The hebdomad.
Seven in Scripture is a very remarkable number. In the text it is repeated in so many forms that it forces itself upon our attention.
I. HEBDOMADS ARE CONSPICUOUS IN THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE LAW.
1. They appear in the week of days.
2. They appear again in the week of months.
3. They appear again in the week of years.
II. HEBDOMADS ARE CONSPICUOUS IN THE CHRONOLOGY OF PROPHECY.
1. The days of the week are taken as prophetic.
2. Dispensations are measured by weeks of times.
III. HEBDOMADS ARE NOT WITHOUT FOUNDATION IN NATURE.
1. They are not very obviously marked in the heavens.
2. Yet they have a foundation in nature.
(1) It is now well known that changes in animals are regulated by weeks. Dr. Laycock, summing up what he had advanced on this subject in a series of remarkable papers, says, "The facts I have briefly glanced at are general facts, and cannot happen day after day in so many millions of animals of every kind from larva or ovum of a minute insect up to man at definite periods, from a mere chance or coincidence; and although temperature, food, domestication, and other modifying circumstances may and do interrupt the regularity with which the various processes I have alluded to are conducted, yet upon the whole it is, I think, impossible to come to any less general conclusion than this. That in animals changes occur every three and a half, seven, fourteen, twenty-one, or twenty-eight days, or at some definite number of weeks".
From this interesting subject we learn:
1. That prophecy is from God.
2. That the God of nature is the God of providence.
3. That religion should be interwoven with secular concerns.—J.A.M.