"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying: Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."[111:2] A Deliverer was hoped for, expected, prophesied, in the time of Jewish misery[112:1] (and _Cyrus_ was perhaps the first referred to); but as no one appeared who did what the Messiah, according to prophecy, should do, they went on degrading each successive conqueror and hero from the Messianic dignity, and are still expecting the true Deliverer. Hebrew and Christian divines both start from the same assumed unproven premises, viz.: that a Messiah, having been foretold, must appear; but there they diverge, and the Jews show themselves to be the sounder logicians of the two: the Christians assuming that Jesus was the Messiah _intended_ (though not the one _expected_), wrest the obvious meaning of the prophecies to show that they were fulfilled in him; while the Jews, assuming the obvious meaning of the prophecies to be their real meaning, argue that they were not fulfilled in Christ Jesus, and therefore that the Messiah is yet to come. We shall now see, in the words of Bishop Hawes: "that God should, in some extraordinary manner, visit and dwell with man, is an idea which, as we read the writings of the _ancient Heathens_, meets us in a thousand different forms." Immaculate conceptions and celestial descents were so currently received among the ancients, that whoever had greatly distinguished himself in the affairs of men was thought to be of supernatural lineage. Gods descended from heaven and were made incarnate in men, and men ascended from earth, and took their seat among the gods, so that these incarnations and apotheosises were fast filling Olympus with divinities. In our inquiries on this subject we shall turn first to _Asia_, where, as the learned Thomas Maurice remarks in his _Indian Antiquities_, "in every age, and in almost every region of the Asiatic world, there seems uniformly to have flourished an immemorial tradition that one god had, from all eternity, _begotten another god_."[112:2]