Ancient Dates.—Do not be troubled at the ancient dates given us by some of the learned men who are claiming to have discovered by various histories, written on stones or bricks, that Egyptian history goes back to more than forty centuries before Christ; that Aztec or Chinese history is older still, etc., etc. In the first place, it is often difficult to tell whether these ancients reckoned by months or years. This is especially true where there is no definition of measuring periods or parallel texts in known languages. Secondly, all nations are wont to boast of their great ancestors, and ancient heroes, deifying their chiefs and magnifying the time of their reign. Thirdly, sometimes kings given as reigning successively, reigned contemporaneously, their reigns lapping or paralleling each other. Fourthly, nations in question counted among their ancestors the long-lived race before the Deluge. It is certainly of enough importance to take these things into consideration before condemning the Bible.