In China feast days once a month were doubtless connected with the phases of the moon.  Among the American Indians time was reckoned by numbers of moons.  The custom of observing as sacred the four days, which marked the transition from one quarter of the moon to another, was also widespread.  In the Hebrew religion the feast of the New Moon was closely identified with that of the Sabbath.  The Hebrew month was also the lunar month of approximately twenty-eight days.  The new moon, therefore, marked the beginning of the month and each succeeding Sabbath a new phase of the moon.  The fourth commandment seems, therefore, like the others to have a basis in nature, and also, as we shall note, a social reason.  Would a commandment be truly divine if it did not have a natural and reasonable basis?  By the ancients rest from labor was regarded as one of the essential elements in the sacred day.  The prophet Amos denounced the merchants of Northern Israel because they were constantly saying,

  When shall the new moon pass that we may sell grain,
  And the Sabbath that we may open the corn?

In its earlier ceremonial interpretation, to abstain from all labor on the Sabbath was clearly regarded as a primary obligation.  Like fasting, it is probably regarded as an offering due to Jehovah.  The word “holy” in the Hebrew means set apart, distinct.  The Sabbath, therefore, was to differ from the other days of the week.  The great ethical prophets of the Assyrian period were the first completely to divest this ancient institution of its heathen significance and give it a deeper religious, and therefore social and humanitarian interpretation.  They gave it its true and eternal content, declaring that God decreed that all who labor should have their needed rest.  The prophet who added the noble interpretation in Deuteronomy 5:14, 15, declares that it was not only that old and young, master and slave, might rest, but also that even the toiling ox and ass and the resident alien might have the relaxation which their tired bodies required.  Thus these inspired prophets traced the ultimate basis of the institution of the Sabbath to God’s providence for the innate needs of man.  They recognized that it was essential for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the individual and, therefore, for the welfare of the State.  That the Hebrews might not forget this obligation, the prophets appealed to the memory of the days when the Israelites themselves were slaves in the land of Egypt and the thought of how Jehovah delivered them from their slavery.

Tuan Fang, the great Manchu viceroy who only recently met martyrdom at the hands of his warring countrymen, said when visiting America a few years ago, “I think that when I return to China I will introduce Sunday in my province.”  When asked whether he would make it the seventh day, he replied, “Yes, for I think that the seventh day is far better than the tenth.  Furthermore, for the convenience and economy of all, I will make it correspond to the Christian Sunday.  From my study of the conditions in America and of the needs in China I am convinced that the Sabbath is a most valuable and essential institution.”