We have shown, then, by the foregoing exposition, that one cause of the deification of men was simply an attempt to solve the problem of human greatness,--an attempt to account for the moral and intellectual superiority of men which enabled them to perform deeds and otherwise exhibit a character far above the capacity of the multitude to comprehend, and which they could find no other way to account for than to suppose them to be Gods, while the low and groveling conceptions which most religious nations, and especially the Jews, had formed of the character and essential attributes of the Infinite Deity (often investing him with the most ignoble human attributes, human passions, and human imperfections), made it perfectly easy to convert their great men by imagination into Gods. The Jews represented God not only as a coming down from heaven in propria persona, and walking, talking, wrestling, &c., as a man (on one occasion we are told he and Jacob scuffled all night), but he is often represented as acting the part of a wicked man, such as lying (see 2 Chron. v. 22), getting mad (see Deut. i. 37), swearing, sanctioning the highhanded and demoralizing crimes of stealing (see Ex. iii. 2), of robbery (see Ex. xii. 36), of murder (see Deut. xiii. 2) and even fornication (see Gen. xxxi. 1, and Num. xxxi) and thus they invested Diety with such mean, low, despicable attributes as to reduce his moral character to a level with the most immoral man in society. So that it was very easy, if not very natural, to elevate their great men (if it really required any elevation) to a level with their God. Men and Gods were in character and conception so nearly alike, that it was easy to bring them on a level, or to mistake one for the other. And hence it is we find an incarnated God, Savior, Son of God, Redeemer, &c., figuring in the early history of nearly every oriental religious nation whose name and history has descended to us. Indeed, the practice of deifying men, or mistaking men for Gods, was once so common, so nearly universal, that it must require a mind very ignorant of oriental history to adore Jesus Christ as having been the only character of this kind who figured in the religious world. It was, as before suggested, deemed the most rational way of accounting for the marked superiority among men, to suppose that some men had a divine birth, and were begotten by the great Infinite Deity himself, and descended to the earth through the purest human (virgin) channel.