This is more difficult to believe than the miracle itself. It is the most improbable statement ever penned--the one that does most violence to human reason. The crudest savages on earth would not have slain nor even harmed a man who had proved himself the Conqueror and King of Death. 397 What did Christ say during his ministry concerning the cross? "He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me is not worthy of me" (Matthew x, 38; Luke xiv, 27). "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark viii, 34). "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke ix, 23). These utterances are alleged to have been made early in his ministry. Now, the cross as a Christian symbol is supposed to have been adopted after, and not until after, the crucifixion. Its introduction in the passages quoted suggests one of two things: either that the Synoptics put into the mouth of Jesus words that he never uttered, or that the cross, as a religious symbol, was used before the crucifixion, in which case its adoption by the church is no proof of the crucifixion. 398 The so-called historical books of the New Testament, the Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, declare that Christ was crucified. Do the remaining books of the New Testament confirm it? In the first four Pauline Epistles, known as the genuine Epistles of Paul, the verb crucify--crucified appears in ten different texts, as follows: "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed" (Romans vi, 6). "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?" (1 Corinthians, i, 13.) "But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness" (23). "For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (ii, 2). "For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (8). "For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God" (2 Corinthians xiii, 4). "I am crucified with Christ" (Galatians ii, 20). "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?" (iii, 1.) "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (v, 24). "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (vi, 14). Webster defines this word as follows: "1. To nail to a cross; to put to death by nailing the hands and feet to a cross or gibbet, sometimes, anciently, by fastening a criminal to a tree with cords. 2. In scriptural language, to subdue; to mortify; to destroy the power or ruling influence of. 3. To reject and despise. 4. To vex or torment."