1889.] 481 LVaux. 



It has been said by high authority, that : 



" The widely spread mystic purport of the Cross Symbol has long been a 

 matter of comment. Undoubtedly, in many parts of America, the natives 

 regarded it trith reverence anterior to the arrival of Europeans ; in the old 

 tcorld it teas long a sacred symbol before it became the distinctive Emblem of 

 Christianity. ' ' 



It is pointed out that during the historic period, till our era, no evidence 

 asserts a denial of this fact. All the mythologies, Scandinavian, Egjnptian, 

 Assyrian, Greek and Roman, the tombs, temples, obelisks and pyramids 

 contain cumulative evidence of this characteristic of these symbols. 

 Some of the esoteric symbolisms of these mythologies permeate the teach- 

 ings imparted today to five hundred thousand men in the United States. 

 It is also contended that out of the spiritual consciousness of all peoples 

 came a religion as a fact. That it was a revelation is as well worthy of 

 credence as that it originated in the ingenuity of material speculation. As 

 before suggested, the use to which these symbols may have been applied, 

 and with which theories and scientific hypothetical inventions have in late 

 times sought to associate them, fails, nevertheless, to destroy their original 

 character. The Phallic theory has no claim on science or philosophy. 

 It portrays the sensuous and the erotic. The scientific effort to divert the 

 primary relations of these symbols from the assertion of the spiritual con- 

 sciousness of man is ingenious and attractive, but its force is in the weak- 

 ness manifested to make this effort successful. 



It is most reasonable that with the very limited knowledge of primitive 

 man, natural objects were looked upon as the exclusive causation of sen- 

 sations. Perceptions and impressions were thus derived. The conscious- 

 ness accepted the object as the material, and the formal, movent or 

 efficient, and final were spiritual 



The spiritual consciousness absorbed this impression of the nutritive 

 and sensitive consciousness. It then came to pass that the Sun, the Ser- 

 pent, and the Tree became symbols of worship, as the natural consequences 

 of a revelation of a spiritual aspiration, and the worship of these symbols 

 is therefore the test of a Divine revelation as the only possible explana- 

 tion. 



The conclusion that synthetically follows this line of thought on the 

 facts given, from authorities alike credible and acknowledged, is that 

 symbols expressed the sensitive and spiritual conscious impressions and 

 aspirations of people since the creation of man. These symbols were the 

 concrete revelations of a Deity to the human race as a Superhuman Divine 

 Power. 



Science, a superrarified philosophy, and modern speculation cannot 

 divest them of their primary character. Revelation imparted to man this 

 primal purpose and significance of these symbols. They rest neither on 

 speculative assertion nor ingenious assumption ; but were rather the ema- 

 nation of a Divine ever-existing power. 



FROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXVI. 130. 3l. PRINTED OCT. 25, 1889. 



