died upon when we accepted the cross as our symbol, the chances
obviously are that we accepted the cross as our symbol for some other
reason than that we assert.

As a matter of fact our position regarding the whole matter is
illogical and unsatisfactory, and we ought to alter it by honestly
facing the facts that we cannot satisfactorily prove that our symbol
was adopted as a representation of the instrument of execution to which
Jesus was affixed, and that we do not even know for certain that the
instrument in question was cross-shaped.

It need only be added that there is not a single sentence in any of the
numerous writings forming the New Testament, which, in the original
Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used
in the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary stauros; much less to
the effect that it consisted, not of one piece of timber, but of two
pieces nailed together in the form of a cross.

Taking the whole of the foregoing facts into consideration, it will be
seen that it is not a little misleading upon the part of our teachers
to translate the word stauros as "cross" when rendering the Greek
documents of the Church into our native tongue, and to support that
action by putting "cross" in our lexicons as the meaning of stauros
without carefully explaining that that was at any rate not the primary
meaning of the word in the days of the Apostles, did not become its
primary signification till long afterwards, and became so then, if at
all, only because, despite the absence of corroborative evidence, it
was for some reason or other assumed that the particular stauros upon
which Jesus was executed had that particular shape.