THE GNOSTIC CONCEPTION OF THE CROSS. 



119 



that it must have cost to produce a full and clear handling of so 

 recondite a subject. The lecturer is probably right in his inference 

 that the Gnostic idea of Christ's gathering His limbs together on the 

 Cross is derived from the Egyptian myth of Osiris ; and, in keeping 

 with the Egyptian element in Gnosticism, I have seen at the British 

 Museum a Gnostic gem consisting of Christ's haloed face carved 

 on the back of a beetle. As the Egyptian beetle rolls together the 

 ball of earth in which it has laid its egg, so, it was supposed, had a 

 beetle once rolled together the ball of the sun ; and hence Egyptian 

 kings called themselves Sun-Beetles — Aa-khepru-Ka, Men-kheper-Ra, 

 and the like : Christ was put on the same level by these dreamers. 



The Chairman, in closing the discussion, said that, while fully 

 agreeing with the proposal to thank the lecturer very cordially for 

 his research and labour, he doubted how far it was worth while 

 to go so fully into what he might call the pathology of Christianity. 

 Gnosticism was a system so wholly void of reason, method, and 

 aim, that it defied real analysis, and led us only farther and farther into 

 the mire and the dark. 



Was such a farrago of capricious and arbitrary notions really 

 worth serious and prolonged study ? The Cross was beyond all 

 dispute the core and centre ot vital Christianity. It was more than 

 an emblem : it was a symbol of the last realities of the Gospel. 

 The Gnostic vagaries about the Cross were merely idle and irrelevant 

 fancies, without power or purpose. It was remarkable that St. Paul, 

 the great exponent of the Cross, did not even mention the Cross or 

 crucifixion in the greatest of all his epistles — that to the Romans. 



The resolution was cordially carried. 



Written Communication. 



Rev. D. M. McIntyre, of Glasgow, wrote : — 



The Gnostic identification of the Cross with Christ may be due to 

 the fact that from a very early period a cross (rectangular, usually, 

 with equal arms), representing a star, was the symbol of Deity. 

 According to Professor Sayce, the cross appears in Ancient Chaldea, 

 on cylinders of the Kassite dynasty, evidently the ideogram for 

 divinity And Sir Arthur Evans writes with reference to a small 

 marble cross which he found in a central place in the shrine of the 

 Cretan goddess-mother : "It must be borne in mind that the equal- 



