ceeded from the God of the Israelites, the Creator of the world, of whom the Egyptians must have heard from the Israelites, and Pharaoh from Joseph, then in high favour; and who could not have been mentioned as the Creator of the world, without the surprising detail that He had created it in six days and rested on the seventh. Joseph mourned for his father seven days, or a week, (sabbat ;) and when the latter Pharaoh was plagued, he was allowed after the first plague a respite of seven days. Balaam, who was not an Israelite, prepared seven altars, and sacrificed seven bullocks and seven rams, showing that the number seven was usual in the religious worship of those times.

The division of time into weeks was known in the country from whence Abraham came out. They could not have learned it from him, for he never returned, and our opponents deny that he ever knew it. Laban, in Charran, says to Jacob, "fulfil her week," (sabbat ;) that is, the week of rejoicings usual at a wedding. Here then a week made the principal feature in an old custom; and we know that customs, more particularly in the East, require a number of years to establish them. The knowledge of the true God was still known in that country, although mixed with superstition; and as weeks were also known, we may conclude that the sabbath, which made the week, was also preserved.

The same custom of having a week's rejoicings on a marriage was observed among the Philistines, who were heathens, in the time of Samson. Judges xiv. 12: “The seven days of the feast." The same word in Hebrew signifies seven days and a week.

There are also evident traces of the sabbath at the time of the flood. "Gen. vii. 4: "The Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark for yet seven days, (a week, sabbat,) and I will cause it to rain upon

the earth forty days and forty nights."*

The same word is used as in all cases in which a week is intended; therefore the command was given on the sabbath preceding the week or seven days mentioned, and most probably given from the divine presence, † and the week follows

* From the account in the text it might seem as if the flood lasted only forty days and forty nights; but these days are mentioned as the particular period at the end of which two events happened: first, ver. 4, the waters at that time had risen so high as to destroy all living creatures; and, 2ndly, ver. 17, they had risen high enough to float the ark. It was thirty cubits high; we may therefore suppose it to have drawn one half, or fifteen cubits. This appears also from ver. 20; for the waters prevailed fifteen cubits above the mountains, and immediately on the cessation of the flood, before the waters could have fallen, the ark touched the top of Ararat. We learn from ver. 24, that the "waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days;" and from chap. viii. 3, that " at the end of the one hundred and fifty days the waters were abated ;" and ver. 4, that the ark rested at the end of five months. † I am strongly led to believe that the glory and the divine presence, which I think never had been withdrawn since it was placed at the east of Eden, moved, just before the flood, into the ark, as it moved into Solomon's temple; otherwise we should expect that the commands of God should have come from heaven, or at least from without; but on the contrary, they came from within the ark. Thus, before Noah entered, chap. vii. 1, the command is, "COME thou, and all thy house, INTO the ark." And in chap. viii. 16, when they were in the ark, the command is, "GO FORTH of the ark, thou and thy wife," &c.

We know from 1 Pet. iii. 18-20,that Christ preached to the wicked antediluvians for one hundred and twenty years before the flood. How could he have preached to such rebellious and carnal persons, as to leave them without a shadow of excuse, except accompanied by some divine and visible symbol of his presence, which they could not mistake? but we do not read anywhere in scripture of any such symbol but one. When the Israelites were murmuring and disobedient, and a communication was about to be given in consequence of their disobedience, the cloud always assumed the appearance of fire.

during that week they went into the ark. After the seven days the flood began on the first day of the following week, on the seventeenth day of the second month. The waters prevailed one hundred and fifty days, or five months, and the ark rested on Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the one hundred and fifty-first day. The one hundred and fifty days contained twenty-one weeks and three days, and therefore the last of the one hundred and fifty days was on the third day of the week, and the seventeenth of the seventh month was the fourth day; and from thence to the first day of the tenth month, when the mountains appeared, we have seventythree days exclusive ;-so that the last of these seventy-three days, or the last of the ninth month, must have been the sabbath. We then have a period of forty days beginning with the first day of the week, and on the fortieth day, or fifth day of the week, he sent forth the raven, expecting it to return on the sixth, so that he might inquire of the Lord on the seventh, or sabbath. Instead of sending forth the dove immediately, he waited for seven days, (for it is said, on the second occasion of sending her out, that he waited yet other seven days: therefore he must have waited seven days before he first sent her out,) he sends her forth at intervals of seven days from the day he sent forth the raven; and therefore always on the fifth day of the week, expecting her back on the sixth, or to have it decided on the sixth, that she would not return, that he might inquire of the Lord on the seventh, the usual day of holding communications with him. By this reckoning, the dove was sent out the third time on the first day of the twelfth month, and the fifth day of the week.

Let us now consider the day on which God actually did speak unto Noah. It was on the twenty-seventh day of the second month. The year of the flood consisted of three

E

hundred and sixty days. I have shown above that the day of the commencement of the flood, the seventeenth of the second month, was the first day of the week; from that day to the twenty-seventh of the second month of the second year, including both, is three hundred and seventy-one days, or exactly fifty-three weeks; and, as the first day of that period was the first day of the week, so must the last or twenty-seventh be the last or seventh day of the week or sabbath; and on this day God made his communication to Noah, and desired him to go out of the ark. And as they took six days going in, we may conclude that they took six days going out. And on the day after he builded an altar, and offered sacrifices, and had communications with the Deity. And this day it appears was the sabbath also; and of this we have further proof,-for, in verse 21, it is said, "The Lord smelled a sweet savour." Now, the literal meaning of those words is, "a savour of REST,"-not, it is true, sabbat, but another word frequently used for the rest of the sabbath. Thus the sabbath shines even through the dark and tempestuous year of the flood from the beginning to the end. And our calculation carried on from the sabbath, the day of the divine communication, seven days before the flood, and the sabbath immediately preceding the flood, to the last day in the ark, also a sabbath, and a day of divine communication, to the day after the work of debarkation, marked with a strong appearance of a sabbath, a day of public worship, a savour of REST.

I have one more argument to prove the antiquity of the sabbath, even so far back as the creation: and this I find in the Hebrew language itself. Every person is ready to grant that the Hebrew is the most ancient language of the world. I hope to prove that it has continued from the time of the creation, and that it was not confounded at Babel.

It is generally allowed that the earlier numbers, the digits preceding "ten," are amongst the very first primary words of any language. Therefore the number "seven" in Hebrew must have been coeval with the origin of the language. Now it is very remarkable, that the words in Hebrew, which signify seven, rest, week, and sabbath, are all the same, with a very slight variation; and this connexion must have been as old as the language, from the very origin of which, the connexion between rest and the number seven must have existed. And this we cannot account for in any other way than by the Mosaic narrative of the creation, the rest on the seventh day, and the command to keep it holy.

I have now to prove the chief step in the above argument, viz. that the Hebrew language had not been confounded, but had existed from the creation. From the creation to the confusion and dispersion at Babel, there had been only one language, Gen. xi. 1. Therefore, if we prove that Hebrew was the language spoken before the Babel transaction, we need not go higher.

Abraham and his descendants were called Hebrews, from Eber, or Heber, great-grand-son of Shem. Some persons, anxious to make new discoveries, and preferring a novel bad reason to an established good one, have endeavoured to derive the name from "eber," which signifies beyond, because Abraham came from beyond the Euphrates. This derivation is fanciful; but the arguments for the former seem to me to be insuperable.

In the very short history after the flood, consisting almost entirely of genealogies, we find proof that Eber was a distinguished character. Although so much had previously been said of Shem, and it had even been prophesied that God should dwell in the tents of Shem, yet, in Gen. x. 21, Shem is distinguished as being "the father of all the chil