106 ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



Adam's rest by " communion," not a Sabbath. 



cance, as J. N. B. has well remarked. {Isaiah Ixv. 17. — p. 

 51.) 



My frieud has inferred (by no very sober logic) that Adam 

 resfed "the jBrst day after his own creation;"* and to my very 

 pertinent inquiry — "fromwhatf — he replies: " It had hetter 

 become him had he risen upward in thought to the sublime 

 repose of the Creator over his finished work, and remembered 

 that Man was then in perfect communion of spirit with his 

 God!" {jy. 49.) So that it appears Adam did not observe a 

 human Sabbath after all ! We are to rise upward in thought 

 to the sublime termination of creation, and remember that 

 Adam by communion of spirit rested from — creation! And 

 as he of course enjoyed this sympathetic repose equally on the 

 next day, and so on the third, and fourth, — this "first Sabbath 

 kcpt by man/' must have been a much longer one than that 

 prescribed by the Decalogue : — indeed it has not terminated 

 vet! for though the " Fatlier worketh hitherto," that "sub- 

 lime repose of the Creator'' never yet has been broken ! My 

 friend's hypothesis does not avail him in the present examina- 

 tion. 



tion," says Dr. Gill, " is used as an argument to enforce the keeping 

 of the seventh-day Sabbath, no w enjoinecl ; but not as a reason of the 

 institution of it." [Body of Divin. vol. 3. B. iii. ch. 8.) In his Com- 

 mentary on Gen. ii. 3, he remarks: " These words may be read in a 

 parenthesis, as containing an account of a fact that was done, not at 

 the beginning of the world, and on the first seventh day of it, but of 

 what had been done in the times of Moses, who wrote this after the 

 giving of the law of the Sabbath .... He takes this opportunity here 

 to insert it, and very pertinently, seeing the reason why God then, in 

 the time of Moses, blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it, was be- 

 cause he had rested on that day from all his works. (Fxod. xx. 11.) 

 And the same reason is given here, tåken plainly out of that law which 

 he had delirered to them." (Com. in loco.) 



* "Being Adam's first day, it could not, with any propriety, be 

 called a rest from labor to him, when, as yet, he had not labored at all ; 

 such a Sabbath was not Buitable to him in a state of iunoceuce." Gill. 

 ^Sody of Div. vol. iii. B. iii. ch. 8.) 



