The original formulas, much enlarged in later times, as far as they are to be traced now, of the introductory benediction, as well as the valedictory prayer, both of which we subjoin, show the character and scope of the day in Judaism so fully, that they may stand instead of any further explanation of our own.
1. (Kiddush.) "Blessed art thou, 0 Lord, our God, king of the universe, who bath sanctified us by his laws, and bath made us participate in his grace, and bath, in his love and in his mercy, given us the Sabbath, as a remembrance of the creation, as the first day of holy convocations, and in memory of the redemption from Egypt; for thou Last chosen us and sanctified us front all peoples, and bast given unto its thy holy Sabbath in love and in grace. Blessed art thou, 0 Lord, w110 sanctifieth the Sabbath. ' 2. (Habdalah.) "Blessed art thou, 0 Lord, our God, king of the universe, who divided between holy and unholy, between light and darkness. between Israel and the peoples, between the Sabbath and the six days of creation. Blessed art thou, 0 Lord, who divideth between holy and unholy." The same character of cheerfulness, of happy rest from the toil and turmoil of the Avorld's business; of quiet and peaceful " return into one's self;" of joyous communion with friends and kindred over good ehecr—in short, of mental and bodily relaxation and recreation that strengthens, braces, pacifies, and maketh the heart glad, while the sublime ideas which it symbolizes are recalled to the memory at every step and turn—seems to have prevailed at all times, down to our own, among the Jews. Whatever difference there may be in the peculiar customs respecting the Sabbath among some of the recent sects among them, e.g., the Karaites, the Chassidism: etc. (see JEWISH SscTs), they chiefly refer to the liturgy (with the one vital exception that the Karaites entirely abstain from the use of light and fire during the whole of the twenty-four hours), and to some minor points, upon which we cannot dwell here. It is also unnecessary here to-go into the spe• cial "superior" or "mourning" Sabbaths during the year, Le., those that precede or fol low certain festivals or days of humiliation, or such as formerly inaugurated new aca demical semestres and the like. Suffice it to reiterate that in every class, every age, and every variety of Jews, front first to last, the Sabbath has been absolutely a (lay of joy and happiness, nay, of dancing., of singing, of eating and drinking, and of luxury The "lulus Sabbatarius" of Sidonius Apollinarins has indeed been a reproach to them, as was their supposed overindulgence in laziness. The thinking minds were, according to Philo anti others, more than ever busy on that day with those sacred mysteries of God's revelation to man and his miraculous workings on behalf of the " chosen' nation; others' hearts were lifted up by prayers, by readings, by earnest exhortations, and by pleasing and instriuctive homiletics. A dark, fanatical, self-torturing spirit is as foreign to the Jewish Sabbath (which is prolonged as far as possible) as it is foreign to the Mosaic and post-Mosaic legislation, its written and oral laws in general.
The benefits of the institution itself for the individual are, after what we have said of Pe practice, too self-evident to require further comment. How it connected, on the one hand, the humzin being with the divine Creator, and. on the other, with his fellow-el-ea • tures, bi.other and stranger, children and &ayes, nay, the very beast of burden, the cx and the ass—how, ever recurring, it inculcated with irresistible force pious reverence, fear, and love of God, the sole master of all things—man's time and property included food-will to all things created, and the absolute equality of all men—need not be urged here.- Proudhon has recently treated on it from the national-economy point of view, tad lie has come to the conclusion that the proportion of the six days of work to the one of judicious rest is one of manifest wisdom, and of great blessing to man.
It is necessary here to say a few words with reference to the notion that the Sabbath. i.e., the celebration of the seventh day as a day of rest, is an institution common to all or most of the civilized nations of antiquity (Assyrians, Arabs, Egyptinne, Greeks, Romans), from whom Moses has also been charted with having borrowed it. There is no more truth in these statements than there is in the often repeated assertion of an ancient Sabbath among the aboriginal savages. The dicta of Philo and Josephine, 13 the ifect that there was no city, either Hellenic or barbarian, and not it single people, to „,...) which the custom of the Sabbath had not penetrated, have absurdly enough been taken by sonic as a proof that the Jews borrowed the custom. If the mini' -: sere? [six and one] is one to which a peculiar significance attached at a very early period, in connec tion with the calendar (compare the seven worlds, the seven continents, the seven seas, etc., of the Indian cosmogony), and if the weekly cycle of seven days which goes back to the ante-Mosaic period (sec Gen. xxix. 27, seq.; vii. 4, 10; viii. 10, 12, etc.), is, probably, the common property of.the Semitic races; yet there is a mighty difference between counting time by seven (the ancient Egyptians had, in fact, a ten days' previous to a seven days' cycle), and making the seventh day a " day of rest and holy convocation," with reference to the national he of Israel. There is no special sanctity found attached to the day either with the Egyptians or with the pre-Mohammedan Arabs, who sacrificed on that day in black garments, in a hexagonal black temple, an old bull to Saturn: exactly as they sacrificed a boy on :mother day of the week, sacred to the planet Jupiter. As for the Greeks, the only authenticated passage we find with reference to the subject, is Hesiod's (Op. et D. 770, etc.) reference to the seventh day of the month, sacred to Apollo as other days were sacred to other gale. Other verses quoted by Clemens Alex andrinns and Ensebius, as from Homer and Hesiod, are proved to he spurious Judzeo Hellenic fabrications. The Roman calendar knows absolutely nothing of a hallowed seventh day.