Far down toward modern times the temples of the old
Prussians, for example, were oak groves, and among them a hierarchy of
priests was ordained to keep the sacred fire perpetually burning at
the root of the sacred oak.
He touched the third object on the tree--the cross under the
candle--and went on:
"To the Christian believer the cross signifies one supreme event:
Calvary and the tragedy of the Crucifixion. It was what the Marys saw
and the apostles that morning in Gethsemane. But no one in that age
thought of the cross as a Christian symbol. John and Peter and Paul
and the rest went down into their graves without so regarding it. The
Magdalene never clung to it with life-tired arms, nor poured out at
the foot of it the benizon of her tears. Not until the third century
after Christ did the Bishops assembled at Nice announce it a Christian
symbol. But it was a sacred emblem in the dateless antiquity of
Egypt. To primitive man it stood for that sacred light and fire of
life which was himself. For he himself is a cross--the first cross he
has ever known. The faithful may truly think of the Son of Man as
crucified as the image of humanity. And thus ages before Christ,
cross worship and forest worship were brought together: for instance,
among the Druids who hunted for an oak, two boughs of which made with
the trunk of the tree the figure of the cross; and on these three they
cut the names of three of their gods and this was holy-cross wood.
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