Whether this can be done or not is a question which involves the wisdom of God; for, granting that he gave the fourth commandment as a Sabbath law, and the regulations concerning the Sabbath, as found in the books of Moses, there is no room for dispute that he understood the statute to enforce the keeping of a definite day, and not merely one-seventh part of time, In the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, where the Sabbath is first introduced, is found an excellent opportunity to test this matter. He there marks out the day which he had hallowed as the one which followed the sixth, and the only one on which no manna fell. For forty years, also, this practice of separating the day of his rest by a weekly miracle from all others was continued. But why should he have done this if there was no choice, and if the keeping of the seventh part of time was all that was necessary? Nay, more, why did he make it absolutely impossible for a man to celebrate any other day but the seventh day of the week? That he did so, we can prove in a few words. We will suppose that a person entertaining the sentiments of the gentleman should have attempted to carry them out in the forty years during which God led the people in the wilderness; also, that his first experiment was that of Sunday rest. In this he would have failed utterly. Do you ask, How? I answer that God had decreed that no manna should fall on the seventh day (Ex. 16:26), and that the manna which was to be eaten on the Sabbath should be gathered on the day before (Ex. 16:5). It would therefore have been impossible for the individual in question to provide food for his Sunday rest. But, disgusted with this kind of Sabbath-keeping, suppose he should have tried, in order, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the result would not have varied materially. On Sunday, there was an utter absence of all food; on the other days, that which had been previously gathered, instead of being fit for use, would have been found corrupted and changed into loathsome worms, since God had told the people that only the manna which was gathered on the sixth day should be kept until the day following; and some of them, having made the experiment of disobeying in the particular in question, found the result as cited above (Ex. 16:19, 20). On the other hand, should the same individual have decided finally to consecrate the seventh day of the week, he would have found no difficulty whatever. Gathering his double portion of the manna on the sixth day, by a miracle of God it would have been preserved pure and wholesome through the last day of the week.