Abstract
“Invariably the great religions constitute merger between classical and popular strains. A symbol of such symbiosis was once advanced by John Clark Archer of Yale. It took the form of the letter X on its side, as the Romans wrote it to signify 1000. Thus one stroke stood for mythical folklore and sundry visible elements of mass religion as they appear in rite and cult. The other stroke represented classical, conceptual, and scriptural norms of faith and order.
“These two strokes of the symbol may be conceived in terms of two historical streams flowing down from antiquity. Intersecting at a given point in time, they form a traffic circle, so to say, affording both transit and interchange for future direction.
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