Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/408

392 7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 8. Thou shalt not steal. 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness. 10. Thou shalt not covet.

Certainly, so far as the fourth commandment is concerned, it is highly improbable that in its original promulgation it should have been enforced by an argument depending upon knowledge of the creative week, contained in a book, of the existence and publication of which at that time there is no kind of evidence.

I lay stress upon this point, because I believe, and desire to suggest to the reader, that the actual history of the week and of the Sabbath is by no means that which the mere reading of the Bible, commencing with the first chapter of Genesis, might suggest to our minds. The book of Genesis describes the first condition of things, and speaks of the Creator as having spent six days in making the universe, and as having then rested on the seventh day, and having hallowed it; from which description it might seem natural to infer that we have here the history of the institution of the week and of the Sabbath as the close of it; and there are in fact writers who suggest that this institution was delivered to Adam, and came down from him by tradition to subsequent generations of men. Thus, in the "Speaker's Commentary," on the words of Genesis ii, 1, "God blessed the seventh day," Bishop Harold Browne remarks, "The natural interpretation of these words is that the blessing of the Sabbath was immediately consequent on that first creation of man, for whom the Sabbath was made." This may be so; but when we endeavor to realize what is meant by the creation of man and the institution of the Sabbath being coeval, it is difficult to express the meaning in intelligible language. The keeping of the seventh day as a day of rest, involves the counting of six days, and then the dealing with the seventh day in some manner different from that in which the first six have been dealt with. Can we quite conceive of such a course in the case of the first man? Supposing him to have come into instantaneous existence in all the perfection of his human intelligence—a supposition which is beset with difficulties and is opposed to the belief of almost all who have studied the subject—is it possible to conceive of the newly formed man as at once comprehending the division of days into weeks, and the consecration of one day above another; or is it possible to conceive of him as capable of receiving a revelation which should convey this knowledge to his mind? If, as all the phenomena of history and of science indicate, the growth of man in knowledge of all kinds has been slow and gradual, then it must be reckoned as incredible that so refined and comparatively complicated arrangement as the division of time by weeks and the keeping of a Sabbath should have been the property of the earliest representative of our race.

So far as Holy Scripture itself is concerned, it will be observed