Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/352

338 unlawful for any worshiper of that god to labor. Sabbaths are found everywhere, for it appears to be a general rule throughout the world that gods should have days consecrated to them, and that on those days the followers of those gods may do no work, no matter whether the holy day recurs weekly, monthly, or yearly. The notion appears to be that to refrain from work on a day dedicated to a god is a mode of showing respect. As soon as this view becomes generally accepted, then to work on a holy day is to show want of respect; and as the gods of uncultured peoples are, like uncultured peoples themselves, very sensitive to slights of this nature, the god whose dignity or vanity has been hurt revenges himself by punishing the sabbath-breaker or by punishing his followers at large, because they have not vindicated his honor by punishing the culprit themselves. Then, since to work on the holy day is likely to call down punishment on the individual or on the community, the axiom that it is unlucky to work on that day becomes accepted, and people will not labor or transact business or journey on it.

Bna-da, the second day of the seven-day period of the Tshi tribes, is sacred to the gods of the sea, and is, in consequence, the sabbath of all those who are worshipers of the sea-gods—that is to say, fishermen and those whose vocations take them on the sea. On Bna-da propitiatory offerings are made to the sea-gods, and no one may catch fish. It is the fishermen's day of rest, and, before the colonial government interfered with native customs, any native who violated it by going fishing was put to death, just as was the custom among the Israelites with their own sabbath-breakers (Exodus, xxxi, 14, 15; Numbers, xv, 32). Similarly, the fifth day, Fi-da, is sacred to the gods who preside over agriculture, and is the holy day or sabbath of all persons who cultivate the soil. Here, then, are two cases of sabbaths recurring every seventh day, just as with the Israelites.

The Babylonian Assyrians had the seven-day week and a weekly sabbath. Mr. George Smith says: "In the year 1869 I discovered among other things a curious religious calendar of the Assyrians, in which every month is divided into four weeks, and the seventh days or 'sabbaths' are marked out as days on which no work should be undertaken." Whether the Assyrian month here referred to was lunar or civil we are not told, but the Rev. A. H. Sayce tells us that, according to the lunar division of the year, "the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth were days of 'rest,' on which certain works were forbidden," so that it seems that the Assyrians had subdivided the lunar month in much the same way as the Tshi tribes have.