se up unto you from among your brethren, _like unto
me_."[282]

The notable difference between the Moses of New Testament times and the
Moses delineated in the ancient narrative renders it especially
interesting to study a passage in which the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews takes us back to the living man, and describes the attitude of
Moses himself towards Jesus Christ. Stephen told his persecutors that
the founder of the Aaronic priesthood had spoken of a great Prophet to
come, and Christ said that Moses wrote of Him.[283] But it is with
joyous surprise we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the
legislator was a believer in the same sense in which Abraham was a
believer. The founder of the old covenant himself walked by faith in the
new covenant.

The references to Moses made by our Lord and by Stephen sufficiently
describe his mission. The special work of Moses in the history of
religion was to prepare the way of the Lord Jesus Christ and make His
paths straight. He was commissioned to familiarise men with the
wondrous, stupendous idea of the appearing of God in human nature,--a
conception almost too vast to grasp, too difficult to believe. To render
it not impossible for men to accept the truth, he was instructed to
create a historical type of the Incarnation. He called into being a
spiritual people. He realised the magnificent idea of a Divine nation.
If we may use the term, he showed to the world God appearing in the
life of a nation, in order to teach them the higher truth that the Word
would at the remote end of the ages appear in the flesh. The nation was
the Church; the Church was the State. The King would be God. The court
of the King would be the temple. The ministers of the court would be the
priests. The law of the State would have equal authority with the moral
requirements of God's nature. For Moses apparently knew nothing of the
distinction made by theologians between the civil, the ceremonial, and
the moral law.

But in the passage before us we have something quite different from
this. The Apostle says nothing about the creation of the covenant people
out of the abject slaves of the brick-kilns. He is silent concerning the
giving of the Law amid the fire and tempest of Sinai. It is plain that
he wishes to tell us about the man's inner life. He represents Moses as
a man of faith.

Even of his faith the apparently greatest achievements are passed over.
Nothing is said of his appearances be