Trinity; or two fingers emblematic of the two natures of the Saviour. In the east it is made from left to right.

The usages referred to in the passages quoted above are all of the private kind, and their employment, although common to all, must always have depended as to their frequency upon the taste or the habits of individuals. The very earliest liturgical forms, however, give ample proof of their use also in the stated ritual of the Church.

Those ancient offices for the celebration of the Eucharist, known as the Divine Liturgies of S. James, S. Mark, of the Holy Apostles, and others, are of uncertain date, yet is generally agreed that their substance belongs to a period before the great council at Nicaea (325 A.D.); and they one and all contemplate the use of the sacred sign in the course of their ritual. These signations are of several kinds; the priest signs the elements before offering them at the altar; he blesses the people with the sign, and is bidden also to sign both himself and all the deacons who are assisting, on the forehead. Moreover at certain prayers he stands with arms folded crosswise on his breast, and a curious rubric in the Liturgy of the Holy Apostles runs, “The priest kisses the Host in the form of a cross, in such a way, however, that his lips do not touch it, but appear to kiss it.” In the different liturgies these several consignations are found with varying frequency, but none are without the sign of the cross in some part of the office. It was not in the Eucharist alone, however, that it was used.

In ordination, according to an early account, the bishop first laid his hand on the head of him who was to be made priest, “with a holy prayer,” and then signed him with a cross, after which all the clergy present gave him the kiss of peace. At the reception of catechumens, or candidates for baptism, this sign formed an important part of the ceremony. “Even as a boy,” S. Augustine tells us in his Confessions, “had I heard of eternal life promised to us through the humility of the Lord our God condescending to our pride, and I was signed with the sign of the cross, and was seasoned with His salt.” Marcus of Gaza also, writing, about the year 400 A.D., the life of his master and Bishop, Porphyrius, describes how some converts, falling at the bishop’s feet, “desired the Sign of Christ, upon which he signed them and made them catechumens.” The well-known primitive posture of prayer, namely, with outspread arms, is distinctly alleged by many early writers to be an intentional allusion to the cross, perhaps especially to the Saviour’s attitude when hanging thereon. So S. Ambrose prayed upon his death-bed; and so every Christian when at prayer represented, according to Asterius Amasenus (a writer of the close of the fourth century), “the Passion of the Cross by his gesture.” Alluding to this constant use of the holy sign in the public offices of the Church, S. Augustine says, “If we are to be regenerated, the Cross is used; or if we are to be partakers of the mystical food of the Eucharist, or to receive ordination, we are signed with the sign of the cross.”

In the English Prayer-Book, as is well known, this sign is specifically retained in the office of Holy Baptism, and the thirtieth Canon was issued in defence of that retention. Of its use in this connection in the primitive Church there can be no question, nor was it denied by those Puritans, who, at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, objected to it. S. Augustine informs us that the water for baptism was signed with a cross; and from several sources we learn that both in the exorcism and the unction, which anciently preceded the actual administration of the sacrament, the catechumen was signed. And further, as the candidate was signed when first received as such, and again when he was baptised, so, too, when the work was completed in confirmation he was signed again. This last signation was preserved, with others, in the first Prayer-Book of King Edward VI., where the bishop is enjoined, immediately before the laying on of hands, to sign the confirmee on the forehead, saying, “N., I sign thee with the sign of the cross, and lay mine hand upon thee, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Amen.”

In passing from this subject some words of Wheatly’s concerning the use of the sign of the cross in the English Church are worth quoting. After observing that in every ancient liturgy one or two signations at least are always found, he proceeds,—“So much has been thought proper on this solemn occasion, to testify that we are not ashamed of the Cross of Christ, and that the solemn service we are then about is performed in honour of a crucified Saviour. And therefore as the Church of England has thought fit to retain this ceremony in the ministration of one of her sacraments, I see not why she should lay it aside in the ministration of the other.”

The material cross was also early adopted in the ritual of the church. As early as the year 400 A.D., mention is made of processional crosses, their chief use being in the Rogations, or processions in which the Litany was sung. Originally they were without the figure of the Crucified, but frequently bore at their extremities the emblems of the four evangelists, while sometimes there were sconces for holding candles on the arms. Such a cross was given to some of the churches at Rome by Charlemagne, and several splendid mediæval examples are still preserved on the Continent. A processional, or station, cross in the Lateran, dates from the fifteenth century; S. Denis has one of the time of S. Louis, and Mayence possesses a very fine one of gilded bronze of the twelfth or thirteenth century, which embodies in its sculptures a whole system of teaching. In this instance the Agnus Dei occupies the centre of the face of the cross, having in the corresponding place on the reverse the Sacrifice of Abraham; the following pairs of subjects fill the ends of the shaft and of the arms, the New Testament subject being in each case on the front, and that taken from the Old Testament behind it at the back; the descent into Hades and Samson carrying off the gates of Gaza, the Resurrection and Jonah cast up by the whale, the Ascension of Christ and that of Elijah, Pentecost and the giving of the Law on Sinai.

Anciently England possessed some very noble examples of processional crosses. At Durham, for instance, was one for use on high festivals, of gold on a silver staff, and another, for ordinary occasions, of crystal. Canterbury, according to an inventory of 1295, had four, all “gilded and gemmed,” and Salisbury, in 1222, had one for Sundays of silver, and another, presumably for festivals, “well gilt and with stones.”

The Exeter Synod, held in 1287, decreed that every parish church should have one fixed cross and one movable, of which the first was probably meant to be a rood, and the second a station-cross, placed when not in procession on the altar. But according to the English rite, a system of ceremonial far more ornate than any now in use in western Christendom, several processional crosses were required, at any rate in large and fully furnished churches. During Lent a plain wooden one was employed, without the figure of our Lord, and painted blood-red; from Easter to Ascensiontide the cross was to be of beryl or of crystal; those of brass or the precious metals being no doubt carried on other high festivals, and on Sundays.

The processional Crucifix, symbolical of our great Exemplar going before His people in their pilgrimage through the world, is borne with the figure facing outwards, in the direction in which the procession is moving; and during Lent it is shrouded, as a mark