4. In all nations myths defy chronology; they are without dates. In the imagination of their people they seem to have existed not only from the beginnings of national life, but to have gone before it. Think of any of them--those that have come down to us from ancient nations, as well as those that still hold their place in the folk-lore of barbarous peoples. They are all without dates. We do not read of Isis and Osiris appearing in the capital of Egypt in the days of Rameses II.; the Egyptian gods are older than any of their dynasties and lived before men kept genealogies. And so of all the gods of mythology; they are without contemporaries known to any history. Myths precede the invention of calendars; if time was counted at all the years were without dates. How utterly different is the story of Jesus, that some men tell us is only a Hebrew myth! Of Jesus and the time of his appearing it is written: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.” Augustus was emperor; Cyrenius was governor in Syria; Herod was king in Judea. 5. Myths defy topography as they do chronology; they are not only without dates, they are without definite localities. They appeared not only some when that cannot be fixed in time, but somewhere that cannot be found as a place. Their origin is shrouded in mystery. Some of the contemporaries of Jesus made it a point against him, “As to this man we know whence he is.” In the story of Jesus we are told of places with such exactness that the statements of the evangelists are to this day the best guides to the scholarly men who make explorations in order to find relics and fragments of lost history in Palestine. They do not tell us of Jesus as appearing somewhere in their country, as Galilee, Samaria, Judea. They tell us of Nazareth, Bethlehem, Bethsaida, Capernaum, Bethphage, Bethany, the Mount of Olives. They tell us of the “beautiful gate of the temple” which, he and his disciples looked upon, and of “Jacob’s well” “near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph”--the very spot where Jesus sat to rest, while his disciples went to Sychar to buy bread of the baker--the well from which a woman of the Samaritans drew water and gave him to drink. 6. Myths are not completed at once. They require long time--ages--for their development. But the conception of the character of Jesus comes into the thought of men with his manifestation and abides through the centuries that have followed as it was first given to the world.