ANSWER: The only way this question can be settled is by appealing to history. Mithraism is a variant religion, which at one time spread over the Roman Empire and came near outclassing Christianity. Yet, Mithra, represented as a young man, and worshiped as a god, is a myth. How, then, did Mithraism arise? Religions, as well as their variations, appear as new branches do upon an old tree. The new branch is quite as much the product of the soil and climate as the parent tree. Like Brahmanism, Judaism, Shinto and the Babylonian and Egyptian Cults, which had no _single_ founders, Christianity is a _deposit_ to which Hellenic, Judaic and Latin tendencies have each contributed its quota. But the popular imagination craves a Maker for the Universe, a founder for Rome, a first man for the human race, and a great chief as the starter of the tribe. In the same way it fancies a divine, or semi- divine being as the author of its _credo._ Because Mohammed is historical, it does not follow that Moses is also historical. That argument would prove too much. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We would be in the same position that the astronomers were when they discovered the great planet Uranus--from their knowledge of the movements of these bodies they were convinced that these perturbations could be occasioned by nothing less than a great planet lying outside of the then view of mankind."(P. 6, _Ibid._) ANSWER: But the astronomers did not rest until they converted the _probability_ of a near-by planet into _demonstration._ Jesus is still a probability. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We have of Jesus a very distinctly outlined history. There is nothing vague about him." (P. 12, _Ibid_.) ANSWER: But in the same sentence the doctor takes all this back by adding: "There are a great many things in his history that are not historical." If so, then we do not possess "a very distinctly outlined history," but at best a mixture of fact and fiction. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We can follow Jesus' history from the time that he entered upon his public career until the time that career closed, just as easily as we can follow Caesar, etc." (P. 12, _Ibid_.)