Now, there can be no doubt, but that God, being infinitely wise, and also most intimately acquainted with the peculiar wants and infirmities, and with the whole nature of man, whom he himself created, and upon whom he bestowed what nature he pleased, foreknew, and therefore decided from the very first, that one-seventh of man’s time was _necessary_ to be, and consequently _should_ be, released from labour, and devoted to a holy rest. But the way which he took to show this to _us_, and to give us, at the same time, an awful and striking sense of it, is perhaps one of the most wonderful instances of all the wonders of his providential care of us. He himself, in his mighty work of the creation of this world, tasked himself to a six-days’ labour, and rested on the seventh day, in order that man, following _his_ example, might use the same proportion of labour and rest. And this He has told us in his holy word; He has not left it to _us_ to find it out by our own reason; He has informed us himself. It had been easy for _him_, for Omnipotence, surely, to have made the world, and all the creatures that fill, diversify, and adorn it, in a single day; nay, in a single hour; yes, truly, in a single minute. As He said, “let there be light, and there was light;” so He had only to say, “let there be a world,” and there would have been a world. In a single instant of time, in the very twinkling of an eye, all the miracles of creation that are visible to _us_, and all that are invisible, beyond the ken even of our imagination, at the Divine fiat, at the simple sound of the omnific word, would have sprung into existence at once, and into all the well-being, order, and harmony, by which all things will consist, in the same beauty and perfection, unto the end. But then there would have been nothing in such a proceeding for the moral instruction, or for the temporal and eternal benefit of men. He set bounds, therefore, to his own boundless power; He reduced infinite down to finite; He controlled his own almighty energies, and ordered his work, a whole world, so as to finish it in six days; He knew that a seventh day of rest was needful for man; and, therefore, He bestowed it upon him as a merciful boon, secured to him indefeasibly for ever by the express pattern of his own doings, and by the positive command to copy that pattern throughout all ages.