14 THE SABBATH. 



hallowed it.' In Deuteronomy this reason is suppressed 

 and another is assigned. Israel being a servant in 

 Egypt, God, it is stated, brought them out of it with a 

 mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. ' Therefore 

 the Lord thy Grod commandeth thee to keep the 

 Sabbath day.' After repeating the Ten Commandments, 

 and assigning the foregoing origin to the Sabbath, the 

 writer in Deuteronomy proceeds thus: 'These words 

 the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount, 

 out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud and the thick 

 darkness, with a loud voice ; and he added no more.' 

 But in Exodus Grod not only added more, but something 

 entirely different. This has been a difficulty with 

 commentators — not formidable, if the Bible be treated 

 as any other ancient book, but extremely formidable on 

 the theory of plenary inspiration. I remember in the 

 days of my youth being shocked and perplexed by an 

 admission made by Bishop Watson in his celebrated 

 ' Apology for the Bible/ written in answer to Tom Paine. 

 'You have,' says the bishop, 'disclosed a few weeds 

 which good men would have covered up from view.' 

 That there were 'weeds' in the Bible requiring to be 

 kept out of sight was to me, at that time, a new revela- 

 tion. I take little pleasure in dwelling upon the errors 

 and blemishes of a book rendered venerable to me by 

 intrinsic wisdom and imperishable associations. But 

 when that book is wrested to our detriment, when its 

 passages are invoked to justify the imposition of a yoke, 

 irksome because unnatural, we are driven in self-defence 

 to be critical. In self-defence, therefore, we plead these 

 two discordant accounts of the origin of the Sabbath, 

 one of which makes it a purely Jewish institution, while 

 the other, unless regarded as a mere myth and figure, 

 is in irreconcilable antagonism to the facts of geology. 

 With regard to the alleged ' proofs ' that Sunday 



