stranger, that is within thy gates_."
Who is the stranger? (Gentiles.) Now the reason for it will carry us
back again to Paradise. "_For in six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the_ SEVENTH;
_wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it_."
"Wherefore 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 _forever_." (Why is it
Lord?) "_For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the_
SEVENTH _day he rested and was refreshed_." Exo. xx and xxxi. Which day
now will you choose? O, says the reader, the seventh if I knew which of
the days it was. If you don't know, why are you so sure that the _first_
day is right? O, [7]because the history of the world has settled that,
and this is the most we can know. Very well then, does not the _seventh_
come the day before the eighth? If we have not got the days of the week
right now, it is not likely that we ever shall. God does not require of
us any more than what we know; by that we shall be judged. Luke xxiii:
55, 56.

Once more: think you that the spirit of God ever directed Moses when he
was giving the history of the creation of the world, to write that he
(God) "blessed the _seventh_ day and sanctified it, because that in it
he had rested from all his work," unless he meant it to be dated from
that very day? Why, this is as clear to the unbiassed mind as it is that
God created man the sixth day. Would it not be the height of absurdity
to attempt to prove that God only intended Adam should be created at
some future period, or that the creation of the heavens and earth was
not in the beginning, but some twenty-five hundred years afterward? All
this would be as cogent reasoning as it would be to argue that God did
not intend this day of _rest_ should commence until about twenty-five
hundred years afterwards. (The word Sabbath signifies rest.)

It follows then irresistibly, that the weekly Sabbath was not made for
the Jews only, (but as Jesus says, for 'man') for the Jews had no
existence until more than two thousand years after it was established.
President Humphrey in his essays on the Sabbath says, "That he (God)
instituted it when he rested from all his work, on the _seventh_ day of
the first week, and gave it primarily to our first parents, and through
them to all their posterit