The Sabbath for Professional Men
Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, “he will never make a painter who looks for the Sunday with pleasure for an idle day;” and Sir Joshua’s journals afford indisputable proofs that it was his habit to receive sitters on Sundays as well as on other days. This was naturally displeasing to Dr. Johnson; and we are told by Boswell, that he (Johnson) made three requests of Sir Joshua, a short time before his death: one was to forgive him thirty pounds which he had borrowed of him; another was, that Sir Joshua would carefully read the Scriptures; and lastly, that he would abstain from using his pencil on the Sabbath-day: to all of these requests Reynolds gave a willing assent, and kept his word.
The lax practice of working on the Sabbath is, we fear, too common. That it is a short-sighted practice there can be no doubt. With respect to it, the Hon. B. F. Butler, of New York, recently made the following statement:
“If I may be permitted to refer to my own experience, I can truly say that, although often severely pressed, and sometimes for years together, by professional occupations and official duties, I cannot call to mind more than half a dozen cases during the twenty-seven years which have elapsed since my admission to the Bar, in which I have found it necessary to devote any portion of the Sabbath to professional or official studies or labours. Of these instances only two, I believe, occurred during my connexion with the Government at Washington, one of which was a case of mercy as well as of necessity, and neither of which prevented my regular attendance at the house of God. The course I have pursued has sometimes compelled me to rise on the ensuing day somewhat earlier than my wont; but an occasional inconvenience of this kind is of small account when compared with the preservation of a useful habit. I am therefore able to testify that it is not necessary to the ordinary duties of professional life, that men should encroach upon the Sabbath; and that the cases of necessity or of mercy, in which professional labour can be required on that day, are few and far between.”
That the vast and unknown Antiquity of the Earth, compared with the 6000 years of its supposed existence is but as yesterday, is the first great startling fact which the researches of Geology have brought to light within the last thirty years. “With rare exceptions,” says Archdeacon Pratt, “this is become, like the motion of the earth, the universal creed. The prejudice of long-standing interpretation and ignorance of the records which the earth carries in its own bosom regarding its past history, had shut up us and our forefathers for ages, in the notion that the heavens and the earth were but six days older than the human race. But science reveals new phenomena, opens up new ideas, and creates new demands. The torch of nature and reason sheds its light upon the letter of Scripture.”
The Rev. Dr. Chalmers was the first to supply this new reading in his Natural Theology, vol. i. p. 251, as follows:—“Between the initial act and the details of Genesis, the world, for aught we know, might have been the theatre of many revolutions, the traces of which geology may still investigate, and to which she, in fact, has confidently appealed as the vestiges of so many continents that have now passed away.”
“In the beginning God created the heaven and earth; the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” is seen to refer to the first calling of matter into existence, and to a state of emptiness and waste into which the earth long after fell, ere God prepared it as the residence of the most perfect of His creatures.
This commentary and explanation was adopted by the late Rev. Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise:
“The word beginning,” he says, “as applied by Moses, in the first verse of the Book of Genesis, expresses an undefined period of time, which was antecedent to the last great change that affected the surface of the earth, and to the creation of its present animal and vegetable inhabitants, during which period a long series of operations may have been going on; which, as they are only connected with the history of the human race, are passed over in silence by the sacred historian, whose only concern was barely to state that the matter of the universe is not eternal and self-existent, but was originally created by the power of the Almighty. The Mosaic narrative commences with a declaration that, ‘in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ These few words of Genesis may be fairly appealed to by the geologist as containing a brief statement of the creation of the material elements, at a time distinctly preceding the operations of the first day; it is nowhere affirmed that God created the heaven and the earth in the first day, but in the beginning; this beginning may have been an epoch at an immeasured distance, followed by periods of undefined duration, during which all the physical operations disclosed by geology were going on.
“The first verse of Genesis, therefore, seems explicitly to assert the creation of the universe; the heaven, including the sidereal systems and the earth, more especially specifying our planet, as the subsequent scene of the operations of the six days about to be described; no information is given as to events which may have occurred upon this earth, unconnected with the history of man, between the creation of its component matter recorded in the first verse, and the era at which its history is resumed in the second verse; nor is any limit fixed to the time during which these intermediate events may have been going on; millions of millions of years may have occupied the indefinite interval between the beginning in which God created the heaven and the earth, and the evening or commencement of the first day of the Mosaic narrative.
“The second verse may describe the condition of the earth on the evening of this first day; for in the Jewish mode of computation used by Moses, each day is reckoned from the beginning of one evening to the beginning of another evening. This first evening may be considered as the termination of the indefinite period which followed the primeval creation announced in the first verse, and as the commencement of the first of the six succeeding days in which the earth was to be filled up and peopled in a manner fit for the reception of mankind. We have in this second verse a distinct mention of the earth and waters, as already existing and involved in darkness; their condition also is described as a state of confusion and emptiness (tohu bohu), words which are usually interpreted by the vague and indefinite Greek term chaos, and which may be geologically considered as designating the wreck and ruins of a former world. At this intermediate period of time, the preceding undefined geological periods had terminated, a new series of events commenced, and the work of the first morning of this new creation was the calling forth of light from a temporary darkness, which had overspread the ruins of the ancient earth.”
Such was the modified diluvial theory in which Dr. Buckland brought the weight of his authority to support the views now generally received.