It was this very human conception of divine incarnation that filled the national imagination and sustained the national hopes before Jesus came. Such an incarnation they were longing for when they rejected him because they could not use him for their ends; it is a conception that to this day lingers in Hebrew thought and hope. They looked and prayed for a divine warrior-king who would lead their armies, restore their nation, and give it dominion over the world. How incredible the idea that the evangelists have only given us a reflection of popular sentiment, the outgrowth of national traditions! These sentiments and traditions were utterly spoiled by the sort of incarnation the evangelists describe. The nation resented unto death the conception Jesus had of his mission to men; before such a king as Jesus they preferred the Cæsar they hated; they put to death the man who only sought to save them from their sins because he disappointed them in their patriotic ambitions. Speaking in a general way, the gods of the nations, when they become incarnate, come to do a man’s sort of work. They work upon the outside of life; they seek to deliver man from external evils and to improve his external conditions. The “twelve labors of Hercules” tell us what men thought they needed a divine man to do; the evangelists tell us what the divine Man thought men needed that he should do. When the gods of mythology become incarnate they work in the realm of circumstances; Jesus speaks only of the man himself, his heart, his character, and seeks only to make him good. Here is, therefore, the essential difference: his conception of evil, and back of that, of course, his conception of man himself. As we have seen, in the thought of Jesus the evil and the good, the woes and the blessings of humanity are in man himself; they are not in externals, but internals; not in circumstances, but in character. Jesus does not, therefore, dwell upon poverty or wealth, sickness or health, enemies or friends, contempt or favor, servitude or freedom, early death or long life. He is not concerned about any circumstances whatever that merely determine man’s external life; he is concerned about man himself. If there be any real good or any real evil the good and the evil are inside, not outside the man.