In support of this view, we may observe that the Jews were commanded to abstain from work, not only every seventh day, but also every seventh year. “Six years thou shalt sow thy ground, and shalt gather the corn thereof; but the seventh year thou shalt let it alone, and suffer it to rest, that the poor of thy people may eat, and whatsoever shall be left, let the beasts of the field eat it: in like manner shalt thou do with thy vineyard and thy oliveyard. Six days shalt thou work: the seventh day thou shalt cease, that thy ox and thy ass may rest; and the son of thy handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed.”[160] And in another place we read: “When you shall have entered into the land which I will give you, observe the rest of the Sabbath to the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and shalt gather the fruits thereof; but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath to the land, of the resting of the Lord; thou shalt not sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. What the ground shall bring forth of itself thou shalt not reap: neither shalt thou gather the grapes of the first fruits as a vintage; for it is a year of rest to the land: But they shall be unto you for meat; to thee, and to thy man-servant, and to thy maid-servant, and to thy hireling, and to the strangers that sojourn with thee, to thy beasts of burden, and to thy cattle, all things that grow shall be for meat.”[161] The seventh year, then, according to Divine command, was a year of rest among the Jews, just as the seventh day was a day of rest; and it is evident that the one precept, no less than the other, was founded on the great example of God’s rest when He had finished the work of Creation. We are satisfied, therefore, that whatever may have been the length of those six days in which God labored, and of the seventh day on which He rested, His example might still be properly set forth as the model on which the law of the Sabbath was founded.
It is urged, however, that in this passage of Exodus, we have the same word יוֺם (yom) applied in the very same context to the six days of the Creation and to the six days of the week; and it can hardly be supposed that the inspired writer would pass thus suddenly from one meaning of the word to another, and a very different meaning, without giving any intimation to his readers of such a transition. If this argument is a good one, we can only say that it completely oversets the opinion of those against whom we are contending. In the fifth verse of the first chapter of Genesis we read: “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning the first Day.” Now, those who reject the theory of long periods, maintain that by the word Day in the latter part of this verse, is meant the whole civil day of twenty-four hours; while it is plain that, in the earlier part of the verse, the same word Day is emphatically applied to only a part of that period—that is, to the time of light as distinguished from the time of darkness. Therefore, they are themselves, in fact, upholding an interpretation which supposes the inspired writer to pass from one meaning of the word Day to another, without any intimation of a change of meaning.
But we do not want to shrink from dealing with this argument on its merits. The principle on which it is founded seems to us unsound and inconsistent with the evidence of the Sacred Books themselves. It is quite a common thing, we contend, in Scripture, for the writer to pass from one meaning of a word to another without any explicit indication of such a transition, when, as in the case before us, the two senses, though different, are analogous: the one being, as it were, the figure, or the symbol, or the pattern, of the other. A few examples will make this clear. In the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, we read as follows: “For the charity of Christ presseth us: judging this, that if one died for all, then all were dead; and Christ died for all.”[162] Here, when it is said that “all were dead,” the meaning is, that all men were dead spiritually by sin; whereas, in the clause immediately preceding, and in the clause immediately following, the same word is used in its literal sense for the death of Christ upon the cross. And yet the Apostle, though he thus passed from the literal to the metaphorical sense of the word, and then back again from the metaphorical sense to the literal, gives no express indication of these transitions.
Again, in the Gospel, when a certain man, being called by our Lord, said: “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father,” Jesus reproved him in these words: “Let the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.”[163] There is some difference of opinion amongst commentators as to the exact meaning of this phrase. But whatever interpretation be adopted, it seems evident from the context that the dead to be buried were those who were literally dead; whereas, the dead who were to bury them were manifestly not those who were literally dead, but those who were dead in some analogous or metaphorical sense. Another example occurs in the twentieth chapter of Saint John. Christ says to His Apostles: “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”[164] When He says, “I ascend to my Father,” the meaning is, “to Him who has begotten me from all eternity.” When He adds, “and your Father,” the meaning is, “to Him who has adopted you for His children.” Here, then, the word Father is first used in the sense of a natural father, and immediately after in the sense of a father by adoption, without any explicit declaration of a change in meaning.
The Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans furnishes an instance in which the transition from one meaning to another occurs in the case of the word Day itself: “The night is passed, and the day is at hand. Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day.”[165] The word Day, in the earlier part of this passage, is used by Saint Paul for the Day of Eternity which is to follow the darkness of this life; while, in the next sentence, it means clearly the period of light between sunrise and sunset. Another illustration of the same kind occurs in the first Epistle to the Thessalonians. “But you, brethren, are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief; for you are all the children of light and the children of the day.”[166] No one familiar with the language of Scripture can doubt that the first day here is the Day of Judgment; and it is quite plain that the second day is not the Day of Judgment.
Our next example, and one most appropriate to our purpose, is taken from the prophet Amos: “And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.”[167] This prophecy is commonly referred by the Fathers to the time of our Lord, when the earth was darkened in the clear day on the occasion of His crucifixion; but some eminent authorities, with Saint Jerome at their head, explain it of the Captivity in Babylon. Either interpretation will suit our argument. The sacred writer first employs the word Day for a long period of time, and afterward proceeds to use it in its more ordinary sense, without giving his readers any express intimation of such a transition.
We hope it is now pretty clear that neither the reason assigned for the institution of the Sabbath Day, nor the particular form of words in which that ordinance is set forth, offers any insurmountable obstacle to the opinion we are defending. And this is quite enough for our purpose. For we would again remind our readers that we are not attempting to prove from the Sacred Text that this opinion must be true, but only that it may be true. Our object has been sufficiently attained if we have succeeded in showing that the hypothesis which makes the Days of Creation long periods, is not inconsistent with the language of Scripture.
We are tempted, however, in the case of this objection, to go somewhat further than the scope of our argument strictly demands. The text we have just been discussing brings before us, in fact, a consideration of great weight in favor of the system of long periods. “In six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth and the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day.” Now, what was this Seventh Day on which God rested? Was it a common day of twenty-four hours? or was it not rather a long and undefined period of time? Saint Augustine answers plainly enough: “The seventh day,” he says, “is without an evening, and has no setting.” And Venerable Bede, asking why the sacred writer had assigned no evening to the seventh day, gives this answer: “Because it has no end, and is shut in by no limit.”[168]
The common sentiment of Theologians, as far as we know, seems to point in the same direction. They tell us that God is said to have rested, inasmuch as He ceased from the creation of new species; and they hold that since the close of the Sixth Day no new species have been brought into existence. But whether this be true or not, it would be very difficult, we think, to point out any sense in which God can be said to have rested after the work of the Six Days, and in which He is not resting at the present moment. If so, the day of His rest is still going on; and it is not a period of twenty-four hours only, but a period of many thousand years. Now, if the Seventh Day on which God rested is a period of many thousand years, are we not fully justified in supposing that the Six Days on which He formed and furnished the Heavens and the Earth were likewise periods of many ages?
