So also with regard to the lateness of the Krishna legends in literary form, it is futile to argue that they are, to use a familiar term, cribbed from the canonical and apocryphal gospels, when most of them are obviously plagiarisms of the ancient sun-myths. The Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, speaking on this subject in his Aryan Mythology, says: "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 early epical literature of the Teutonic tribes. Practically the myths of Krishna seem to have been fully developed in the days of Megasthenes (fourth century B.C.), who identifies him with the Greek Hercules." [Megasthenes wrote a work on India, which was the chief source of the later Greek information on the subject.] Professor Monier Williams, the accepted authority on Hinduism, writing for the S.P.G., in his book, Indian Wisdom, and speaking of the Bhagavad-gita, says: "It may reasonably be questioned whether there could have been any actual contact of the Hindoo system with Christianity without a more satisfactory result in the modification of Pantheistic and anti-Christian ideas." Again, he says: "The religious creeds, rites, customs, and habits of thought of the Hindoos generally had altered little since the days of Menu, 500 years B.C." In his Hinduism (p. 19) he shows that "we may be justified in assuming that the hymns of the Veda were probably composed by a succession of poets at different dates between 1500 and 1000 years B.C." This is an important concession, because the ancient hymns of the Veda furnish the germs of those sun-myths which tell of the death, resurrection, and ascension of a virgin-born saviour. Whatever may be thought of the conclusions of the highest authorities regarding Krishnaistic and Buddhistic beliefs, I hope I may have so far carried the reader with me that he will be prepared to admit that there are very many striking resemblances to the Gospel stories in those ancient beliefs whose priority to Christianity is not disputed. Now that these resemblances are no longer attributed to a device of the Evil One, an explanation for them is urgently required. The explanation from the Christian side is the theory of a Progressive Revelation; and, apparently, there can be no other, if Christianity be true. The reader has been put in possession of a few details of the remarkable parallels, and he should apply this theory for himself to each and all of them, and see whether it furnishes a fair working hypothesis, whether his mind can accept the explanation now offered to him, and, I might almost add, whether he can honestly continue to call himself a Christian believer. Let him ask himself which is the more probable, that in the common mythos we have marvellous anticipations of the Bible stories, or that in the latter we have reproductions of the former?