At first the promise is presented in the negative form of rest from labour. Even the Creator condescended thus to rest. But what _such_ rest can be to God it were vain for man to try to conceive. We know that, as soon as the foundations of the world were laid and the work of creation was ended, God ceased from this form of activity. But when this negative rest had been attained, it was far from realising God’s idea of rest either for Himself or for man. For, though these works of God, the material universe, were finished from the laying of the world’s foundations to the crowning of the edifice,[49] God still speaks of another rest, and threatens to shut some men out for their unbelief. Our Lord told the Pharisees, whose notion of the Sabbath was the negative one, that He desired His Sabbath rest to be like that of His Father, Who “worketh hitherto.” The Jewish Sabbath, it appears, therefore, is the most crude and elementary form of God’s promised rest. The promise is next presented as the rest of Canaan.[50] This is a stage in advance in the development of the idea. It is not mere abstention from secular labour, and the consecration of inactivity. The rest now consists in the enjoyment of material prosperity, the proud consciousness of national power, the growth of a peculiar civilization, the rise of great men and eminent saints, and all this won by Israel under the leadership of their Jesus, who was in this respect a type of ours. But even in this second garden of Eden Israel did not attain unto God’s rest. Worldliness became their snare.