During our talk I should like to use the old sweet Bible word Sabbath, which can alone suggest its real subject. I want us all to feel its importance to ourselves as belonging to those who profess and call themselves Christians. We have not to consider how those spend the day of rest who are living without God in the world, and to whom the Sabbath and its ordinances are less than nothing; but how we can best use and enjoy the privileges it brings, and help others to do likewise. What is the Sabbath? If you were really within hearing, I could imagine most of you would reply, “Why do you ask such a question? Everybody knows the difference between it and other days.” And you would probably describe all its distinctive features. The open churches, the closed places of business, worshippers hurrying in one direction, holiday-makers in another. Or perhaps some would tell of joy experienced in meeting with fellow Christians in the House of God, or of happy family gatherings under the home roof, impossible on other days, but delightful on that precious day of rest. After hearing all, and sympathising with your joys, I should ask you to turn your thoughts from the present, and go back with me to the first chapter of the world’s history for the answer to my question, “What is the Sabbath? What was its beginning?” It is God’s first gift to mankind, bestowed when His work of Creation was completed by the instalment of the first human pair in the garden “eastward in Eden,” which He had planted as a fitting abode for them. The Divine Creator of the universe consecrated the Sabbath by His example, and gave it to be a continuous blessing throughout endless ages. It is beautiful to note the wisdom of God in dealing with the first human pair, and the lesson He taught them is for us to-day. Paradise or Eden was not to be the abode of idleness. By daily work _rest was to be earned_, and only by means of work could rest be enjoyed, and its preciousness realised in any great degree. I may note, in passing, that the idle, self-indulgent time-killers are the persons who complain most of weariness. They are tired with doing nothing, yet not having earned the right to rest, they cannot enjoy it. People often allude to the Sabbath as if it were a merely Jewish institution. Forgetting the earliest Bible record, they dwell on the time of Israel’s wanderings in the desert, on the double supply of manna bestowed on the sixth day to meet the wants of the seventh also; the disobedience of some, and the words which followed, addressed by the Lord to Moses: “See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore He giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days.” The Fourth Commandment, given from Mount Sinai, and engraved on stone, was the renewal and confirmation of that first inestimable gift of a day of rest.