114 ABROGATION OP THE SABBATH. 



Hesiod. IIomer. Callimachus. 



fairs." {Hemerai : verses 5 — 9 ; or of " Works and Doi/s," 

 verses 767 — 771) If, from this, my friend is able to construct 

 "a trace of the weekly Sabbath/^ he is welcome to the con- 

 struction. 



The nearest resemblance to anything of the kind I can dis- 

 cover in the pages of Homer (nearly 1000 B. c), is where 

 UlysseS; entertaining King Alcinous with his adventures, re- 

 lates how, after 



"Six days and nights a doubtful course we steer, 

 The next, proiid Lamos' stately towers appear:" 



{Odyssey, x. 81.) 



or in a subsequent passage, where, after returning from his 

 long wanderings, he beguiles his faithful Eumæus with the 

 story th it, 



*'In feast and sacrifice, my chosen train 

 Six days consumed: — the seventh we ploiigbed the main." 



[Odyssey, xiv. 252.) 



If my friend sees, in these passages, an evidence of Grecian 

 Sabbatism, I will not rob him of their benefit. 



In the remaining poems of Callimachus (260 b. cf, I 

 cannot even meet with an incidental allusion to a seventh day !* 

 The only thing septenary occurs in his Hymn to the Birth- 

 place of Apollo; which narrates that, at the birth of Latona's 

 son, ^^ the tuneful swans of the god, scven times circled around 

 Delos, singing/' {l'o Delos. vei^ses 249 — 252.) This contribu- 



* Clemens Alexandrinus (to whom Dr. Dwight is indebted for 

 his authorities) cites from Callimachus several detached and un- 

 meaning phrases [Stromat. lib. v.), ringing the changes on the number 

 *'seven;" such as "the seventh is among the good things;" — "all 

 things in the starry heaven have been constructed, appeariug in seven 

 orbits," &c. These passages are not to be found in any of the poems 

 of Callimachus now extant ; and they have just no relation whatever 

 to the Sabbath question. It so happens that another of the Fathers 

 (EusEBius: Evangel. Præparat. lib. xiii. 12), quoting these very same 

 passages, ascribes them (with perhaps equal propriety) to Lixus ! 



