We are to think of Jesus, they tell us, as we do of the Greek Theseus, of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, of the Thor and Odin of the Scandinavian legends, of the Hindustanee Vishnu, or of Buddha, and of scores of other myths that belong to the poetry, traditions, superstitions, and religions of other nations. Much scholarship has been mustered into the service of this notion. All this may appear more absurd than serious to one whose education has made Jesus of Nazareth real to his thoughts. It may indeed be so; but we must be fair even to those who seem to us to advance absurd views. I cannot doubt that some able and sincere minds have accepted a theory of Jesus that makes him out only a Hebrew myth. Let us look at this theory in a common-sense way, without burdening these pages with tiresome and confusing quotations. There are some things which may be plain enough to those who are unlearned in the writings and legends referred to--some things that the learned cannot deny. Myths are growths, and whatever grows--whether a tree, a man, a thought, or a legend--grows under certain laws that cannot be violated. There may be some laws under which myths develop unknown to me. But some of these laws are unmistakable. I mention them, and you will see for yourself that none of them are observed in the story of Jesus. The story we find in the evangelists violates them all. If the conceptions among other nations that are called myths are myths then Jesus cannot be counted among them. 1. Myths originate and, as conceptions, are complete before written history. In all nations the earliest historians relate mythological stories that antedate all letters and all records. In some nations a fragmentary history went to a sort of record before there was a true written language. Rude pictures engraved on stone or painted, and what are called cuneiform characters, such as are found on the bricks or clay cylinders among the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, and such hieroglyphics as are found on ancient tombs in Egypt, in Mexico, and other countries--these tell us of national myths that belonged to a period ages before even these crude attempts at writing were made. The principle--it is invariable as a law--holds good in every nation that has a myth or written history of any sort. But the Jesus of the evangelists appeared, and the story of his life was written, long after the most eventful and important history of the Hebrew race was recorded.