392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 



8. Thou shalt not steal. 



9. Thou shalt not hear 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 sug- 

 gest to the reader, that the actual history of the week and of the Sab- 

 bath is by no means that which the mere reading of the Bible, com- 

 mencing 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 insti- 

 tution was delivered to Adam, and came down from him by tradition 

 to subsequent generations of men. Thus, in the " Speaker's Commen- 

 tary," on the words of Genesis ii, 1, " God Messed 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 expi-ess 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 ? Suppos- 

 ing him to have come into instantaneous existence in all the perfec- 

 tion 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 conse- 

 cration of one day above another ; or is it possible to conceive of him 

 as capable of receiving a revelation which should convey this knowl- 

 edge 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 



