We might speak of the limitations that go with other conceptions of gods incarnate. They are specialized by race and localized by country. This thought has been illustrated elsewhere. It may answer now simply to remind you that Vishnu is Hindustanee, Isis and Osiris Egyptian, Odin and Thor Scandinavian. Not one of them has relations to the whole human race. But Jesus, who calls himself “the Son of man,” is of all, and belongs to all. But the most notable difference to be considered now, that which alone would place Jesus apart from all others, whether men or legendary gods, is in the end he proposed to accomplish. The gods became incarnate and appeared to men, or dwelt among them, to do many and very different things; Jesus to do just one thing, and to do what no other ever proposed to do, or so much as thought of doing. He, “the Son of man,” was of all and for all, and he proposes an end that concerns all. The evil he would remove from all is not a Hebrew trouble; it is in the human race. This is plainer in comparison. Vishnu, the supreme god of Hindustanee mythology, has condescended, so the old stories tell us, to almost innumerable incarnations. But for what end? Always to work some prodigies; to do some strange things on the plane of men’s lives; to do things affecting men’s circumstances, not men’s character. He comes to do something in a limited sphere; something for his people, Hindustanee people, not for the whole race of man. Vishnu, when he comes in mercy, comes to remedy external conditions; he delivers from pestilence, famine, wild beasts, poisonous serpents. When he comes in wrath it is to crush his enemies. In mythology the very conception men had of the coming of the gods grew out of their circumstances. Thus in India the conception of evil itself was determined by conditions peculiar to India. With them evil grew out of the jungles where pestilence was bred, serpents abounded, and fierce man-eating tigers hid themselves and waited for their prey. It was determined by those conditions of life peculiar to dense populations, subject to the scourges that followed war, and evil natural conditions--plague and famine. The evil Jesus considered was peculiar to no people and to no country; it did not grow out of natural conditions; it was in man himself, and it was sin. Among warlike nations the gods came down to take part in mere national matters; they fought the battles of their friends and punished their enemies. Your Homer tells you all this in the story of the siege of Troy. Virgil tells you the same thing; your classical authors are full of it. The poor Indians and negro tribes tell of such incarnations.