sent forth the cry, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" Yet was God never so present as in that moment when the words, "It is finished," declared the reign of Satan to be forever ended, and all power in heaven and on earth to belong to the glorified and divine humanity of JESUS CHRIST. Thus the revelation of God in his Word is, firstly, a process of involution, or successive unveilings, to be followed by that of an evolution or successive revealings, in accordance with the advancement of mankind in the power of spiritual insight and spiritual living-for "to him that hath, shall be given, and from him that hath not, shall be taken away." The law is a necessary and eternal one grounded in the nature of things, that on "all the glory there shall be a covering." Only so can the infinite be apprehended and approached by the finite, and the "invisible things of God from the creation of the world be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." The Divine descends to the physical apprehension of man in the veils of nature, in the phenomena of a world of matter and time and space; to his mental and spiritual apprehension the Divine similarly descends in the adaptation of spiritual truth through the veils of literal scripture and law and religious rite. It is thus an established law that the successive religious ages or epochs of man are precisely in accordance with the successive understandings of the Word of God as revealed. As Paul so significantly says, "Moses put a veil upon his face so that the children of Israel might not steadfastly behold the glory of his countenance." "But their minds were blinded; for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is done away in Christ. But even unto this day when Moses is read the veil is upon their hearts; when they shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away." And so, although the "law was given by Moses," to be succeeded by the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ," yet did our Lord himself speak in parables, and before the ascension promised that in a time which should yet come, he would speak to them no more as he had hitherto done, "in parables," but would show them "plainly of the Father."

46

Thus the process of the evolution of the Spirit out of the veil of the letter of the Scripture, begun in our Lord's own interpretation of the "Law for those of ancient time," is a process to whose further continuance the Lord himself testifies. The letter of Scripture is the cloud which everywhere proclaims the presence of the Infinite God with his creature man. The cloud of the Lord's presence is the infinitely merciful adaptation of divine truth to the spiritual needs of humanity. The cloud of the literal gospel and of the apostolic traditions of our Lord is truly typified by that cloud which received the ascending Christ out of the immediate sight of men. The same letter of the Word is the cloud in which he makes known his second coming in power and great glory, in revealing to the church the inner and spiritual meanings of both the Old and New Testaments of his Word. For ages the Christian Church has stood gazing up into heaven in adoration of him whom the cloud

has hidden from their sight, and with the traditions of human dogma, and the warring of the schools and critics, more and more dense has the cloud become. In the thickness of the cloud it behooves the church to hold the more fast its faith in the glory within the cloud; to give heed to the voice of those who spoke to the men of Galilee: "Why stand ye gazing into heaven? This same Jesus which is taken from you shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go;" and to be ready to recognize in the unfolding of the sense of the Scriptures in which the Lord Jesus is seen to be everywhere in his Word, its Spirit and its Life,-verily the coming of the Son of Man again "in the clouds with power and great glory."

The view of the Bible and its inspiration thus presented is the only one compatible with a belief in it as a divine in contradistinction from a human production. As a divine creation, like everything of nature, it has in its very being an infinite series of deeper and deeper meanings, reaching even to the divine wisdom itself from which it has proceeded; which meanings man can enter into more and more interiorly in the degree that he advances in spiritual perfection and in spiritual life.

It is not from man, from the intelligence of any Moses, or Daniel, or Isaiah, or John, that the Word of God contains its authority as divine. The authority must be in the words themselves. If they are unlike all other words ever written; if they have a meaning, yea, worlds and worlds of meaning, one within or above another, while human words have all their meaning on the surface; if they have a message whose truth is dependent upon no single time or circumstance, but speaks to man in all times and under all circumstances; if they have a validity and an authority selfdictated to human souls, which survives the passing of earthly monuments and powers, which speaks in all languages, to all minds-wise to the learned, simple to the simple-if, in a word, these are words that experience shows that no man could have written from the intelligence belonging to his time or from the experience of any single human soul, then may we feel sure that we may have in the words of our Bible that which is diviner than any penman that wrote them.. Here is that which "speaks with authority and not as the Scribes." The words that God speaks to man are "spirit and are life." The authorship of the Bible and all that this implies of divine authority to the consciences of men, are contained, like the flame of the Urim and Thummim on the breast-plate of the High Priest, in the bosom of its own language, to reveal itself by the spirit to all who will "have an ear to hear." So shall it continue to utter the "dark parables of old which we have known and our fathers have told us," and "to show forth to all generations the praises of the Lord," becoming ever more and more translucent with the glory that shines within the cloud of the letter; and so shall the church rest, amid all the contentions that engage those who study the surface of revelation, whether in nature or in Scripture, in the undisturbed assurance that the "Word of the Lord abideth forever."

THE SEVENTH DAY

THE DIVINE ELEMENT IN THE WEEKLY
REST-DAY.

BY THE REV. A. H. LEWIS, D.D., OF PLAINFIELD, N. J.

Experience shows that the idea of sacred time, and hence of the weekly rest-day, is vitally connected with the development of religion in individual life and in the world. There is no point on which God has more clearly uttered his verdicts. When the falsehood which says "no day is sacred" became regnant in the early history of Christianity, spiritual canker and decay fastened on the church like a deadly fungus. When the same falsehood ripened in the French Revolution, God thundered forth his verdict again, high above the smoke and din of national suicide. The slight regard which the world pays to these verdicts is as foolish as it is futile and ruinous.

The weekly rest-day is not an accident in human history. It is not a superficial and temporary phenomenon. It springs from the inherent philosophy of "time;" and from man's relation to God through it. We cannot remove ourselves from continuous living contact with him, even though we refuse to commune with him through love and obedience. On the other hand, the loving soul cannot hold communion with God without this medium of time; and such are the demands of life on earth that sacred time must be definite in amount, and must recur at definite periods. This is doubly true because men are social beings, and social worship and united service are essential factors in all religions.

The idea of sacred time, in some or in many forms, is universal. The supreme expression of this idea is found in the week, a divinely appointed cycle of time, measured, identified and preserved by the Sabbath. The weekly rest-day and the week are the special representatives of God; not of creation simply, but of the Universal Father, Creator, Helper and Redeemer; the All in All; the Ever-living and Ever-loving One.

Language is embalmed thought. It gives unerring testimony concerning the habits and practices of men in all ages. Under this universal law of philology the identity of the week, in its present order, in placed beyond question. A table of days carefully prepared by Dr. W. M. Jones, of London, assisted by other eminent scholars, shows that the week, as we now have it, exists in all the principal languages and dialects of the world. Copyright, 1893, by J. H. B.

This philological chain encircles the globe, includes all races of men, and covers the entire historic period. It proves that infinite wisdom provided, from the earliest time, and as an essential part of the divine order of creation, the weekly rest-day, by which alone the universal week is measured. The Sabbath and the week have thus a supreme value in all human affairs. But this value is fundamentally and preëminently religious. When men give the Sabbath to rest, because it is God's day, because of reverence for him, and that they may commune with him, all their highest interests are served. Spiritual intercourse and acquaintance with God are the first and supreme result. Worship and religious instruction follow. Under the behest of religion, the ordinary duties of life, its cares and perplexities, are really set aside, not simply refrained from. Sacred hours are God's enfolding presence, lifting the soul and holding it in heavenly converse. All that is holiest and best springs into life and develops into beauty, when men realize that God is constantly near them. The sense of personal obligation, awakened by the consciousness of God's presence, lies at the foundation of religious life and of worship. God's day is a perfect symbol of his presence; of his enfolding and redeeming love.

An adequate conception of the problems which surround the Sabbath question will not be obtained unless we consider some things which prevent these higher views from being adopted. First among hindrances is the failure to recognize duration as an attribute of God, and hence the Sabbath and the week as necessary parts of the divine and everlasting order of things. The absence of this higher conception is the source of the present wide-spread non-religious holidayism, with its long catalogue of evils; evils which perpetuate the falsehood, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

Another great hindrance is interposed when men emphasize and exalt the importance of physical rest, as the reason for maintaining Sabbath observance. This is done because the divine element is unrecognized, and in turn the divine element is obscured in proportion as physical rest is crowded to the front. This reverses the true order. It places the lowest, highest. It exalts the material and temporary above the spiritual and eternal. When the physical needs are made prominent, the spiritual perceptions are benumbed and clouded.

Another decided hindrance to the recognition of the divine element in the weekly rest-day is reliance on the civil law for the enforcement of its observance. This point is worthy of far more careful and scientific consideration than it has yet received. The vital divine element in the weekly rest-day is eliminated when it is made a "civil institution." The verdict of history on this point is unmistakable, uniform and imperative. Any argument is deceptive and destructive, if it places the rest-day on a par with those civil institutions that spring from the relations which men sustain to each other in organized society. No weekly rest-day has ever been relig.