Apostles3. They may well therefore be considered as deserving peculiar attention.
They set forth the character of Christ literally —
[When God had spoken to the Jews in thunderings and lightnings, they entreated that he would, in future, commu- nicate his mind and will to them through a mediator. He, approving their request, promised them a prophet raised up from among themselves, who should fully reveal to them his most secret counsels'3. Such a prophet was Jesus. He was raised up in a most extraordinary way, being the son of a pure virgin. He was taken from among their brethren, being of the tribe of Judah, and of the family of David. " Though he was in the form of God, and thought it no robery to be equal with God, he took upon him the form of a servant ;" yea, " became a worm and no man, the very scorn of men and the outcast of the people." He revealed all that it was needful for men to know, and " opened their understandings that they might understand it." To him did the Father himself, by an audible voice from heaven, apply this prophecy0. And Jesus thus literally executed the commission given him of the Father.]
But it is in a typical view that the text is princi- pally to be considered —
[Our Lord resembled Moses in the offices of a lawgiver, a saviour, an intercessor. But, waving all observations re- specting these, let us trace the resemblance which subsisted between them, as " prophets" of the Most High God.
Both of them received their doctrines in the same way. Moses was not merely instructed, like other prophets, by visions, or dreams, or by the " still small voice" of inspiration, but was admitted to converse with God as a man talketh with his friend, and received the law from the hands of God, engraven upon stones by God himself. In this he differed from all the other prophets that ever existed in the world, till this new Prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ, arose. But Christ had been from all eternity "in the bosom of the Father d;" and he taught the very truths which he had heard, and learned, of the Father e.
Both of them also taught the very same doctrine. Moses gave the law to be a " ministration of death," and a rule of life; and our Lord explained, and enforced it, for the very same ends. Moses also pointed the people to the sacrifices
a Acts vii. 37. b Deut. xviii. 16—18. c Matt. xvii. 5.
d John i. 18. e John viii. 28.