either was there any
worm therein. And Moses said, Eat that to-day; for to-day is a sabbath
unto the Lord: to-day ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye
shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it
there shall be none. And it came to pass, that there went out some of
the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And
the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments
and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the sabbath,
therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide
ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the
seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day.' It looks as
though the people had been used to the Sabbath already, for the
commandments given on the mount come three whole chapters later. It
looks to me as if God established the Sabbath right at the beginning
when He rested from His own work, and that's what it means when it
says He sanctified it."

"What do you suppose He said, 'I have given _you_ a sabbath' for? It
looks as if it were meant for a benefit for the people and not for
God, doesn't it?" said Allison, sitting up and looking over his aunt's
shoulder. "Why, I always supposed God wanted the Sabbath for His own
sake, so people would see how great He was."

Julia Cloud's cheeks grew red with a flash of distress as if he had
said something against some one she loved very much.

"Oh, no!" she said earnestly. "God isn't like that. Why, He loves us!
He wouldn't have given a Sabbath at all if it hadn't been quite
necessary for our good. Besides, in the New Testament, Jesus said,
'The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath'! Oh, He
made it for us, to be happy in, I'm sure. And perhaps He rested
Himself so that we might understand He had set apart that time of
leisure in order to be everything to us on the day when we had most
time for Him. I have read somewhere that God had to teach those early
people little by little just as we teach babies, a few things each
year; and over in the New Testament it says that all these things that
happened in the Old Testament to those children of Israel happened and
were written down for an example to us who should live in the later
part of the world. So, little by little, by pictures and stories He
taught those people what He wanted all of us to know as a sort of
inheritance. And He took the things first that were of the most
impor