Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/407

Rh ; if the people, when, in God's providence, he first took them in hand, had been simple barbarians, having no measure of time but the phases of the moon, it would manifestly have been less easy to secure for rest and for religious purposes each seventh day. Why each seventh day? Why not the fourth or the fourteenth? But if the people had their almanac ready-made, and if they had been accustomed in Egypt to measure the time by weeks and to find each day of the week as weary as the rest under their cruel taskmasters, they would readily accept and rejoice in a law which made the concluding day of each week a day of rest and rejoicing. And in fact we find in the Deuteronomy version of the fourth commandment this pertinent exhortation: "Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day" (Deuteronomy v, xv).

Let us now turn for a moment to this same commandment as we find it in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, and as it is commonly cited. The most remarkable feature in the commandment, as here given, is the reference to the six days' work and the seventh-day rest of the Almighty Creator. Upon this work of the creative week I shall have more to say hereafter; but at present let me observe that the form of the commandment, beginning "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy," seems to imply that previous knowledge of the week and the Sabbath, of which we have already found evidence. It is very unlikely that the notion of a seventh-day Sabbath would have been announced for the first time in such fashion; in fact, we have already met with distinct teaching on the subject. Let it be added, however, that it has been supposed, and the supposition is reasonable, that the argument for keeping holy the Sabbath-day, founded upon the history of the Creation, which appears in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, does not belong to the original form of the commandment. The fact of its omission in Deuteronomy, and the addition in that version of the commandments of an appendix to the law of the Sabbath-day, which does not appear in Exodus, seems to set us free to suppose that both the one addition and the other were made subsequently, and did not belong to the commandment when given from Sinai. Indeed, there is much internal probability to recommend the suggestion of Ewald (approved by Canon Cook in the "Speaker's Commentary" as "deserving respect"), that the ten commandments were originally given in the following terse form:

1. Thou shalt have none other God before me. 2. Thou shalt not make to thee any graven image. 3. Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain. 4. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy. 5. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. 6. Thou shalt not kill.