Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/410

394 by weeks was a matter of familiar knowledge to Moses. Then, this being so, it is quite intelligible that the successive works of creation, beginning with light and culminating in man, should fit themselves, as it were, into the framework which the division of the week supplied. Some framework would manifestly be required, and this framework would be ready-made.

There would be an advantage in this presentation of the week, which would be analogous to that which belonged to the whole Mosaic cosmogony, as a testimony against idolatry. The tendency, to which the nations almost universally fell victims, was to worship the heavenly bodies; but the story of creation, as given to the ancient church, distinctly asserted the creature character of these bodies, and with great and emphatic distinctiveness man's superiority to them all; the first chapter of Genesis was an eloquent protest against the worship of the host of heaven; and so, if there was a tendency to connect the days of the week with this same kind of false worship, by giving one day to the sun, another to the moon, and so on, nothing could more effectually cure this error than the appropriation of the days as representative of the stages of operation in the creative work of the one supreme God. The days did not belong to the planets, owed no allegiance to them, and were not influenced by them, however it might be true that the method of reckoning them was due to the number of these bodies; they were simply the first, second, third... days; all were alike except the seventh, upon which a special character was impressed. And it may be remarked in this connection that the Israelites never adopted the heathen practice, almost if not quite universal, of designating the days of the week by the names of the planets or of deities; to an Israelite Sunday was the first day of the week, and nothing more; the seventh day was the Sabbath, and the sixth was the day of preparation, but no taint could be found the whole week through of anything which could be twisted or perverted to idolatrous ends. The Christian Church has not thought it necessary to take so much precaution; bearing in mind that through her Lord the idols have been "utterly abolished," she has not feared to suffer to remain in her nomenclature some of the relics of the heathen past. When the Society of Friends endeavored to substitute the Jewish system for that which is current in Christendom, it was felt that the effort was unnecessary and unprofitable, and it has consequently failed outside their own body. The mongrel method of denoting the days of the week, which prevails throughout Europe, varying from one country to another, but mongrel in all, can not be defended upon any except antiquarian principles, but may be acknowledged to be free in common use from all taint of superstition or any danger of bringing in idolatry.

I shall be quite prepared to find that the view which has been taken in this essay of the relation of the seven days of Genesis to the