IT has been already suggested that the division of the creative work into six days rather than into five or ten or any other number, contemplated the weekly Sabbath and was designed to connect this Sabbath for man with God’s rest from this creative work so that the Sabbath should be at once a memorial of the creation and should bear in itself the force of God’s example in his relative periods of labor and of rest. God created this beautiful earth for man’s abode, and man to dwell upon it; therefore let man remember his Great Creator and Father, thoughtfully contemplating his works, admiring and adoring, worshiping and serving the Glorious Author of both his being and his blessings. God wrought six days and rested one; so let man throughout all the ages of earthly time. Such is the relation of the Sabbath to God and to man.――――Note therefore 1. _God ordained and enjoined it._ It is precisely a divine institution――not man-made but heaven-born; an outgrowth of God’s wisdom and love for his offspring man――for that one of all his creatures whom only God “made in his own image.” “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made” (Gen. 2: 3). “Blessed and sanctified”――not _as to himself_ but _as to man_; _i. e._ not to make the day a blessing to himself but a blessing to man; not to make the day holy _to himself_ but holy _as to man_. It was a day for man to keep holy and a day laden with blessings for man on condition of his sacredly observing it in its true spirit and intent.――――In accord with this view are our Savior’s words (Mk. 2: 27), “The Sabbath was made for man”――to become a blessing for man, one of the great and sure channels of mercy from the Great Father to his obedient children. Thus the Sabbath was instituted for man when the race existed in Adam and Eve alone――one of the institutions revealed from God and enjoined in Eden――good for man before his fall, and surely not less needful to the race fallen than to the race sinless. Let it be distinctly considered that this Sabbath was instituted with no limitations of time or race or nation――not for Eden alone; not for the race before their fall only――to become defunct when man began to sin; not for the Jews alone to be only a Jewish national observance and to become obsolete when the ceremonials of Judaism “waxed old and vanished away.” It was indeed prescribed anew to the Hebrew nation and enforced with new sanctions, especially by his obligations to his covenant-keeping God for national deliverance from Egyptian bondage; but this weighs not a feather against the doctrine that the Sabbath was made _for man_. While the Sabbath obligation, thus heightened by new mercies, might be said to become more sacred and obligatory upon the Jewish nation, this fact could by no means make the day less sacred to the Gentiles of every land and of all time.