63 THE SACRED AND SECULAR
God, the great honor of having been once publicly pro-
claimed by the voice of God; and twice written upon
tables of stone by the finger of the Lawgiver. It has,
moreover, one signal honor which the other precepts
cannot lay claim unto; viz., the fact that it is founded
upon the example of the Almighty himself.
The law being thus delivered to Moses, and by him
brought down from the mount, was, by God’s command,
placed beneath the merey-seat in the ark of God's testa-
ment. 18x. 40:20; Dcut. 10:5.
The whole work of atonement and sin-offering in the
earthly sanctuary related to this law of God; and the
Sabbath of the Lord constituted one-tenth part of that
law. Lev. 16.
During the period of the forty years’ sojourn in the
wilderness, the children of Israel did very generally vi-
olate the Sabbath. Ezekiel has given us much infor-
mation on this point. It even appears that while
Moses was in the mount during the first forty days,
Israel did then greatly pollute the Sabbath. It was
one of the sins for which they came so near being shut
out of the promised land at that time. Ize. 20: 9-13.
But God gave them a second probation, or rather pro-
longed their existing probation, but it was, for all that,
a failure. So he lifted up his hand in the wilderness
and solemnly sware that they should not enter the land.
See Num. 14:28, 29; Ize. 20:15. And here is the
reason for this oath, as stated by Xzckiel in the next
verse: ‘Because they despised my judgments, and
walked not in my statutes, but polluted my Sabbaths:
for their heart went after their idols.” When, therefore,
Paul wrote to the Hebrew people, the descendants of
these very persons who thus failed to enter the prom-
ised land beeaunse of their violation of the law of Ged in
general, and of the Sabbath in particular, how signifi-
cant to them must have been his solemn exhortation,
Heb. 4:11: «Let us labor therefore to enter into that
rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbe-
lief.” Their unbelief showed itself in acts of direct