But how can these two facts be reconciled:--that Moses had, undeniably, the Messiah in view, and that, notwithstanding, there seems at the same time to be a reference to the prophets in general? The simplest mode of reconciling them is the following. The prophet here is an _ideal_ person, comprehending all the true prophets who had appeared from Moses to Christ, including the latter. But Moses does not here speak of the prophets as a collective body, to which, at the close, Christ also belonged, as it were, incidentally, and as one among the many,--as _Calvin_ and other interpreters mentioned above suppose; but rather, the plurality of prophets is, for this reason only, comprehended by Moses in an _ideal_ unity, that, on the authority of Gen. xlix. 10, and by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, he knew that the prophetical order would, at some future time, centre in a real person,--in Christ. But there is so much the more of truth in thus viewing the prophetic order as a whole, since, according to 1 Peter i. 11, the Spirit of Christ spoke in the prophets. Thus, in a certain sense, Christ is the only Prophet. Footnote 1: _Lampe_ says: He has preserved to us not only what, in Paradise, and afterwards to and through the Patriarchs, had been told about this Redeemer; but he himself, under divine inspiration, has prophesied of Him,--especially in Deut. xviii. 15-18. THE ANGEL OF THE LORD IN THE PENTATEUCH, AND THE BOOK OF JOSHUA. The New Testament distinguishes between the hidden God and the revealed God--the Son or Logos--who is connected with the former by oneness of nature, and who from everlasting, and even at the creation itself, filled up the immeasurable distance between the Creator and the creation;--who has been the Mediator in all God's relations to the world;--who at all times, and even before He became man in Christ, has been the light of [Pg 116] the world,--and to whom, specially, was committed the direction of the economy of the Old Covenant.