Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/151

Rh hearts, in that most significant declaration of Christ, "God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." It is the spirit and the truth with which one worships, not the day or the form, which is of real significance. Forms, of course, have their value or they would not be given. But that value can only be estimated by a full understanding of the spiritual purpose for which they were ordained. In ignorance of this we necessarily mistake the outward form for the inward reality, and we necessarily lay great stress on the correctness of the minor details of the form, to the great neglect of that spirit and purpose for which alone it was given. Let us apply this idea to the question of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was instituted—so it is stated in Exodus—in commemoration of the fact that "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore," it is added, "The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." Now science has proved as conclusively as it is possible for science to prove anything, that the world, so far from having been made in six days, was many hundred thousand years in formation. And another truth has become equally well established, to wit, that many of the stars of heaven were created at a period inconceivably more ancient