22 ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



No Sabbath in Genesis. Its first enactment, in Exodus. 



Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, are happily agreed, and 

 that is ^^ wlicn the week should begin and end/' J. N. B. 

 will permit me to remind him that, if Sunday is really the day 

 on which Jesus rose from the dead, we have the testimony of 

 all the evangelists that it is " the first day of the week," and 

 not '^ the seventh day/' 



"In Eden," says your correspondent, "the first Sabbath 

 kept by man was the first day after his own creation V It is 

 much to be regretted that he has felt at liberty to make so im- 

 portant an addition to the testimony of Scripture. Certainly 

 no such account is to be found in the Bible, nor anything 

 similar to it. In Fxod. xvi. 25, J. N. B. will find a narrative 

 of " the first Sabbath kept by man." In vain shall we search 

 for even a hint that, during the twenty-five hundred years pre- 

 vious, man ever did keep, or ever was required to keep, a Sab- 

 bath. But we are told that Adam rested " the first day after 

 his own creation !" — in the name of wonder — from what? To 

 assume that the declaration in Gen. ii. 3, "God blessed the 

 seventh day and sanctified it," means that man " sanctified 

 it," requires rather too great an exercise of "fancy" for a 

 sober logician.* I dislike retort, but I cannot help reminding 

 my friend J. N. B. that " so serious a blunder at the beginning 

 should abate a little his tone of confidence." 



The First Proposition, then, that there is but one Bible 

 Sabbath, stands wholly unimpaired. No one can assail it by 

 " venturing to affirm." Nothing will answer but a chapter 

 and verse, pointing out a " Sabbath" other than that of the 

 fourth commandment — " the seventh day." Such an appeal 

 has not as yet been even attempted. 



II. The Second Proposition, that the Sabbath was strictly a 

 ceremonial and Jewish institution, seems to your correspondent 



* " The words are a narrative of wliat God did himself; but do not 

 contain a precept of what Adam should do." Dr. Gill. {Body of 

 Divinity, vol. iii. book iii. chap. 8.) 



