After the Most High had solemnly espoused the people unto himself, as his peculiar treasure in the earth,[81] they were brought forth out of the camp to meet with God. “And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.” Out of the midst of this fire did God proclaim the ten words of his law.[82] The fourth of these precepts is the grand law of the Sabbath. Thus spake the great Law-giver:— “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all 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, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” The estimate which the Law-giver placed upon his Sabbath is seen in that he deemed it worthy of a place in his code of ten commandments, thus causing it to stand in the midst of nine immutable moral precepts. Nor is this to be thought a small honor that the Most High, naming one by one the great principles of morality until all are given, and he adds no more,[83] should include in their number the observance of his hallowed rest-day. This precept is expressly given to enforce the observance of the Creator’s great memorial; and unlike all the others, this one traces its obligation back to the creation, where that memorial was ordained. The Sabbath is to be remembered and kept holy because that God hallowed it, _i.e._, appointed it to a holy use, at the close of the first week. And this sanctification or hallowing of the rest-day, when the first seventh day of time was past, was the solemn act of setting apart the seventh day for time to come in memory of the Creator’s rest. Thus the fourth commandment reaches back and embraces the institution of the Sabbath in paradise, while the sanctification of the Sabbath in paradise extends forward to all coming time. The narrative respecting the wilderness of Sin admirably cements the union of the two. Thus in the wilderness of Sin, before the fourth commandment was given, stands the Sabbath, holy to the Lord, with an existing obligation to observe it, though no commandment in that narrative creates the obligation. This obligation is derived from the same source as the fourth commandment, namely, the sanctification of the Sabbath in paradise, showing that it was an existing duty, and not a new precept. For it should never be forgotten that the fourth commandment does not trace its obligation to the wilderness of Sin, but to the creation; a decisive proof that the Sabbath did not originate in the wilderness of Sin.