_Gen. 2:3_—“_And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made._” Our rest is to be a miniature representation of God’s rest. As God worked six divine days and rested one divine day, so are we in imitation of him to work six human days and to rest one human day. In the Old Testament there are indications of an observance of the Sabbath day before the Mosaic legislation: _Gen. 4:3_—“_And in process of time_ [lit. “_at the end of days_”] _it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah_”; _Gen. 8:10, 12_—Noah twice waited seven days before sending forth the dove from the ark; _Gen. 29:27, 28_—“_fulfil the week_”; _cf._ _Judges 14:12_—“_the seven days of the feast_”; _Ex. 16:5_—double portion of manna promised on the sixth day, that none be gathered on the Sabbath (_cf._ _verses 20, 30_). This division of days into weeks is best explained by the original institution of the Sabbath at man’s creation. Moses in the fourth commandment therefore speaks of it as already known and observed: _Ex. 20:8_—“_Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy._” The Sabbath is recognized in Assyrian accounts of the Creation; see Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch., 5:427, 428; Schrader, Keilinschriften, ed. 1883:18-22. Professor Sayce: “Seven was a sacred number descended to the Semites from their Accadian predecessors. Seven by seven had the magic knots to be tied by the witch; seven times had the body of the sick man to be anointed by the purifying oil. As the Sabbath of rest fell on each seventh day of the week, so the planets, like the demon-messengers of Anu, were seven in number, and the gods of the number seven received a particular honor.” But now the discovery of a calendar tablet in Mesopotamia shows us the week of seven days and the Sabbath in full sway in ancient Babylon long before the days of Moses. In this tablet the seventh, the fourteenth, the twenty-first and the twenty-eighth days are called Sabbaths, the very word used by Moses, and following it are the words: “A day of rest.” The restrictions are quite as rigid in this tablet as those in the law of Moses. This institution must have gone back to the Accadian period, before the days of Abraham. In one of the recent discoveries this day is called “the day of rest for the heart,” but of the gods, on account of the propitiation offered on that day, their heart being put at rest. See Jastrow, in Am. Jour. Theol., April, 1898.