humanity cannot be content
without the semblance of personality in God, and since everything has
become divine, it was easy to regard not only natural powers, but also
personal beings as gods. Polytheism was the result. Vishnu and Siva,
gods of reproductive and destructive powers, came to be worshiped.
Incarnation and transmigration followed. The incarnation was not the
incarnation of the supreme Brahma, but of one of the subordinate
deities, Vishnu, and even this incarnation was but a temporary
assumption of human form--a vanishing manifestation, to be put off again
like a worn-out garment when the real god returned to his heaven. The
Hindu Trimurti was never the Christian Trinity; for Christ is not only
the supreme God manifest in the flesh, but also the eternal Revealer of
God, who takes our humanity to be a part of himself forever, the
partaker of his inmost being and the sharer of his throne.

While we credit Hinduism with the idea of incarnation, we regard it as
only showing this to be a necessity of human thought, and as far from
satisfying man's longings for union with God. Gautama Buddha,
passionless and lost in the contemplation of his own excellence, is not
the Christian Redeemer, who daily bears our burdens and takes upon
himself, in order that he may take away, the sin of the world. And what
shall we say of the other deities of the Hindu pantheon, but that they
are personifications of every human caprice and vice. The Krishna of the
Puranas has infected all India with his licentiousness, and has given
sanction to the worst forms of lust.

The growth of caste was another result of the loss of a personal and
moral God and the deification of his works. Since all things came to be
regarded as manifestations of deity, the order of society and its
distinctions became fixed. The origin of caste is to be found in the
superiority of the Aryan conqueror to the Dravidian aborigines. The
people of light complexion looked down on the dark-skinned race, and
drove them to the wall. Intermarriage between the two classes of the
population became abhorrent to the ruling class, and all manner of
restrictions were put upon their intercourse, till even the shadow of
the outcaste falling upon the Brahman brought contamination. Let us not
blame the Aryan too hastily, for in South Africa and in our own Southern
States we see the same denial that God has made of one blood all the
races of men, and the same exclusion of the darker