Sabbath in solemn grandeur and patriarchal dignity, waiting with Israel, its keeper and ally, for the day when all humanity will worship the one holy God of Abraham, and when our ancient Sabbath may truly become the Sabbath of the world. 8. In all lands time was originally regulated by the movements of the moon, which are within the observation of all. The alternation of its increase and decrease divided the month into two parts, which were then subdivided into four. Therefore the original month among both the Babylonians and the Hebrews consisted of four weeks of seven days each, the last day of each week being the Sabbath, the “day of standstill,” and two days of the new moon.(1474) Both the new moon and full moon were special days of celebration,(1475) and later two other Sabbath days were added between them to correspond to the four phases of the moon. Still later the week was detached altogether from the moon and made a fixed period of seven days, solemnly ended by the Sabbath. Thus Judaism raised the Sabbath above all dependence on nature and into the realm of holiness. The Jewish Sabbath became the witness to God, the Creator ruling above nature in absolute freedom.(1476) Still the ancient festival of the new moon was preserved as an observance in the Temple, and it afterward survived only in the liturgy of the Synagogue. While ancient Israel had observed the New Moon as a day of rest even more sacred than the Sabbath,(1477) the Priestly Code placed it among the festivals only as a day of sacrifice, but as neither a day of rest nor of popular celebration.(1478) Beside the recital of the _Hallel_ Psalms and the _Mussaf_ (“additional”) prayer in the Synagogue no religious significance was attached to it in the daily life of the people. Still the fact that the Jewish calendar was regulated by the moon, while that of other nations depended on the solar year, led the rabbis to compare the unique history of Israel to the course of the moon. As the moon changes continually, waxing and waning but ever renewing itself after each decline, so Israel renews itself after every fall; while the proud nations of the world, which count their year by the course of the sun, rise and set, as it does, with no hope of renewal.(1479) At the same time, assurance was found in the prophetic words that “the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of the seven days” and “thy (Israel’s) sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light.”(1480)