is so graphic in its picture of vicarious suffering for the good of men that infidel writers have charged the story of the Cross with plagiarism, and have applied to Prometheus some of the expressions used in the fifty-third chapter of the Prophecy of Isaiah.  We are often told that there is injustice in the very idea of vicarious suffering, as involved in the Christian doctrine of salvation, or that the best instincts of a reasonable humanity revolt against it.  But such criticisms are sufficiently met by these analogies which we find among all nations.

Let me next call attention to some of the predicted deliverers for whom the nations have been looking.  Nothing found in the study of the religious history of mankind is more striking than the universality of a vague expectation of coming messiahs.  According to the teachings of Hinduism there have been nine incarnations of Vishnu, of whom Buddha was admitted to be one.  But there is to be a tenth avatar who shall yet come at a time of great and universal wickedness, and shall establish a kingdom of righteousness on the earth.  Some years ago the Rev. Dr. John Newton, of Lahore, took advantage of this prediction and wrote a tract showing that the true deliverer and king of righteousness had already come in the person of Jesus Christ.  So striking seemed the fulfilment viewed from the Hindu standpoint, that some hundreds in the city of Rampore were led to a faith in Christ as an avatar of Vishnu.

A remarkable illustration of a felt want of something brighter and more hopeful is seen in the legends and predictions of the Teutonic and Norse religions.  The faiths of all the Teutonic races were of the sternest character, and it was such a cultus that made them the terror of Europe.  They worshipped their grim deities in the congenial darkness of deep forest shades.  There was no joy, no sense of divine pity, no peace.  They were conscious of deep and unutterable wants which were never met.  They yearned for a golden age and the coming of a deliverer.  Baldr, one of the sons of Woden, had passed away, but prophecy promised that he should return to deliver mankind from sorrow and from death.  “When the twilight of the gods should have passed away, then amid prodigies and the crash and decay of a wicked world, in glory and joy he should return, and a glorious kingdom should be renewed.”  Or, in the words of one of their own poets: 

   “Then unsown the swath shall flourish and back come Baldr;
    With him Hoder shall dwell in Hropter’s palace,
    Shrines of gods the great and holy,
    There the just shall joy forever,
          And in pleasure pass the ages.”