The Upanishads are the second series of Hindu scriptures. These practically identify the human soul, as well as all natural objects, with the supreme God. The self is only a manifestation of Brahma. The trend is toward absolute pantheism. The individual is lost in the whole, and the realization of this is salvation. But humanity cannot be content without the semblance of personality in God, and since everything has become divine, it was easy to regard not only natural powers, but also personal beings as gods. Polytheism was the result. Vishnu and Siva, gods of reproductive and destructive powers, came to be worshiped. Incarnation and transmigration followed. The incarnation was not the incarnation of the supreme Brahma, but of one of the subordinate deities, Vishnu, and even this incarnation was but a temporary assumption of human form--a vanishing manifestation, to be put off again like a worn-out garment when the real god returned to his heaven. The Hindu Trimurti was never the Christian Trinity; for Christ is not only the supreme God manifest in the flesh, but also the eternal Revealer of God, who takes our humanity to be a part of himself forever, the partaker of his inmost being and the sharer of his throne. While we credit Hinduism with the idea of incarnation, we regard it as only showing this to be a necessity of human thought, and as far from satisfying man's longings for union with God. Gautama Buddha, passionless and lost in the contemplation of his own excellence, is not the Christian Redeemer, who daily bears our burdens and takes upon himself, in order that he may take away, the sin of the world. And what shall we say of the other deities of the Hindu pantheon, but that they are personifications of every human caprice and vice. The Krishna of the Puranas has infected all India with his licentiousness, and has given sanction to the worst forms of lust.