ORIGIN AND OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY.

I

BY THE REV. WM. WEBER, PH.D.

T is always interesting and instructive to investigate the origin of our institutions, religious, political, social, and otherwise. That is especially so when an institution which, in the beginning, was strictly ecclesiastical has finally been adopted by the political community and thus become, though with certain modifications, a civil institution. Such has been the case with our Sunday. It is without doubt a specific Christian institution. For, it is found exclusively among those nations where Christianity is the ruling religion. At first simply a custom of the Church, the State soon took hold of it and made it a legal holiday. Thus it happens that, with us and the other Christian nations, Sunday is not only observed by the members of the Christian Church, but also by those who are outside its pale.

It is only natural that between these two bodies of people, church-members and non-church-members, a difference of opinion should exist as to the proper way of observing Sunday. Accordingly, we are confronted by the Puritan idea and by the worldly conception of Sunday. The former regards Sunday as a holy day which is to be observed as prescribed by the Old Testament commandment : "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy!" Work and worldly pleasure of any kind on this day constitute a transgression of God's holy commandment. The worldly people, on the other hand, accept Sunday only as a day of rest and recreation. They claim as their right to seek, on this day, first of all, relaxation of a more or less refined kind, just as their spirit prompts them. The result is that these two opposing views sometimes clash. Every one, therefore, who considers that strife and quarrel promote the true interests neither of the Church nor of the general public will feel the more inclined to form an adequate opinion concerning the origin and early observance of the Christian Sunday. The question is whether

no middle ground may be found on which the Church and the world could meet and compromise.

The observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, began undoubtedly in the first century of the Christian era, and moreover, it started within the Christian Church. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans had a week of seven days. The pre-Christian Greeks divided the month into three parts of ten days each. The first French Republic attempted, as we know, to revive this old Greek custom, in order to replace the Christian Sunday. Among the Romans, it was customary that the farmers rested every eighth day from their work in the fields. On that day, they came into the city to sell the produce of their forms and buy what they needed. The day was called Nundina. It was furthermore distinguished from other days. by inviting guests to dinner and keeping the children home from school. But it didn't bear any special religious character, though it might coincide with some religious festival. Thus, while the Greeks may be said to have had weeks of ten days and the Romans such of eight days, neither had originally the week of seven days.

There were, however, at that time, even within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, races who, from times immemorial, had kept weeks of seven days. The best known among them are the Jews. But also the Egyptians shared that custom. These people retained their weeks of seven days most scrupulously, even when they left their native province and settled in distant parts of the Roman Empire among people of different nationality. They did so for religious reasons, as long as they remained faithful to their inherited religion, because the week of seven days formed an important part of their religion. In this manner, the division of time into weeks of seven days each had become a familiar thing in all parts of the Roman Empire, chiefly through the Jews, about the beginning of the Christian era.

In as far as the week of seven days is concerned, the Christian nations owe their week-system to the Jews. It is not, of course, a specific Jewish institution, but belonged to the Semitic nations in general. It is in all probability closely connected with their worship of the planets.

But the Jews observed the seventh day of the week, the socalled Sabbath-day. It began 6 o'clock Friday night and lasted till 6 o'clock Saturday night. For, as the creation-story tells us, darkness existed before there was light. Hence night, the period of darkness, forms the first half of the Jewish civil day or the time in which the sun apparently completes his course around the earth.

The second half is the natural day or the time from sunrise to sunset. This space of twenty-four hours at the end of each week was set apart by the Jews as their holy day. Their reason for celebrating it was, in later times at least, strictly religious. The Sabbathcommandment closes with the well-known words: "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth and the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbathday, and hallowed it!" The Jews, therefore, kept the last day of the week holy, because God had commanded them to do so; and God had commanded them to do so, because he himself had rested on that day and thereby hallowed it, after he had created the whole world in six days. The Christian Church, however, while retaining the Jewish week, set aside the day hallowed by God. The early Christians selected in its place the first day of the week, about which there existed no commandment of God, and which had not been hallowed by him. They also gave up the Jewish mode of reckoning a civil day from sunset. to sunset, and adopted in its stead the Roman way of beginning and ending the day at midnight.

All this certainly tends to show that Sunday, both as holy day and as holiday, is neither of Roman, Greek, or Jewish-Semitic origin. It has to be considered as a genuine Christian institution.

But, though Sunday must have originated among the early Christians, it is quite sure that it has not been ordained by the founder of the Christian religion. Jesus of Nazareth was born, lived, and died a Jew and stayed all his life in Palestine. He restricted his activity carefully to members of his own nation. When the Canaanitish woman implored him to help her daughter, he at first refused his aid. The reason, given by himself for this behavior, is: "I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." In accordance with this principle, he instructed his disciples when they set out on their first missionary expedition: “Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, and enter not into a city of the Samaritans ; but go rather unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Jesus always claimed to be, in the first instance, a pious, law-abiding Israelite. He defines this attitude of his very clearly and distinctly in the following words, contained in the Sermon on the Mount: "Think not that I came to destroy the law and the prophets. I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you: Till heaven and earth shall pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished. Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever shall

teach and do them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." These and similar passages must be genuine words of Christ. For they do not agree with the later policy of the Church, which abandoned the Mosaic law and, under the brilliant leadership of St. Paul, entered upon its triumphant career among the Gentiles. If the least doubt as to their authenticity had prevailed among the early Christians when they collected the sayings of the Lord, those words would surely have been excluded from the Gospels. We may rest assured that Jesus kept the Sabbath, as a pious, godfearing Jew was expected to keep it, even if it were not expressly and repeatedly mentioned that he went into the synagogue on the Sabbathday to take part in the services. Jesus cannot, therefore, be regarded for a single moment as the author of the Christian Sunday.

This is further confirmed when we look upon the practice of the primitive Church which was gathered by the twelve apostles from among the Jews. It is not necessary to enter upon a detailed account of the facts in this case. The epistles of St. Paul refer to them on almost every page. In the first place, it is a historical fact that St. Peter and his colleagues remained faithful to their original call. They continued, as appears from the Epistle to the Galatians, to go to "the circumcision." They kept aloof from intercourse with Gentiles, even if they were fellow-Christians. They observed the Mosaic law, including the Sabbath-commandment. Their more zealous and more narrow-minded followers opposed St. Paul with exceeding bitterness. They denied his right to work as apostle of Christ, and attempted to induce his converts to accept, in order to become true Christians, the law of Moses in addition to their belief in Jesus Christ. This conflict between Paulinism and primitive Christianity lasted for quite a time. Not only the letters of St. Paul, but also the writings of the Apostolic Fathers redound with it. Church history informs us that the Christians of Jewish descent in Palestine upheld their separate church-organization till the seventh century. They believed in Jesus Christ like all Christians, but they never forsook the Jewish law. They practised circumcision, and kept the Sabbath. By that time, Palestine had become settled by a predominating population of Gentile Christians. They no longer understood that they were face to face with the original, primitive Church. They could not see why any followers of Christ should differ in their customs and usages from the universal Church, and, consequently, despised those Judaizing Christians as Nazarean and Ebionite heretics. That proves that neither Jesus nor his twelve apostles had anything to do with the origin of our Sunday.

Still, the celebration of Sunday belongs to the New Testament Apostolic Age. For (Acts xx. 7) we read: "Upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread. Paul discoursed with them." The first day of the week is of course Sunday; and the breaking of the bread and the discourse of the apostle constitute the regular Sunday services of the congregations at Troas. In 1 Cor. xvi If. we possess another passage showing that Sunday had a special significance for the congregations which St. Paul had founded. He writes there: "Concerning the collection for the saints, as I gave order to the churches of Galatia, so also do ye. Upon the first day of the week let each one of you lay by him in store, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come." It is a well-known fact that this mode of making collections for ecclesiastical and charitable purposes in the churches on Sunday prevails up to the present time. As early as in the Apostolic Age, Sunday was also called the Lord's day, as follows from Rev. i. 10. And it is not without significance that the congregations to which the Apocalypse is addressed are in the territory where St. Paul was the first to preach the Gospel.

These passages establish the fact that Sunday, as day for the divine services of the Christians, was first observed in Pauline churches, and that St. Paul himself observed the day in that manner. Thus, we cannot escape the conclusion that the great apostle of the Gentiles is the real author and founder of the Christian Sunday. As soon as he had organized congregations whose members were for the greater part of Gentile descent, the question arose, how often and when they should come together for common worship. That happened, as far as we know, first in Asia Minor. The Jewish training of the apostle himself, the practice of the Jewish-Christian Church, as well as the circumstance that many of the Greek converts had been connected before with Jewish synagogues suggested that the new congregation should meet regularly every seventh day. But, for certain reasons, which will be discussed more fully later on, St. Paul did not care to have his disciples assemble on the same day as the Jews. To avoid this, he chose Sunday, the first day of the week, instead of Saturday, the seventh day. He was guided in this selection by the fact that Jesus had arisen from the dead on Sunday.

It goes without saying that only a man of great authority among the early Christians could successfully introduce so great an innovation. The natural tendency of the Gentile Christians as well as of their Jewish-Christian teachers would have been to follow the