175 
. ? 6 ') The reason given for the Fourth Commandment requires the suppo- 
sition of long creative days. It cannot be meant that God works six natural 
days, and rests on the seventh, as we do ; but it may mean that on God’s 
seventh day we should have entered on His rest, and that our weekly 
Sabbath is a memorial of this rest, lost by the Fall, but to be restored in 
the future. 
(7.) This explanation has the support of the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, whose argument in his fourth chapter has no force unless on the 
supposition that God entered into a rest, or Sabbath, of indefinite duration, 
which man failed to enter into owing to the Fall, retaining only the weekly 
Sabbath as a shadow of it ; but which is to be restored in Christ, who has 
already entered into His rest, of which the Lord’s Hay is in like manner a 
foreshadowing to us. There is also good reason to believe that the term 
aliovtg used with reference to the creation, in Hebrews i. 2, and in 
Ephesians iii. 11, refers to the creative days as long periods; and these 
passages, so obscure otherwise, become plain when this is taken into con- 
sideration. 
Further discussion of these points will be found in the work to which I 
have already referred, and in Macdonald’s admirable treatise on “ Creation 
and the Fall,” * probably the best book on this subject accessible to the 
English reader ; and it may be considered as established by an overwhelming 
amount of evidence that Moses himself, our Lord, and the Apostle Paul, 
have recognized the days of creation as long periods. If so, there can 
surely be no advantage in adhering any longer to a mediaeval literalism, 
which besides depriving us of the advantage of explaining the origin aud 
true religious significance of the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day, and the relation 
of both to God’s rest and to the rest which remains for His people, places 
the Bible in unnecessary conflict with truths which the stones themselves 
have, in these days, opened their mouths to declare. 
It is high time that clear and Scriptural views of these subjects were given in 
all our schools and pulpits, by all grades of religious teachers. If this were pro- 
perly done, there would be less reason to complain that young people, when 
they go out into the world, find what they have been taught in the name of 
religion to be in conflict with what all intelligent people believe on the evi- 
dence of their senses and their reason. The blame of the resulting infidelity 
may not lie at the door of even infidel men of science so much as of those 
who should have known the Word of God more perfectly before attempting 
to instruct others. There are enough of errors promulgated in our day in the 
name of science and philosophy, to engage the attention of theologians, without 
placing the Bible in apparent hostility to truths which are in harmony with 
its own teachings. 
* Hamilton, Adams, & Co., London. See also Lewis’s Introduction to 
Lange’s “ Genesis ” (pp. 131 et seq.) : Clark, Edinburgh. 
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