And this is the natural order in which we might have expected to find them appropriated to the days of the week. But, obviously, this is not the principle on which the days have been named; for, to give a single instance, the nimble Mercury, the smallest of the visible planets, comes next before the majestic Jupiter, the ruler of the heavens and wielder of the thunderbolt.

Let us try another principle, that of classifying the planets in importance, not by their size and splendour, but by the magnitude of their orbits and length of their revolutions. This will give the following order:—

We are now on the track of the right solution, though there is still apparently hopeless discord between this order and that of the days of the week. The true solution is such an artificial one, that we should never have discovered it if it had not been disclosed to us by the clay tablets exhumed from ancient royal libraries in the temples and palaces of Chaldæa. These tablets are extremely ancient, going back in many cases to the times of the old Accadians who inhabited Chaldæa prior to the advent of the Semites. Some of them, in fact, are from the royal library of Sargon I., of Accade, whose date is fixed by the best authorities at about 3800 b.c. These Accadians were a civilized and literary people, well versed in astronomy, but extremely superstitious, and addicted beyond measure to astrology. Every city had its ziggurat, or observatory-tower, attached to its temple, from which priests watched the heavens and calculated times and seasons. To some of those ancient priests it occurred that the planets must be gods watching over and influencing human events, and that, as Mars was ruddy, he was probably the god of war; Venus, the lovely evening star, the goddess of love; Jupiter, powerful; Saturn, slow and malignant; and Mercury, quick and nimble. By degrees the idea expanded, and it was thought that each planet exerted its peculiar influence, not only on the days of the week, but on the hours of the day; and the planet which presided over the first hour of the day was thought to preside over the whole of that day. But the day had been already divided into twenty-four hours, because the earliest Chaldæans had adopted the duodecimal scale, and counted by sixes, twelves, and sixties. Now, twenty-four is not divisible by seven, and, therefore, the same planets do not recur in the same order, to preside over the same hours of successive days. If Saturn ruled the first hour, he would rule the twenty-second hour; and, if we refer to the above list of the planets, ranged according to the magnitude of their orbits, we shall find that the Sun would rule the first hour of the succeeding day, and then in succession the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus, round to Saturn again, in the precise order of our days of the week. This order is so artificial that it cannot have been invented separately, and wherever we find it we may feel certain that it has descended from the astrological fancies of Accadian priestly astronomers at least 6000 years ago.

Now for the Sabbath. The same clay tablets, older by some 1000 years than the accepted Biblical date for the creation of the world, mention both the name and the institution. The "Sabbath" was the day ruled over by the gloomy and malignant Saturn, the oldest of the planetary gods, as shown by his wider orbit, but dimmed with age, and morose at having been dethroned by his brilliant son, Jupiter. It was unlucky in the extreme, therefore, to do any work, or begin any undertaking, on the "Sabbath," or Saturday. Hence, long centuries before Jewish Pharisees or English Puritans, rules of Sabbatarian strictness were enforced at Babylon and Nineveh, which remind one of the knight who

"Hanged his cat on Monday

For killing of a mouse on Sunday."

The king was not allowed to ride or walk on the Sabbath; and, even if taken ill, had to wait till the following day before taking medicine. This superstition as to the unluckiness of Saturn's day was common to all ancient nations, including the Jews; but when the idea of a local deity, one among many others, expanded, under the influence of the later prophets and the exile, unto that of one universal God, the ruler of the universe and special patron of his chosen people, the compilers of the Old Testament dealt with the Sabbath as they did with the Deluge, the Creation, and other myths borrowed from the Chaldæans. That is to say, they revised them in a monotheistic sense, wrote "God" for "gods," and gave them a religious, rather than an astronomical or astrological, meaning. Thus the origin of the Sabbath, as a day when no work was to be done, was transferred from Saturn to Jehovah, and the reason assigned was that "in six days the Lord created the heaven and the earth, and all that therein is, and rested on the seventh day."

One more step only remains to bring us to our modern Sunday, and this also, like the last, is to be attributed to a religious motive. The early Christian Church wished to wean the masses from Paganism, and very wisely, instead of attacking old-established usages in front, turned their flank by assigning them to different days. Thus the day of rest was shifted from Saturday to Sunday, which was made the Christian Sabbath, and the name changed by the Latin races from the day of the sun to the Lord's Day, "Dominica Dies," or "Dimanche." It has remained Saturday, however, with the Jews, and it is quite clear that it was on a Saturday, and not a Sunday, that Jesus walked through the fields with his disciples, plucking ears of corn, and saying, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." It is equally clear that our modern Sabbatarians are much nearer in spirit to the Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked, and to the old Accadian astrologers, than to the founder of Christianity.

It is encouraging, however, to those who believe in progress, to observe how in this, as in many other cases, the course of evolution makes for good. The absurd superstitions of Accadian astrologers led to the establishment of one day of rest out of every seven days—an institution which is in harmony with the requirements of human nature, and which has been attended by most beneficial results. The religious sanctions which attached themselves to this institution, first, as the Hebrew Sabbath, and, secondly, as transformed into the Christian Sunday, have been a powerful means of preserving this day of rest through so many social and political revolutions. Let us, therefore, not be too hasty in condemning everything which, on the face of it, appears to be antiquated and absurd. Millions will enjoy a holiday, get a breath of fresh air and glimpse of nature, or go to church or chapel cleanly and respectable in behaviour and attire, because there were Accadian Zadkiels 6000 years ago, who believed in the maleficent influence of the planet Saturn.