Lord hath given," and adding (v. 16), " This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded."

With the opinion thus warranted by the whole tenor of the narrative, that the Sabbath rite was pre viously unknown both to Moses and his people, their antecedent history is in perfect accordance. Not a trace can be found in it of any Sabbath having been at any time known to them, whilst on the other hand incidents are related in it which would naturally, and most probably, have led to the mention of their having had some knowledge of a Sabbath, if this were really the fact.

When the Israelites were “groaning” under their bondage in Egypt, it formed no subject of their complainings that they were not allowed a respite from their hard toil on Sabbath-days; yet, had it been a traditionary belief with them that God had at the Creation enjoined a seventh day of rest from labour, and that their forefathers had observed and enjoyed this Sabbath, it was impossible they should not have keenly felt their deprivation of it to be an aggravation of their sufferings, and yet this made no part of "their cry" unto God.

Again, when Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh to demand permission to leave Egypt, they told him (Exod. v. 1): "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness." This was the only religious purpose assigned. And that they may observe my Sabbaths," we may presume would have been added, if the Sabbath had been an existing institution, of

which Pharaoh had deprived them. Moreover, when, in consequence of plagues inflicted upon him and his people, Pharaoh at length determined upon making some concession to the Israelites, yet not to suffer them to depart out of Egypt, he said to Moses (Exod. viii. 25): "Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land" (meaning the border land of Goshen, where the Israelites dwelt); Moses refused the offer, and said: "We will go three days' journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice unto the Lord our God, as he shall command us." (v. 26, 27.)

Sacrifice thus appears to have been the only religious purpose for which he was commissioned to apply for liberty to go into the wilderness, and the only purpose on which he expected to receive a Divine command.

The incidents here recited strongly favour the opinion that Moses had no knowledge of any Sabbath prior to that which he himself, by Divine command, instituted in the wilderness; and no one, I am confident, can give a fair and full consideration to the 16th chapter of Exodus without acknowledging that it has every appearance of being a narrative of the institution of a religious rite which was till then unknown.

Even if we suppose it to be possible that all the circumstances there related might have attended the renewal of a Sabbath rite fallen into disuse, still it would scarcely be possible there should have been no manifestation on the part of Moses and the people, that they knew the wilderness Sabbath to be a

revived, and not a novel institution. Nothing of the kind is recorded, nor would any reader of the existing narrative fancy that he saw in it the recognition of an antecedent Sabbath, if he were to come to the perusal of it unprepossessed with the notion that a Sabbath was ordained at the time of the Creation. Nevertheless, the declaration made to the Israelites, "To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath," is the only piece of direct evidence which Sabbatarians are able to produce in their attempt to prove that a Sabbath was known to mankind before the time of Moses.* Their other evidence consists of mere conjectures, arising out of certain facts which they say cannot be satisfactorily explained but by the supposition of a seventh-day Sabbath, commanded at the Creation. Of those facts it may be as well here to remark generally, that they afford no evidence whatever that the pious and devout of the olden time, the patriarchs and others, who, it is pretended, were observers of the Sabbath, abstained on the Sabbathday from pursuing their worldly occupations, when not engaged in the performance of religious rites.

* It may be thought that another instance is to be found in the words of the Fourth Commandment : "Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy," the word remember implying, as it certainly does, that a Sabbath institution already existed when the Fourth Commandment was given; but this does not warrant the inference that the Commandment alludes to and recognises a Sabbath enjoined at the Creation. See note A, at the end of the Chapter.

THERE are

SECTION VII.

hints," says one writer, there are

traces," says another, of the observance of a Sabbath instituted at the Creation. The patriarchal history, says the author of "Brief Remarks" (p. 15), contains an account of some circumstances which afford us no insignificant hints that the Sabbath was observed." To substantiate this assertion, he endeavours to extract a hint from an expression used in the 4th chapter of Genesis, relating to the sacrifices of Cain and Abel. He argues upon it thus: "Cain and Abel are described as offering their sacrifices to the Lord in process of time,' as our version has it, but as in the margin of that version, and in the Hebrew, at the end of days.' Now the only period of days before alluded to is that of the week, and it is highly probable that this form of expression indicates nothing more than that they made their offerings on the day which terminates the week-that is, on the Sabbath."

It cannot, indeed, be expected of any evidence furnished by a hint, that it should be more than "highly probable" evidence of the fact to which it is alleged to relate, and therefore the question for consideration in this case is, whether the writer's argument suffices to prove that his supposed hint affords such evidence. He rejects the Bible phrase, “in process of time," in favour of the marginal reading,

"at the end of days;" but that it is questionable if his argument derives any benefit from this selection, will be seen in the following candid remarks of Dr. Jennings, who, although an advocate for the tenet of a Creation Sabbath, says (in his "Jewish Antiquities," ii. 111): “To prove that this distinction of time (by weeks) prevailed in the first ages of the world, some allege the following passage of the Book of Genesis :

In the end of days (mikkèts jamim) Cain and Abel brought their offering to the Lord; that is, say they, at the end of the week, or on the Sabbath-day; for, according to the learned Gataker, there was then no other distinction of days but into weeks. We may, however, observe, with deference to so great an authority, that it is not impossible, nor improbable, that by this time they might have learned to distinguish time, by the changes of the moon, into months, and by the course of the sun and the revolutions of the seasons, into years. It is very evident that the phrase mikkèts jamim does not always import the end of the week, from the use of it in the second Book of Samuel (xiv. 26), where it is said, that ‘at the end of the days Absalom polled his head, because his hair was heavy on him, and he weighed it at two hundred shekels.' It cannot be imagined his hair should grow so heavy as to need polling every week. Probably in this place the phrase means, as we render it,at every year's end.' In the same sense the learned Ainsworth understands it in the passage in Genesis, which we are now considering: At the end of the year,' when the fruits of the earth were ripe,