days ye must eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord seven days in the seventh day is an holy convocation: shall do no servile work therein. (Leviticus xxiii, 4-8.)

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The other" the feast of ingathering," or of Tabernacles, as it is more commonly called-was held six months later, in the

autumn:

Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the Lord." (Leviticus xxiii, 34.)

"In the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath." (Ibid., 39.)

"The feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.” (Exodus xxiii, 16.)

Thus, as the morning and evening sacrifices stood respectively at the beginning and end of the bright part of the day, so the great feasts of spring and autumn, Passover and Tabernacles, stood at the beginning and end of the bright part of the year. The sun, when he crossed the equator northward in the spring, was for a sign, and for an appointed assembly, a "season season"; and again when he crossed it southward in the autumn. Thus each year was marked out and sanctified by an act of worship at its beginning, and by another at its close.

The month also was sanctified by a religious observance. By its nature, the month does not supply so close an analogy with the day as does the year, and in primitive times the first

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appearance of the " new moon was the only phenomenon of

the month suitable as a sign or signal from whence time could be reckoned.

So in Numbers xxviii, 11, the ordinance for the continual burnt offering of the sacrifice of a lamb in the morning and of a second lamb in the evening, is followed by the injunction :—

"In the beginnings of your months ye shall offer a burnt offering unto the Lord; two young bullocks, and one ram, seven lambs of the first year without spot.”

Further in the tenth chapter and tenth verse of the same book, it is added :-

In the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you for a memorial before your God: I am the Lord your God." That these five "seasons" should be "appointed as times for religious observance, was simple and natural. The beginning and ending of each day, the beginning of each month, the beginning and ending of the summer half of each year (that is to say, the two equinoxes of spring and autumn) are important notes of time, indicated by the heavenly bodies, and appropriate as seasons for public worship.

THE SEVENTH.

But the Mosaic Law laid emphasis on another principle not thus directly dependent on the relations of the heavenly bodies. This is the principle of the special sacredness of the seventh : every seventh day and every seventh year were held specially sacred, and were kept for rest. And the seventh month in every year was peculiarly the month set apart for sacred services; in particular for the most solemn service of the whole Mosaic ritual, that of the great Day of Atonement.

Let it be noted that there is nothing in the natural character of the seventh day to distinguish it from any of the other six. That which marks it, if we accept Genesis ii, 2-3, and Exodus xx, 8-11, as historical, is the Word of God Himself; it is an act of choice on His part, and if the seventh day is observed by men, it is observed by men who do so in the exercise of their own power of choice, which they desire to bring into accord with what they have accepted as being the Divine choice. The day is sacred, not as being different in itself from other days, but as being chosen for special observance by God and by man.

Equally so was it with the seventh year. This was a sabbath of rest, just as the seventh day was. Indeed, in Exodus xxiii, the yearly sabbath is put before the weekly sabbath, as if the latter were derived from the former :

"Thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in

the fruits thereof: But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard. Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed." (Exodus xxiii, 9-12.)

An analogous regulation dealt with the case of a Hebrew who had fallen into poverty and had been sold into servitude :

If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing." (Exodus xxi, 2.)

"And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty." (Deuteronomy xv, 13.) The significance of the observance of the seventh day and of the seventh year was that of rest, and release from slavery.

The seventh month of each year was distinguished in the same spirit. There were special sacrifices over which the silver trumpets were blown on the first day of every month, but it was only on the first day of the seventh month that it was commanded: Ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work it is a day of blowing the trumpets unto you." (Numbers xxix, 1.)

Also on the tenth day of this seventh month there shall be a day of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you; Ye shall do no manner of work: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your souls in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath." (Leviticus xxiii, 27-32.)

SEVEN TIMES SEVEN.

This principle of the sanctification of the seventh day and of the seventh year received a yet further application. Seven times seven was to be counted from the sabbath of the week of unleavened bread :

When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest :

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, from 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 Deuteronomy 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 manservant, 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 Egypt: 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 fundamental 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

of the word, a circumstance which influences importantly the rules for the drawing up of the Jewish Calendar to-day.

It should be noted that it was necessary that the people should know some days before these "holy convocations" exactly when they were going to take place, in order that due preparation should be made, and this rule must have applied to the Feast of Trumpets as well as to the other six.

Lastly it was ordained :—

Thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years: and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family." (Leviticus xxv, 8-10.)

This is the complete Mosaic Calendar, the full circle of religious observances commanded to Israel, as laid down in the five books of Moses. The continual burnt offering, day by day, in the morning and at even; the great annual festivals in spring and in autumn; the monthly blowing of trumpets at every new moon ; the special hallowing of every seventh day and of every seventh year, and of the seventh month of every year; the completion of the Feast of Unleavened Bread after seven weeks by the Feast of Pentecost; and the completion of the seven weeks of years in the year of Jubilee. The circle was thus complete, and thenceforth a new circle began.

CALENDARS.

Whatever calendar men use, or whatever their state of civilization, they count by Days, for the Day gives us our most definite measure of time. If we wish for a larger unit, we have the choice of two-the Month and the Year. Nomadic nations have a natural tendency to reckon by months; agricultural and settled nations must count by years. But a difficulty is experienced when the attempt is made to reckon both by months and by years,

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