Dean Farrar states upon page 11 of his Life of Christ as represented in Art that "Of all early Christian symbols the Fish was the most frequent and the favourite."
The Fish; and not the Cross.
Moreover the Dean significantly adds upon the next page, that the Fish
"Continued to be a common symbol down to the days of Constantine."
And the significance lies in the fact that the introduction by Constantine of the solar symbols venerated by the Gauls, may account for the displacement of the symbol of the Fish from favour.
Upon page 19 Dr. Farrar goes on to say that
"Two symbols continued for ages to be especially common, of which I have not yet spoken. They were not generally adopted, even if they appeared at all, until after the Peace of the Church at the beginning of the fourth century. I mean the cross and the monogram of Christ."
Here again, it will be seen, the Dean admits that the cross, as the symbol of our religion, came in with Constantine.
Directly after the passage last quoted Dean Farrar very misleadingly remarks: "It must be remembered that the cross was in itself an object of utter horror even to the Pagans." For the exact reverse is the truth, inasmuch as in almost every land a cross of some description had been for ages venerated as a symbol of Life.
The fact of course is that the Dean here and elsewhere, like other Christian writers, does not take the trouble to distinguish between the symbol of the cross and the death caused by execution upon a stauros; which instrument, by the way, was, as has been shown, not necessarily in the shape of a cross, and appears to have been in most cases a stake without a transverse rail. What the Pagans held in utter horror was the awful death caused by transfixion by or affixion to a stauros, whatever its shape; the symbol of the cross was, upon the contrary, an object of veneration among them from time immemorial.
On page 23 Dr. Farrar, alluding to the use
of the transient sign of the cross by the Christians of early days, makes the admission
"That it did not remind them of the Crucifixion only or even mainly is proved alike by their literature and other relics."
Exactly so: for the non-material sign traced by them (and by us) upon the forehead in the non-Mosaic initiatory rite of baptism and perhaps also upon the breast or in the air at other times, seems to have been the survival of a Pagan and pre-Christian custom.