Archaia. 487 



material creation on our planet on the sixth day, the inference is 

 that God still rests. Notwithstanding the weight of Hugh Millar's 

 arguments on (this point, and the decided terms in which he 

 insists that our Sabbath is a day proportional to the Sabbath of 

 the Lord, we yet see no scriptural warrant for such an idea. 

 More likely to our mind is that to have been the Sabbath of the 

 Lord, when in the garden of Eden he walked with the perfect 

 and unfallen man, and rested with holy complacency in the glory 

 of his finished work. Here we have that which perfectly accords 

 with the idea of Divine rest, and which constitutes sinless Para- 

 dise the most expressive emblem of that eternal rest prepared for 

 the children of God. 



The period of human redemption in which there is, as its most 

 prominent feature, the sufferings and death of the Saviour is to 

 our thinking a time in which there is more of Divine working, 

 more signal displays of divine power, than in all the works of 

 material creation. It was concerning this redemption period that 

 Christ said: "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." These 

 considerations do not well comport with the idea that the dispen- 

 sation of grace is the Sabbath period of the Lord. A careful 

 consideration of the text conveys to us the idea that the Sabbath 

 on which Gcd is represented as resting from all his works is the 

 literal diurnal seventh day following in regular succession that 

 which by way of emphasis is marked with the cardinal " one " and 

 in which the perfect holiness of the world was undisturbed by sin. 



That the words " in the day " (beyorri) are used in chapter ii. 

 4, in a sense different from that in which day (yom) is used in 

 the first chapter does not in the least affect our conclusion. The 

 sentence in which " in the day " (beyom) is found is obviously a 

 parallel to the first clause of the same verse which says. " These 

 are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were 

 created." It thus appears that, "when" and " in the day " are 

 used to mean one and the same thing ; the one in fact according to 

 the well ascertained principles of Hebrew grammar exactly explains 

 the meaning of the other. In the chrestomathy of the scholarly 

 and accurate Nordheimer the words " in the day " (beyom) are 

 rendered by the phrase " during the time." 



That such an adverbial form of " yom " in composition with the 

 preposition "oe^A" was in use at this early time, the text itself is 

 evidence sufficient. At the time the narrative was written the 

 Hebrew language had already attained its classic fullness and 



