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E. WALTER MAUNDER, ESQ., F.R.A.S., ON 



and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted 

 for you : on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall 

 wave it . . . and ye shall count unto you from the morrow 

 after the sabbath, fi'om the day that ye brought the sheaf 

 of the wave offering ; seven sabbaths shall be complete : 

 Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye 

 number fifty days ; and ye shall offer a new meat offering 

 unto the Lord." (Leviticus xxiii, 10-16.) 

 The regulation is given in a different form in Deuteronomv 

 xvi, 9-12 :~ 



" Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee : begin to 

 number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest 

 to put the sickle to the corn. And thou shalt keep the 

 feast of weeks unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a 

 freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto 

 the Lord thy God, according as the Lord thy God hath 

 blessed thee : and thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy 

 God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man- 

 servant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within 

 thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the 

 widow, that are among you, in the place which the Lord 

 thy God hath chosen to place His name there. And thou 

 shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egjrpt : and 

 thou shalt observe and do these statutes." 



This feast of Pentecost, though ordained in the wilderness, was 

 not ordained for the wilderness. It was to be kept " when ye 

 be come into the land which I give unto you " ; not before. As 

 the fundamental idea of the seventh day was rest, so the funda- 

 mental idea of the forty-ninth day, seven times seven, was that 

 of fulfilment, of completeness. The Day of Pentecost was the 

 completion of the feast of unleavened bread, and is still so 

 regarded. 



The feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, completes also the seven 

 "holy convocations " whereon no servile work was to be done ; 

 and observed as sabbaths in addition to the ordinary weekly 

 day of rest. The other six are the first and seventh days of 

 the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the four holy days of 

 the seventh month, that is to say, the Feast of Trumpets, the 

 Day of Atonement and the first and eighth days of the Feast of 

 Tabernacles. In most years, therefore, no fewer than eight days 

 in the seventh month were kept as sabbaths in the fullest sense 



