The Evangelical Church teaches tlie necessity of bap- tism (Augsb. Conf. art. ix, etc.), and also that "the fe- male sex was not ordained by God to rule, either in the Church, or in secular positions where a specially strong understanding and good counsel are requisite. But they are ordered to take care of their household, and to see after it diligently'' (Luther, in Walch's Werke, ii, 1006). The ground which the Reformers took on this question was up to our day approved by the Protestant churches at large. Among the Friends, hoivever, no such dis- tinction has ever been recognised. Indeed, the ten- dency of the present age is to abolish the rule alto- gether, and females in several instances have actually been installed as pastors in this countrj', while in other cases their ability in the pulpit has been freely acknowl- edged even among evangelical denominations. Yet even this hardly satisfies the advocates of '• women's rights" ( q. v.). See Herzog, Real-EncyUop. vi, 647. (J. H. W.)
Incardinare, in the language of the Chiurch of the Middle Ages, is the appointment of any strange bishop, presbyter, deacon, or a person of some other class of the priesthood, to this or that church, in which he was to perform services in part or exclusively, or even the ap- pointment to one particular church. The election of a cardinal was also called incardinare. — Fuhrmami, Iland- wurterbucli d. Kirchengesch, ii, 435.
Incardiiiati clerici, fugitive or foreign priests appointed to a church, in contrast with the appointment of a native and regular priest.— Pierer, Universal Lex- icon, viii, 840.
Incarnation (Lat. in, and caro, flesh), the perma- nent assumption of a human form by a divine personage.
I. False or Pretended Incarnations of Heathen Re~ ligions. — The mythologies of most nations afford traces, although faint, of the idea of incarnation. If, as Yinet has suggested, tliere can be no religion without an in- carnation, the pseudo-incarnations of false religions may be regarded as so many gropings for the truth, " if haply they might feel after him" who at some time should be- come incarnate. These incarnations express the deepest need of our common nature. Sin has so isolated man from God that he feels there is no hope of his restora- tion except "the gods come down in the likeness of men." This idea confronts us from all parts of the world, whether m the avatars of the Hindu, the election and worship of the Lama of Thibet, the metamorphoses of
INCARNATION"
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INCARNATION
the Greek and Roman mythologies, or the wilder wor- ship of the aborigines of America. The earlier Chris- tian apologists attributed tliese caricatures of the true incarnation to Satan, and alleged that '-he invented these fables by imitating the truth." Neander makes the profoimd suggestion that '■ at the bottom of these myths is the earnest desire, inseparable from man's spir- it, for participation in the divme nature as its true hfe— its anxious longing to pass the gidf which separates the God-derived soul from its original — its wish, even though unconscious, to secure that miion with God which alone can renew human nature, and which Chris- tianity shows us as a living reality. Nor can we be astonished to find the facts of Christianity thus antici- pated in poetic forms (embodying in imagmative crea- tions the innate yet indistinct cravings of the spirit) in the mytliical elements of the old religions, when we re- member that human nature itself, and all the forms of its development, as well as the whole course of human history, were intended by God to fuid their full accom- plishment in Clirist" {Life of Ch-ist, chap, ii, sec. 12). The want that thus expresses itself in these fabled ava- tars lies at the foundation of idolatry. The unsatisfied nature of man demands that his Deity should be near him — should dwell with him. It first leads him to rep- resent the Deity by the work of his own hands, and then to worship it (see Tholuck, Predigten, ii, 148). Or we may look upon these avatars as so many faint and distant irradiations of the holy light that shone upon the Garden through the first promise given to man. On the contrary, Kitto dffliies " that there is in Eastern mj'thology any incarnation in any sense approaching that of the Christian, and that least of all is there any where it has been most insisted on" {Daily Bible Illust. on Jolm i, 14). Cocker, in his late work (ChrisHaniti/ and Greek Philosojihi/, N. Y. 1870, 8vo, p. 512), advances the theory that the idea of " a pure spiritual essence, without form and without emotion, pervading all and transcending all, is too vague and abstract to yield us comfort," and that therefore the need of an incarnation "became consciously or unconsciously 'the desire of na- tions' " by " the education of the race" and " by the dispensation of philosophy. . , . The idea of an incar- nation was not unfamiliar to human thought, it was no new or strange idea to the heathen mind. The number- less metamorphoses of Grecian mythology, the incarna- tions of Brahma, the avatars of Vishnu, and the human form of Krishna, had naturalized the thought (Young, Christ of History, p. 248)." See Domer, Lehre r. der Person Christi, i, 7 sq. ; Biblioth. Sacra, ix, 250 ; Weber, Indische Studien, ii, 411 sq.