I do not join in the Puritan horror of one of the
oldest of churches. It is time the old bitterness
were laid aside, especially by us, who have suffered
nothing from Rome. Our forefathers wrestled
with a strong man in triple armor, — namely,
the Church of Rome, — and conquered, after many
wounds, the right of being let alone. Among
the Saxon race that man has been shorn of power,
and yet many are eager to strike against a skele-
ton which is but dust and ashes. As to the cross,
as a sign, the men who speak of it should not ob-
ject to seeing it, or even wearing it. Across seas



FRENCHMAN'S HEAD. 185

I have met it in many places: up among the
Alps ; by the road-sides, on the Rhine plain ; and
always with a sense of somehow being made better
by that simple sign. To-day is not time here ; but
a to-morrow comes when the Church will receive
the cross, as Constantine did, as the sign under
which it conquers. For prejudice is temporal, but
the cross eternal. There is a certain mystery of the
cross, and I should not wonder if the Universe, as
many old churches are, were built upon it, and into
the shape of it. A very common, a very natural,
a very facile shape for men to pattern after or in-
vent in their architecture or mechanics, and long
ago men painted it or graved it in Egypt, and be-
fore Egypt, until its origin is lost in antiquity, as
many of the most wonderful religious ideas of the
heathen are. I have been interested in the story
which the early Church Fathers give of that Egyp-
tian apple, in which, whatever way you cut it, ap-
pears always a cross. And I think that if we saw
clearly enough, we should find beneath all substance
a cross, as a sign of how the world lives and thrives.
