INCARNATION
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INCARNATION
uoush' new-bom. As soon as he was carried to his grave' in 1473. a search was instituted for the personage who had been destined to succeed him. This was found to be an infant who established its title to the lionor by appearing to remember various articles which had been the property of the lama just deceased, or, rather, were the infant's own property in earlier stages of existence. ... So fascinating was the theory of perpetual incar- nations that a fresh succession of rival lamas (also of the yellow order) afterwards took its rise in Teshu-lambu, while the Dalai lamas were enthroned m Lhassa; and at present every convent of importance, not in Tibet only, but in distant parts of Tartary, is claiming for it- self a like prerogative. . . . The religion of Tibet is from day to day assuming all the characteristics of man- worship" (Hardwick, ii, 93 sq.). For the election of the successor of the lama, see also Hue's Travels in Tartary, ii, ch. vi, p. 197 sq.
Tlie notion that prerailed in Egjqit was similar, '■ save only that the symbolical bull was substituted for the literal man, and as Buddha is still held to be suc- cessively born in each infant lama, so the god Osiris was equally thought to be successively born in each consecrated Mnevis. Nor was the doctrine of a hitman incarnation by any means lost in that country. Diod- orus gives a curious account of an infant in whose per- son Osiris was thought to have been born into the world in order that he might thus exhibit himself to mortals : and what Herodotus says of the Egyptian Perseus, who was the same divinity with Osiris, necessarily requires us to suppose that at certain intervals a man was brought forward by the priests as an incarnation of their god" (Diod. Sic. lib. i, p. 20 ; Herod. Hist, ii, ch. xci ; G. S. Faber, Eight Dissertations, i, 61 sq. ; see Wilkinson's note ad loc. cit. in Rawlinson's Herodotus"). On the general subject, see also I^aber's Orir/in of Pagan Idola- try, vi, ch. vi ; Eight Dissertations, i, 67 sq.
Under the head of classical metamorphoses it will be sufficient to refer to Baur in Baumgarten (on Acts, i, 446, transl.) ; to Ovid, Metamorphoses, Baucis et Phile- mon; and the name that Jupiter bore oiZtvQ KaTaj3d- Ti)r (Biscoe, On the Acts, p. 205).
"Passing over to the American continent, whether by way of Iceland to Labrador, or eastward from Asia, we find the wilderness, from the frozen shores of the Arctic Ocean to the iSIexican Gidf, resomiding with the deeds of a hero-god corresponding in character, history, and name with the Wodin and Buddha of the eastern continent. . . . His grandmother descended from the moon, which, in the symbolic language of the early tra- ditions, alwaj^ represents the Xoachian ark. The only daughter of this Nokomis, in the bloom of her maiden- hood, without the conciurence of mortal agency, and in a miraciUous manner, gave birth to a son, who became conscious, as he advanced to manhood, that he was en- dowed with supernatural powers for the redemption of the world from evil. All his stupendous exploits were directed to that end. His name in the Indian dialects ^as Bosho, Bozho;' etc. (Meth. Qnm-t. Rev. 1859, p. 596 ; compare Schoolcraft's A Igic Res. i, 135 ; and Kingsbor- ough's Mex. Aniiq.vi, 175). The remarkable story of the birth of Hiutzilopochtli from a virgin mother is given by Squier, .imerican A rchceological Res. p. 196. For the reputed incarnations of the highest god, Tez- \ catlipoca, thought by 'Mr. Sqiuer to be analogous to Buddha, Zoroaster, Osiris, Taut in Plinenicia, Odin in Scandinavia, etc., see Hardwick, ii, 152, with his re- mar'.vs. — Brinton (Daniel G.), Myths of the New World (X. Y. 1868), 12mo), chap, ii and iv.
II. Definition of "Incarnation" in the Ch-istian Scheme. — In the evangelical sense, incarnation is that act of grace whereby Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took upon himself the nature of man. " By taldng only the nature of man, he still continueth one person, and changeth but the manner of his subsisting, which was before in the mere glory of the Son of God, and is now in the habit of our flesh" (Hooker, Ecc, Pol. v, § 52). In the assumption of
our nature he became subject to the consequences of sin, except that he was without the accident of siu (see Ebrard, in Herzog, Real-EncijUop. s. v. Jesus Christ). '• That Christ should have taken man's nature shows that corruption was not inherent in its existence m such wise that to assume the nature was to assume the sin" (Wilberforce, Doctrine of the Incarnation, ]>. 74). The essential features of the incarnation are pecidiar to Christianity, and when •w'e speak of the incarnation, that of Christianity is at once luiderstood ; for the incarna- tion of Vishnu as found in Krishna, which is admitted to be the most periect of all heathen incarnations, and the only one to be compared with that of Clirist accord- ing to Hardwick {Christ ami other Masters, i, 291), "when purged from all the lewd and Bacchanalian ad- juncts which disfigure and debase it, comes indefinitely short of Christianity." " Nothuig can be more absurd than to compare the incarnations of this Indian deity with that of Christ. They are by their multiplicity alone tinctured with the pantheistic idea. The human personality is destitute of reaUty, since it is taken up and laid down as a veil or mask with which the divinity invested himself for a moment. JNIoreover, the degra- dation of the god is carried too far— he descended to evil, and participated in human corruption" (Pressense, Rel. before Christ, p. 61). Although, therefore, the idea of the union of the divine and human natures was not foreign to heathenism, yet that the divine Logos should become flesh belonged to Christianity alone. False re- ligions teach an apotheosis of man rather than a proper incarnation of the Deity. Judaism itself had never risen to the conception of an incarnate God. The antagonism between the Creator and the creature was too sharply defined to admit such an interpretation of the first prom- ise as the incarnation has given. See Jlartensen, Christ. Dogm. § 128 ; Neander, Church Hist. (Clark), ii, 200 sq. ; Kitto, Daily Bible Illust. 29th week, .evening.