyr, that the instrument upon which Jesus was executed was called
a cross. But whatever may have been its form, as soon as the myths of
former religious worship began to attach themselves to his history, he
became the symbolical dead man on a cross, the original sacrifice to
Mahadeva. He portrayed the same idea as did Crishna, Ballaji, the dying
Osiris, and all the other sun-gods. He, like each of these, represented
a new sun at the beginning of a new cycle. He was a risen savior, and
to him were finally transferred all the festivals, seasons, symbols, and
monograms of former solar deities. That the figure of a dead man on
a cross was a familiar emblem throughout Asia and various portions
of Europe, and that numberless crucified gods--incarnations of the
sun--have been worshipped throughout the East, is a fact which it has
been the aim of the initiated among the Christian clergy to conceal,
but one which no one who has examined the evidence with a mind free from
prejudice attempts to deny.

In Italy, on many of the earlier pictures of Christ, ma