GENESIS AND MODERN THOUGHT. 173 
have occupied a long time. While the six days are said to have had an evening 
and morning, this is not affirmed of the seventh day, which may, therefore, in the 
view of the writer, be still in progress. Our Lord in his reply to the Pharisees, 
who accused him of working on the Sabbath—‘‘ My Father worketh hitherto, 
and I work”—affirms his belief that God’s Sabbath lasted up to his time; and 
the Jews seem to have held the same opinion, since they did not object. The ar- 
gument relating to the Sabbatism of God’s people, in Hebrews 4, depends for its 
force on the idea that God’s creative Sabbath is still in progress, and that Christ’s 
Sabbatism, on which he has entered after finishing his work, is also an indefinite 
period. When, in Hebrews 1, Christ is said to have ‘‘ made the worlds,” the lit- 
eral meaning is ‘‘ constituted or determined the long ages of the worlds’ making,” 
—that is, of the creative days, and the expression ‘‘ eternal purpose,’’ used of 
Christ in Ephesians 3:11, with reference to the creation, has the same reference. 
It means the purpose or design of thecreative ages. The above are merely a few 
evidences which show that the doctrine of long creative periods was that held by 
Moses himself, by our Lord, and by the apostles; and after this it will be scarcely 
necessary to add that Augustine and other early fathers of the church understood 
the matter in the same way, and that many good and eminent men in later times 
have arrived at the same conclusion. The days of the first chapter of Genesis 
may be literal days of vision to the seer; but they are working days of God, and 
not of man; and we live in the seventh of them, which was intended to bea 
Sabbath of rest, but has failed of this, for the present, on account of the fall of 
man. 
2. It may be affirmed that this doctrine of long creative days gives the only 
full and complete explanation of the institution and obligation of the Sabbath. 
If God made the world in six natural days, and rested on the seventh, then his 
example would have no force, unless it could be shown that, in some sense, he 
continues to work on six days, and rest on the seventh; but nature shows that this 
is not a fact, and our Lord’s expression, ‘‘My Father worketh hitherto,”’ agrees 
with this. Thus on the literal day theory, there would be a hidden fallacy implied 
in the reason annexed to the fourth commandment. But if Cod made the world 
in six long periods; if the seventh was not only this rest but that blessed Sabba- 
tism in which innocent man was to enjoy perpetual happiness; if this Sabbatism 
was lost by the fall, and if the weekly Sabbath is a memorial of this rest lost by 
the fall and the hopeful sign that it is to be restored by the Savior, then we have 
a substantial reason for the Sabbath day, a warrant for its being placed where it 
is in the ten commandments, and for the great importance attached to it through- 
out the Old Testament. The Sabbath then becomes to us an emblem at once of 
_ the paradise lost by the fall, and of the paradise to be regained in Christ. In- 
_ stead of appearing as piece of ritual misplaced in the moral law, it becomes that 
which gives life and significance to the whole decalogue. We have here also the 
true explanation of the change from the Jewish Sabbath to the Lord’s day; for if 
the one was the reminder of the Sabbatism lost by the fall and to be restored, 
