The following query presents a single instance of the attempts made by recent critics to discredit the utterances of inspired men:

      In the exposition of September 7, Sunday-school lesson, "The Prophet Like Moses," one of our church papers remarks: "An allusion to the Messiah in these verses is of a remote sort, and there is no reason to understand them to refer to any one except the immediate successor of Moses." Is this a correct rendering, and is the Lesson Committee astray in naming this lesson, and [400] in selecting as the Golden Text, "This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world"?

W. P. KEELER.

CHICAGO, Ill., Sept. 12, 1902.

      If we had nothing on the subject except the words of Moses (Deut. 18:15), we might not be able to say positively to what prophet he had reference. Yet the Jewish interpreters, who had nothing else, reached the conclusion that he referred to the Messiah, as is plain from the words of the "Golden Text" quoted by Bro. Keeler. These are the words of the Galileans when they witnessed the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:14). They doubtless reached this conclusion from the consideration that, among the later prophets of the Old Testament, there was not one who was in any special degree "like Moses."

      It is usual with the critics who consider themselves better interpreters of the Old Testament than the apostles were, to say that the reference of Moses is not to any individual prophet, but to the line of prophets which God raised up in Israel; but if he had meant this he would have used words indicative of this meaning, instead of saying "a prophet." The "church paper" quoted by Bro. Keeler rejects this interpretation, and says: "There is no reason to understand them [the words of Moses] to refer to any one except the immediate successor of Moses." According to him, then, there is no reason to understand them, as the "modern critics" do with one accord, as referring to a line of prophets. This is hard on the critics. It represents them, one and all, as adopting an interpretation for which there is no reason. They have done the same in many other instances. But if there is no reason for this, what reason is there for referring the words to "the immediate successor of Moses"? Joshua, who was the immediate successor of [401] Moses, figured eminently as a military leader, but he is not to be compared with Moses in his capacity as a prophet. There is no reason then to suppose that by the "prophet like unto Moses," Joshua was meant. Here are two hypotheses, then, for which there is "no reason;" but for the early Jewish interpretation there was a reason, and so, after all, the Jewish rabbis were better interpreters than their modern critics.

      But those of us who believe that the apostle Peter, in his first and second discourses recorded in Acts, spoke as he was moved by the Holy Spirit, have no need of such reasoning on this subject, for he settles it for us by divine authority, that the reference of Moses was to the Christ. Only those who are wiser than Peter, and who are constantly asserting that the apostles adopted unreasoning rabbinical interpretations of the Scriptures, can call this in question. When they give some proof that they are better interpreters than the inspired apostles, it will be soon enough to pay respectful attention to them. Until then their vaporing assumptions should be allowed to pass like the idle wind. They are in reality included in the very winds of which the apostle speaks when he warns us not to be "tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine" (Eph. 4:14).

[SEBC 400-402]