It has been suggested by some writers, who, for some reason or other, objected to the recognition of the cross as an emblem of great antiquity, that the stone structures which were erected in the British Islands by the Druids, Saxons, and Danes, owed their cruciform character to the necessities of the situation rather than to any other cause; that the stones were placed across each other as a matter of mere convenience, and not with the view of forming a cross, and that these monuments, which served as instruments of Druidical superstition before the implanting of the Gospel in Britain, were afterwards appropriated to the use of Christian memorials by being formed in the figure of a cross or marked with this emblem. It is admitted, of course, that those cruciform structures were thus appropriated, but of what use will it be to repudiate the antiquity of examples whose age has been far surpassed in other parts of the world. The crosses of India, just alluded to, remain to be accounted for, and even when they have been as summarily disposed of as the British ones, there are the crosses suspended from the necks of the Assyrian kings, whose existence cannot possibly be accounted for by the above hypothesis. It was not necessity or convenience that designed a Maltese cross, a thousand years before the Christian era, of precisely the same form as that which is worn by men and women in this nineteenth century, nor probably was it a merely ornamental taste; we are rather disposed to believe that the secret lies in the symbolical meaning, which has ever been attached to the form.
The universality of the cross as a religious symbol is certainly a most astounding fact, and the more so because it has evidently always represented the same fundamental idea in connection with the theological systems, in all ages, of the Old and New Worlds. If but one of these mythologies possessed it, there might be little difficulty in tracing out the significance of the coincidence between its existence there and in Christian theology, but prevailing as it does universally, and destined as it is to retain its connection with the religion of man, it excites feelings of the most profound wonderment and surprise. Lipsius and other early writers, in reference to this matter, declared their sincere belief that the numerous cruciform figures to be found on the monuments of antiquity were of a typical character, and expressed a sentiment which looked forward to the cross of Christ; a few others doubted this, and suggested difficulties, while Gibbon ridiculed the whole matter, as it thus stood, from beginning to end. The belief, however, that the cross in Pagan lands was in some incomprehensible manner connected with the same object or idea as in the Christian church was not easily got rid of, and was considerably deepened by the testimony of missionaries to the New World that amongst people of apparently different origin and of altogether different attributes, the cross was common as an object of worship and veneration. So universal has the presence of this symbol and its attendant worship been found that it has been said to form a complete zone about the habitable globe, extending as it does from Assyria into Egypt, and India, and Anahuac, in their ruined temples; to the pyramidal structures of East and West, and to those in Polynesia, especially the islands of Tonga, Viti, and Easter; "as it appears upon numberless vases, medals, and coins of the earliest known types, centuries anterior to the introduction of Christianity; and as its teaching is expressed in the concordant customs, rites, and traditions of former nations and communities, who were widely separated from, and for the most part ignorant of, the existence of each other, and who possessed, so far as we are aware, no other emblematical figure in common." Egypt, Assyria, Britain, India, China, Scandinavia, the two Americas--all were alike its home, and in all of them was there analogy in the teaching respecting its meaning.