“What did He have to rest for? A God wouldn’t get tired, would He?” burst forth Leslie, turning big inquiring eyes on Julia Cloud.
“I don’t know, unless He did it for our sakes to set us an example,” she answered slowly, “although that might mean He rested in the sense of stopped doing it, you know. And that would imply that He had some reason for doing so. I’m not very wise, you know, and because I may not be able to answer your questions doesn’t mean they can’t be answered by some one who has studied it all out. I’ve often wished I could have gone to college and studied Greek and Hebrew, so I could have read the Bible in the original.”
“H’m!” said Allison thoughtfully. “That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? I always wondered why they did it, but I don’t know but I’ll study them myself. I think I’d enjoy it if there was a real reason besides just the discipline of it they are always talking about when you kick about mathematics and languages.”
“Well,” said Leslie, sitting up interestedly, “is that all there is to it? Did some one just up and say we had to keep Sunday because God did? I think that is a kind of superstition. I don’t see that God would want to make us do everything He did. We couldn’t. I wouldn’t unless He said to, anyhow.”
“O Les! You’re way off,” laughed her brother. “God did. He said, ‘Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all 141 thy work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant nor thy maid servant–––’ Don’t you remember the Ten Commandments? No, I guess you were too little to learn them. But I got a Testament for learning them once. Say, Cloudy, when did He give that command? Right away after He made Adam and Eve?”
“I’m not sure,” said Julia Cloud, fluttering the leaves of her Bible over to the second slip of paper. “I don’t find any reference to it in my concordance till way over here in Exodus, after the children of Israel had been in Egypt so many years, and Moses led them out through the wilderness, and they got fretful because they hadn’t any bread such as they used to have in Egypt, so God sent them manna that fell every morning. But He told them not to leave any over for the next day because it would gather worms and smell bad, except on Saturday, when they were to gather enough for the Sabbath. Listen: ‘And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating; and when the sun waxed hot, it melted. And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man; and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. And he said unto them, This is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the Lord; bake that, which ye will bake to-day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade; and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. And Moses said, Eat that to-day; for to-day is a sabbath unto the Lord: 142 to-day ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none. And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day.’ It looks as though the people had been used to the Sabbath already, for the commandments given on the mount come three whole chapters later. It looks to me as if God established the Sabbath right at the beginning when He rested from His own work, and that’s what it means when it says He sanctified it.”
“What do you suppose He said, ‘I have given you a sabbath’ for? It looks as if it were meant for a benefit for the people and not for God, doesn’t it?” said Allison, sitting up and looking over his aunt’s shoulder. “Why, I always supposed God wanted the Sabbath for His own sake, so people would see how great He was.”
Julia Cloud’s cheeks grew red with a flash of distress as if he had said something against some one she loved very much.
“Oh, no!” she said earnestly. “God isn’t like that. Why, He loves us! He wouldn’t have given a Sabbath at all if it hadn’t been quite necessary for our good. Besides, in the New Testament, Jesus said, ‘The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath’! Oh, He made it for us, to be happy 143 in, I’m sure. And perhaps He rested Himself so that we might understand He had set apart that time of leisure in order to be everything to us on the day when we had most time for Him. I have read somewhere that God had to teach those early people little by little just as we teach babies, a few things each year; and over in the New Testament it says that all these things that happened in the Old Testament to those children of Israel happened and were written down for an example to us who should live in the later part of the world. So, little by little, by pictures and stories He taught those people what He wanted all of us to know as a sort of inheritance. And He took the things first that were of the most importance. It would seem as if He considered this matter of the Sabbath very important, and as if He had it in mind right away at the first when He made the world, and intended to set apart this day out of every seven, because He stopped right off the very first week Himself to establish a precedent, and then He ‘sanctified’ it, which must mean He set it apart in such a way that all the world should understand.”
“What is a precedent?” asked Leslie sharply.