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weeks has nothing whatever to do with the naming of days after the seven planets. Indeed among those nations, who name the days as we do, the week is not universally regarded. The Egyptians, from whom the names of the days and their order are derived to us, divided days not into weeks, but into decades. The Hindoos, who name the days in the same manner, know nothing of weeks, but divide the month into two parts. The naming the days after the planets is simply a result of ascribing the hours each to the regency of a certain planet, as was done by the old astrologers, each day being then named after that planet which was regent of its first hour. The order of the planets, as determined by the Egyptian astrologers according to their apparent distance from the earth, was the following: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. Assigning, then, the first hour of the first day in the astronomical calendar to the regency of Saturn, and the following hours to the other planets in their order, the first hour of the second day would fall to the Sun, that of the third to the Moon, that of the fourth to Mars, that of the fifth to Mercury, that of the sixth to Jupiter, that of the seventh to Venus, that of the eighth to Saturn again, and so on; and, naming each day after the regent planet of its first hour, we have the names of the days of the week as they appear in the Romanic, Teutonic, Indian and Egyptian languages. Hence it appears that the naming of the days after the planets did not begin until after the division of the day into twenty-four hours was permanently adopted; and, further, that the naming of the days after the planets had no connection whatever with their division into weeks.

All the evidence, therefore, which archæology has brought to light concerning astrological divisions of time among the ancients, is irrelevant to the question of the divine origin of the sabbath; while all that it teaches us of the cosmogonies of early nations, as compared with that of Genesis, forces us to the conclusion that the latter is the original and authentic source, from which the traces of truth in the former were derived.*

Thirty years ago it was believed to have been discovered that the Egyptians, Chaldæans, Hebrews and other ancient nations derived their astronomical knowl

On the other hand, from other independent and very ancient documents of the Mosaic recension, we gather that the division of days into weeks was much older than the time of Moses; indeed, that it was common among the patriarchs from the earliest times. Thus God gives Noah seven days to bring his household into the ark, after it was finished, Gen. vii, 4, 10; Noah waits repeatedly seven days, Gen. viii, 10, 12. Isaac is circumcised after seven days, Gen. xxi, 4; and that in accordance with the divine direction, xvii, 12. The marriage festival of Leah lasts seven days, Gen. 1, 10. And this division of time is expressly referred by the Pentateuch, Exodus xx, 11, xxxi, 17, to the account of the creation given in the first document of Genesis.

The argument, then, for the divine origin of the sabbath may be stated as follows: First, there is not the slightest evidence against it; secondly, this ancient document, which is believed to be as old as Adam, and the truthfulness of which we have seen confirmed in a wonderful manner, affirms it; thirdly, the Pentateuch expressly derives the institution of the sabbath, and the derivation of days into weeks, from the fact that God created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh day.

Reviewing now the ground which we have been over, we have here the most perfect and wonderful harmony that the nature of language would permit between this earliest record of human literature, and the theories and discoveries of modern science. Can we resist the conclusion that this ancient document is a true account of a revelation from God? As we have already remarked, a true account of the creation must be either the induction of profound and genuine science, or a revelation from God. It is idle to suppose that man could arrive at truth so far transcending his means of knowledge by any

edge, and their divisions of time from the Hindoos. Now it is put beyond question that the Hindoos derived all that they knew of these branches from the Greeks, since the commencement of the Christian era. This fact should be a warning to those who are so desirous of overthrowing the authority of the Bible, and who are too ignorant to speak modestly of the results of archæological inquiry, not to plume themselves on the invalidation of the word of God until their irrelevant objections are substantiated on more reliable grounds.

other course than by a logical induction from positive facts. But, at the age when this document was written, the facts, which would be necessary to light the theorist to correct results, were totally unknown. What men called facts were only appearances; and these were such as would lead the speculative mind anywhere but to the truth. The history of science down to a comparatively recent date, has been almost nothing but a record of errors that have resulted from speculating on false or insufficient data. The absurd cosmogonies of the Chaldæans, Egyptians and Hindoos illustrate the utter futility of attempting to reason out a theory of creation from the views and assumptions of early science; and even within the memory of some who may read this Article, the theories of science were such as to preclude and to forbid a cosmogony like that which is now believed to be true.

Suppose, for example, our first progenitor, or Moses, or any scientific man down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, left alone to devise a philosopheme concerning the creation what ground would he have had to describe the earth and the other heavenly bodies as originally one; to make light the first creation, even before the sun; to picture the earth as covered with an ocean of water; to speak of plants as created before the sun; of sea animals and birds as preceding land animals; and, finally, to make seven distinct epochs in the history of world formation? The positive science of our day shuts us down to this order and division of the grand features of creation; but until the nebular hypothesis of Laplace was promulgated, the notions of men were such that they would be utterly unable to devise such a plan of creation on any rational grounds; and, further, that they would inevitably devise one contrary in many respects. It is an interesting fact that in the description of the creation given in the Zendavesta, or sacred book of the Persians, and which is taken almost literally from the first document of Genesis, "the sun is created before the light, and then the herbs and the plants after the sun; which are precisely the two points they did not understand, and therefore altered as errors."*

Coleridge: Table Talk, p. 270.

On the other hand, suppose that the most eminent philosopher of our day were required to give to a company of rude and ignorant savages a succinct account of the creation, for the sake of teaching them some important religious lessons: could he find language better adapted to his purposes than that of this primitive document? Would he not be obliged to use the same concrete and physical forms of language to express his philosophical ideas? Would he not seize on just the points here specified, as the most prominent? Would he not give the same order and divisions to the successive steps? Could he attempt any more thorough and elaborate description without transcending the ability of his hearers to understand, and frustrating the very object which he designed to secure? Would he not take the account in Genesis just as it stands, as the best possible description to an ignorant, untutored mind, of what we now regard as the true cosmogony of science?

Consider, now, this primitive account of the creation, thus true in all its details, expressing, as perfectly as the conditions of language would allow, the scientific decisions of this enlightened age, but coming down to us from a remote antiquity, and from a people possessing not even a rudimentary knowledge of science can we avoid the inevitable conclusion that this first document of Genesis is a true account of a revelation from God? For thousands of years the human mind has been rearing its proud science; age has added to age its contributions; and, in these later times, false assumptions and vain theories. have been continually urged against the truth of this primeval narrative of the creation: and now, to-day, the grandest results of human science have but fathomed the philosophy of this primeval record, and established its truth as the record of a divine revelation. Who then shall say that this account of the creation is but a fiction of the human mind? that these profound harmonies are merely chance coincidences? Who shall dispute the overwhelming proof here offered of the truth and sacred character of this manifest revelation from God? Ignorance and folly may doubt, and cavil, and deny; but no man who has a right to call himself a scientific man, a true student of nature, and of the word of God, can fail to recognize the

harmonies between God's word and works, and to appreciate the mutual support which each, when rightly interpreted, renders to the other.

Such is the testimony of that distinguished Student of Nature, to whose thoughts we have so often alluded—nor can we better close our summing up of the results of scientific inquiry concerning the cosmogony, than by quoting the concluding paragraph of a discussion of this subject from his own pen:"The two records, the earlier revelation and the later, are thus one in their sublime enunciations of the history of creation. There is a like grandeur in the progress of the ages. They both contain conceptions infinitely beyond the reach of the human intellect, and bear equal evidence of their divine origin. The 'grand old book of God still stands,' and this grand old earth, the more its leaves are turned over and pondered, the more will it sustain, enlighten, and illustrate the sacred word. The two are independent inscriptions, written in lines of light by the same sun of righteousness: and the more deeply they are studied and loved for their truths, the higher may we rise towards the effulgence of their eternal source. The universe and the Bible are consecutive parts of one glorious volume; the former teaching of infinite harmonies, coming up from the deep past, and of man's relation through Nature to God; the latter, of man's relation through his own soul to God, and of still loftier harmonies in the eternal future: the first part, telling not only of the wisdom and power of God, but also of man's exaltation, at the head of the kingdoms of life, the being towards whom, with prophetic eye, all nature was looking through the course of ages, preparing his earthly abode, ar. ranging every ridge, and plain, and sea, and living thing, for his moral and intellectual advancement, and with so much beneficence that man, when he came to take possession of the domain, found everywhere lessons of love and adoration, and read in his own exaltation a hope, though a trembling hope, of immortality; the second part, after a chorus epitomizing the former revelation, pursues its closing thought. Man, in his relation to his Maker, makes that hope of immortality sure, and points out the way of life, by which he may enter into everlast

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