the doors of the gate which defended the hostile city, and victorious over his enemies even in death; he unites in his own person circumstances of agreement with the corresponding events in the life of Christ, which we can hardly imagine to have been entirely without design, when we know how other events have really been connected by the Providence of God. But the design being no where asserted or implied in Scripture, the comparison rests only on the authority of human interpreters.

Far be it from any one to discountenance the temperate discussion of these and similar points of resemblance to Christ, in the history of eminent men recorded in the Old Testament. The enquiry may be made the means of much religious instruction, and may serve to shew the similarity, at least, of the means, which the Providence of God has devised, in different ages, to promote his designs. The minds of men were, perhaps, thus led on and prepared for the great revelation of the Gospel. The events of Christ's birth, and ministry, and death, however wonderful, were no new thing; no strange, sudden deviation from the course of God's Providence. In many instances the dealings of the Almighty are unveiled in his word, and the steps by which the Gospel dispensation was

prefigured are displayed. Probably in many more the same great design was promoted effectually, though secretly to us; and the traces of it may be investigated, with advantage, by those whose leisure and attainments enable them to undertake the task.

But our present enquiry, confined to those historical types which may be considered evidences of the inspiration of Scripture, and intentionally illustrative of the mutual connection of its several parts, will exclude all those, either in the patriarchal or Jewish dispensation, in which the connection of the events is neither expressed nor implied in the sacred volume.

It will comprise only,

First, those which are supported by accomplished prophecy, delivered previously to the appearance of the antitype: or,

Secondly, those supported by accomplished prophecy, delivered in the person of the antitype: or,

Thirdly, those which in Scripture are expressly declared, or clearly assumed, to be typi cal, after the prefigured events had taken place.

The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.

WHEN Moses, under the immediate inspiration of the Spirit of God, uttered this prediction to the people of Israel, he gave a specific prophecy, to which their descendants were, in future ages, to look; and also indicated a remarkable peculiarity in his own character.

He was already known to those whom he addressed as their leader and deliverer, their lawgiver, their prophet, and their priest. The miracles which he had wrought, the manifestations of divine favour which had been bestowed upon him, had long pointed him out as an individual eminently distinguished above his fellows.

They who had come out of Egypt, and they

who had been born in the desert, however they might occasionally rebel, must equally have acknowledged him to be endued with wisdom and power from on high. The eye-witnesses of the wonderful works, which he had performed before Pharaoh, could not doubt the reality of his divine mission. They, who had walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea, and seen all their enemies dead upon the seashore, could not forget at whose bidding the waters had been divided, and the sea had afterwards returned to its strength. Nor could they, who had trembled before the thunders of Mount Sinai, have entirely shaken off the impression of those terrors, by which the authority of Moses had been confirmed. His wonders also in the desert, which all had seen and known, must have confirmed the young in their belief of those more ancient things, of which their fathers had told them.

Such was the Prophet, who was now delivering his last injunctions to his country

men.

At this concluding period of his ministry, Moses was gifted with a greater measure of the prophetic spirit, than he had exhibited in the whole course of his past life; and disclosed to the people of Israel a fact hitherto concealed from them that his own actions, wonderful as

they were in themselves, and convincing, as proofs of his own prophetic character, had all an ulterior object: that they were intended to introduce and to prefigure the actions of that Prophet, whom the Lord God should raise up from among them, like unto himself.

This prediction of the future influences and modifies the past also. When correspondence with the several actions of Moses is laid down as the criterion, by which he who fulfilled the prophecy is to be tried, to those very actions is ascribed, in some degree, a symbolical character. The prophecy is a verbal prophecy. But the connection between the first series of events, in which Moses was engaged, and the second series of events, in which the predicted Prophet should be engaged, is strictly the connection of historical type and antitype. The existence of the prophecy proves, incontrovertibly, that the similarity, if it be found to exist, is preconcerted and the completion of the prophecy, involves also the completion of the type.

If, therefore, it should be found that Jesus, both by himself and by his disciples, was asserted to be this Prophet like unto Moses; and that he alone fulfilled, in every respect, the conditions which Moses prescribed; we shall have a proof, at once from verbal prophecy and