The universal prevalence of the cross as an ornament and symbol during the last eighteen centuries in the Christian church has led to some great, if not grave, mistakes. It has been supposed, and for various obvious reasons very naturally so, to be of exclusively Christian origin, and to represent materially no more than the instrument by which the founder of that religion was put to death; and, spiritually or symbolically, faith in the sacrificial atoning work he then completed. There are not a few people about who, having become imbued with this idea, rush to the hasty conclusion that wherever the cross is found, and upon whatever monuments, it indicates a connection with Christianity, and is therefore of comparatively modern origin. History, in consequence, becomes a strange and unfathomable mystery, especially when it belongs to kingdoms of well-known great antiquity, amongst whose symbols or ornaments the cross is plentiful, and the mind finds itself involved in a confusion from which it cannot readily extricate itself. Never was there a greater blunder perpetrated, or a more ignorant one, than the notion of the figure of the cross owing its origin to the instrument of Christ's death, and the Christian who finds comfort in pressing it to his lips in the hour of devotion or of trouble must be reminded that the ancient Egyptian did a similar thing. The fact is, there is great similarity between the cross worship, or veneration if you please, of ancient and modern times. Christians, we know, are apt to repudiate the charge of rendering worship to this symbol, but it is clear from what is printed in some of their books of devotion that some sort of worship is actually rendered, though disguised under other names. As to the veneration thus offered being right or wrong, we here say nothing; the fact only concerns us so far as it relates to the subject we have in hand.