coins, it was not so much a Gaulish symbol as the other; and it was
evidently because that other was the symbol followed by the triumphant
leader of the Gauls and his victorious army, that the Christians wished
to specially identify it with the Christ.

In any case, whether the so-called Monogram of Christ was more or less
forced upon Christianity when Constantine made our faith the State
Religion of his empire, or whether it was adopted by Christians of
their own volition, it was a politic move (than which few possible
moves could have done more to secure the triumph of our faith) to
accept as the symbol of the Christian Church what was at one and the
same time the symbol of Constantine, of the Roman State, and of the
universally adored Sun-God.

That the more generally accepted symbol of the Sun-God, the cross of
four equal arms, should in time supplant the more local one, was of
course only to be expected; as was the adoption of a cross with one arm
longer than the others, as being the only kind which could possibly be
connected with the story of Jesus as the Christ incarnate.

As to the possible objection that what has been dealt with in this
chapter has been rather the origin of the Christian custom of
manufacturing and venerating material representations of the sign or
figure of the cross than the origin of the Christian cross itself, the
answer is obvious. And the answer is that the first cross which can
_justly_ be called "Christian," was the one which was the first to be
considered, to use Dean Farrar's expressions, "mainly," if not "only,"
a representation of an instrument of execution; which cross was
undoubtedly not a transient sign or gesture but a material
representation of the cross with one arm longer than the others and was