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[Slingluff]

, and so on? Probably for two reasons. First, that the rehearsal, as in
a catalogue, of the leading classes of natural objects, might give
definiteness and precision to the teaching that each and all were
creatures, things made by the word of God. The bald statement that the
heaven and the earth were made by God might still have left room for the
imagination that the powers of nature were co-eternal with God, or were
at least subordinate divinities; or that other powers than God had
worked up into the present order the materials He had created. The
detailed account makes it clear that not only was the universe in
general created by God, but that there was no part of it that was not
fashioned by Him. The next purpose was to set a seal of sanctity upon
the Sabbath. In the second chapter of Genesis we read-- "On the seventh
day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh
day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh
day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His
work which God created and made." In this we get the institution of the
_week_, the first ordinance imposed by God upon man. For in the fourth
of the ten commandments which God gave through Moses, it is said-- "The
seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do
any work. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea,
and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord
blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it." And again, when the
tabernacle was being builded, it was commanded-- "The children of Israel
shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their
generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the
children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed." God made
the sun, moon, and stars, and appointed them "for signs, and for
seasons, and for days, and years." The sun marks out the days; the moon
by her changes makes the months; the sun and the stars mark out the
seasons and the years. These were divisions of time which man would
naturally adopt. But there is not an exact number of days in the month,
nor an exact number of days or months in the year. Still less does the
period of seven days fit precisely into month or season or year; the
week is marked out by no phase of the moon, by no fixed relation between
the sun, the moon, or