juries we are apt to incur through this work. If any thing is clear, it is the connection between the Sabbath and the fall. The work which needs intermission, lest the divine life should be imperilled by it, is not-[we would rather say, is not so much]-the cheerful and pleasant employment of which we read in Gen. ii. 15; it is [rather] the oppressive and degrading toil spoken of in Gen. iii. 19, work done in the sweat of the brow, upon a soil that brings forth thorns and thistles." We would put the statement comparatively, rather than absolutely; for the rest of God being held on the first seventh day of the world's existence, and the day being immediately consecrated and blessed, it must have had respect to the place and occupation of man even in paradise. Why should work there be supposed to have differed in kind from work elsewhere and since? There could be room only for a dif ference in degree; and being work from its very nature that led the soul to aim at specific objects, and put forth continuous efforts ad extra, it required to be met by a stated periodical institution, that would recall the thoughts and feelings of the soul ad intra. Man's perfection in that original state was only a relative one. It needed certain correctives and stimulants to secure the continued enjoyment of the good belonging to it. It needed, in particular, perpetual access to the tree of life for the preservation of the bodily, and an ever-returning Sabbatism for that of the spiritual life. But if such a Sabbatism was required even for man's wellbeing in paradise, where the work was so light, and the order so beautiful, how could it be imagined that the Sabbatical institution might be either safely or lawfully disregarded in a world of sorrow, temptation, and hardship?

Was there really, however, any Sabbatical institution? There is no command respecting it in this portion of the inspired record. And may not the mention there made of God's keeping the Sabbath, and blessing and sanctifying the day, have been made simply with a prospective reference to the precept that was ultimately to be imposed on the Israelites ? So it has been alleged with endless frequency by those who can find no revelation of the divine will, and no obligation of moral duty excepting what comes in the authoritative form of a command, and it is still substantially reiterated by

1 Ueber den Tag des Herrn, p. 12.

Hengstenberg, who certainly cannot be charged with such a bluntness of spiritual discernment. We meet the allegation with the statement that has already been repeatedly urged-that it was not yet the time for the formal enactments of law, and that it was by other means man was to learn God's mind and his own duty. The ground of obligation lay in the divine act; the rule of duty was exhibited in the divine example; and these were disclosed to men from the first, not to gratify an idle curiosity, but for the express purpose of leading them to know and do what is agreeable to the will of God. If such means were not sufficient to speak with clearness and authority to men's consciences, then it may be affirmed that the first race of mankind were free from all authoritative direction and control whatever. They were not imperatively bound either to fear God, or to regard man; for excepting in the manner now stated, no general obligations of service were laid on them. But to suppose this; to suppose even in regard to what is written of the original Sabbatism of God, that it did not bear directly upon the privileges and duties of the very first members of the human family, is in truth to make void that portion of revelation-to treat it, where it stands, as a superfluity or a blemish. We cannot so regard it. We hold by the truthfulness and natural import of the divine record. And doing this, we are shut up to the conclusion, that it was at first designed and appointed by God, that mankind should sanctify every returning seventh day, as a season of comparative rest from worldly labour, of spiritual contemplation and religious employment, that so they might cease from their own works and enter into the rest of God.

But we shall not pursue the subject farther at present. We even leave unnoticed some of the objections that have been raised against the existence of a primeval Sabbath, as the subject must again return, and in a more controversial aspect, when we come to consider the place assigned to the law of the Sabbath in the revelation from Sinai. It is enough, at this stage of our inquiry, to have exhibited the foundation laid for the perpetual celebration of a seventh-day Sabbath, in the original act of God at the close of his creation-work. In that we have a foundation broad and large as the theatre of creation itself and the general interests of humanity, free from all local restrictions and national peculiarities. That in the infancy of the world, and during the ages of a remote.

antiquity, there would be much simplicity in the mode of its observance, may readily be supposed. Indeed, where all was so simple, both in the state of society and the institutions of worship, the symbolical act itself of resting from ordinary work, and in connection with that, the habit of recognising the authority of God, and realising the divine call to a participation in the blessed rest of the Creator, must have constituted no inconsiderable part of the practical observance of the day. And that this also in process of time should have fallen into general desuetude, is only what might have been expected from the fearful depravity and lawlessness which overspread the earth as a desolation. When men daringly cast off the fear of God himself, they would naturally make light of the privilege and duty set before them of entering into his rest. And considering the disadvantages, both personal and social, which were necessarily connected with a primeval Sabbath, it is not to be wondered at that, besides the original record of its divine origin and authoritative obligation, traces of its early existence should be found only in some occasional notices of history, and in the wide-spread sacredness of the number seven, which has left its impress on the religion and literature of nearly every nation of antiquity. But however neglected or despised, the original fact remains for the light and instruction of the world in all ages; and there perpetually comes forth from it a call to every one who has ears to hear, to sanctify a weekly rest unto the Lord, and rise to the enjoyment of his blessing.

CHAPTER SIXTH.

TYPICAL THINGS IN HISTORY DURING THE PROGRESS OF THE FIRST
DISPENSATION.

HAVING now considered the typical bearing of the fundamental facts and symbolical institutions belonging to the first dispensation of grace, it remains that we endeavour to ascertain what there might afterwards be evolved of a typical nature during the progress of that dispensation, by means of the transactions and events that took place under it. These, it was already noted in our preliminary remarks, could only be employed to administer instruction of a subsidiary kind. In their remoter reference to gospeltimes, as in their direct historical aspect, they can rank no higher than progressive developements-not laying a foundation, but proceeding on the foundation already laid, and giving to some of the points connected with it a more specific direction, or supplementing them with additional discoveries of the mind and will of God. It is impossible here, any more than in the subjects treated of in the preceding chapters, to isolate entirely the portions that have a typical bearing from others closely connected with them. And even in those which exhibit something of the typical element, it can scarcely be expected, at so early a period in the world's history, to possess much of a precise and definite character; for in type, as in prophecy, the progress must necessarily have been from the more general to the more particular. In tracing this progress, we shall naturally connect the successive developements with single persons or circumstances; yet without thereby meaning to indicate that these are in every respect to be accounted typical.

SECTION FIRST.

THE SEED OF PROMISE-ABEL, ENOCH.

THE first distinct appearance of the typical in connection with the period subsequent to the fall, is to be found in the case of Abel; but in that quite generally. Abel was the first member of the promised seed; and through him supplementary knowledge was imparted more especially in one direction, viz. in regard to the principle of election, which was to prevail in the actual fulfilment of the original promise. That promise itself, when viewed in connection with the instituted symbols of religion, might be perceived-if very thoughtfully considered-to have implied something of an elective process; but the truth was not clearly expressed. And it was most natural, that the first parents of the human family should have overlooked what but obscurely intimated a limitation in the expected good. They would readily imagine, when a scheme of grace was introduced, which gave promise of a complete destruction of the adversary, with the infliction only of a partial injury on the woman's seed, that the whole of their offspring should attain to victory over the power of evil. This joyous anticipation affectingly discovers itself in the exclamation of Eve at the birth of her first-born son, "I have gotten a man from (or, as it should rather be, with) the Lord"gratefully acknowledging the hand of God in giving her, as she thought, the commencement of that seed which was assured through divine grace of a final triumph. This she reckoned a real getting-gain in the proper sense-calling her child by a name that expressed this idea (Cain); and she evidently did so by regarding it as the precious gift of God, the beginning and the pledge of the ascendancy that was to be won over the malice of the tempter. Never was mother destined to receive a sorer dis

1

1 I think it quite impossible, in the circumstances, that the faith of Eve should have gone farther than this; as the promise of recovery had as yet assumed only the most