Christian Fathers to make out Pythagoras a debtor to Hebraic wisdom, Plato an 'Atticizing Moses,' Aristotle a picker-up of ethics from a Jew, Seneca a correspondent of St. Paul, were due 'in some cases to ignorance, in some to a want of perfect honesty in controversial dealing.'[287:2] "_His arguments would be even more conclusive if applied to the Bhagavad-gita_, the author of which was probably contemporaneous with Seneca.[287:3] It must, indeed, be admitted that the flames of true light which emerge from the mists of pantheism in the writings of Indian philosophers, must spring from the same source of light as the Gospel itself; but it may reasonably be questioned whether there could have been any actual contact of the Hindoo systems with Christianity without a more satisfactory result in the modification of pantheistic and anti-Christian ideas."[288:1] Again he says: "It should not be forgotten that although the nations of Europe have changed their religions during the past eighteen centuries, _the Hindu has not done so, except very partially_. Islam converted a certain number by force of arms in the eighth and following centuries, and Christian truth is at last slowly creeping onwards and winning its way by its own inherent energy in the nineteenth; _but the religious creeds, rites, customs, and habits of thought of the Hindus generally, have altered little since the days of Manu, five hundred years B. C._"[288:2] These words are conclusive; comments, therefore, are unnecessary. Geo. W. Cox, in his "Aryan Mythology," speaking on this subject says: "It is true that these myths have been crystallized around the name of Crishna in ages subsequent to the period during which the earliest _vedic_ literature came into existence; _but the myths themselves are found in this older literature associated with other gods_, and not always only in germ. _There is no more room for inferring foreign influence in the growth of any of these myths than, as Bunsen rightly insists, there is room for tracing Christian influence in the earlier epical literature of the Teutonic tribes._ Practically the myths of Crishna seems to have been fully developed in the days of Megasthenes (fourth century B. C.) who identifies him with the Greek Hercules."[288:3] It should be remembered, in connection with this, that Dr. Parkhurst and others have considered _Hercules_ a type of Christ Jesus. In the ancient epics Crishna is made to say: "I am Vishnu, Brahma, Indra, and the source as well as the destruction of things, the creator and the annihilator of the whole aggregate of existences. While all men live in unrighteousness, I, the unfailing, build up the bulwark of righteousness, as the ages pass away."[288:4]