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This however is a curious rather than an important point, for even the assumption that the word crux always and invariably meant something cross-shaped, would not affect the demonstration already made that the word stauros did not.
This sacredness of the crucial symbol may be one reason why its form was often adopted, especially by the Celts in the construction of their temples, though I have admitted in the text the commonly received opinion that in cross-shaped temples the four limbs of the cross referred to the four elements. Brinton assigns another symbolism.
The rectangular houses were built in a style still found in Chinese houses, except that their front did not always face south as is now the general rule. The Shang buried their kings in large, subterranean, cross-shaped tombs outside the city, and many implements, animals and human sacrifices were buried together with them.
Besides all this each strip between the eight thin shafts is covered from top to bottom except where the empty niches occur with carving in slight relief, either foliage or, more usually, renaissance arabesques. Larger piers stand next the transept, cross-shaped, formed of four of the thinner piers set together, and about six feet thick.
No cross-shaped symbol of wood or of any other material had any part in the Christianity of the second and third centuries; and the only cross which had any part in the Christianity of those days was the immaterial one traced upon the forehead in the non-Mosaic and originally Pagan initiatory rite of Baptism, and at other times also according to some of the Fathers, apparently as a charm against the machinations of evil spirits.
Consider, for example, all the unexpected aesthetic values, the inspiration and variety of emotional result which arises out of the cross-shaped plan of the Gothic cathedral, and the undesigned delight and wonder of white marble that has ensued, as I have been told, through the ageing and whitening of the realistically coloured statuary of the Greeks and Romans.
Had there been any such intimation in the twenty-seven Greek works referring to Jesus, which our Church selected out of a very large number and called the "New Testament," the Greek letter chi, which was cross-shaped, would in the ordinary course have been referred to; and some such term as Kata chiasmon, "like a chi," made use of.
He had told her that his heart had throbbed more anxiously during her daring feats than on the bloodiest field of battle. She moved forward more swiftly to the time of the lively dancing tune which the city pipers were playing. Midway along the rope she turned, ran back to the cross-shaped trestle at the steeple window, handed the balancing pole to Loni, and received a cage filled with doves.
He would remember how the Saint had called upon his comrades at Heavenfield to fall down with him before the Cross and pray Almighty God for salvation from the mighty foe. He would recall the great victory and the cross-shaped church built to commemorate it. He knew well the honour of the Cross.
It is also clear from the evidence already quoted concerning the adoption by Christians in the fourth century of a symbol they denounced in the third, that whether Jesus was executed upon a cross-shaped instrument or not, that was not the chief reason why the phallic symbol of Life became recognised as the symbol of the Christ.
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