The Claim for the First Day
By W. H. James
THE first day of the week is now almost universally kept by Christendom; and the reason given for its observance is that Christ’s resurrection occurred on that day. We are told that redemption is greater than creation. It is not necessary to dispute this point, but we would ask that even if a memorial of the resurrection were instituted by Christ or His disciples (which is absolutely untrue), are we justified in substituting it for the one already existing to commemorate both creation and sanctification, without some definite statement in Scripture that the former was abrogated? The first day of the week is never in Scripture spoken of as a Sabbath rest day. Are we, then, justified in taking the Sabbath commandment out of the very heart of God’s law and substituting a fresh institution? For if Sunday is to be kept in honour of Christ’s resurrection, it is clearly an altogether new institution. Christ right through His earthly pilgrimage observed the seventh-day Sabbath; the apostles, according to the history of the early Church given in the Book of Acts, always preached on the Sabbath. Only on one occasion have we any record of Paul preaching on the first day of the week, and that is found in Acts 20. At the close of the Sabbath on our Saturday evening the disciples came together to break bread. Paul preached to the believers till midnight as he intended leaving them on the Sunday morning, and taking a long walk to meet the other disciples at Assos. We read of Paul while at Corinth: “And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them [Aquila and Priscilla] and wrought: for by their occupation they were tent-makers. And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. . . . And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the Word of God among them.” Acts 18:3-11. We have no account here of Sunday meetings during this eighteen months, the first day of the week being evidently an ordinary working day, occupied by Paul and his hosts in tent-making. Again, we read that while Paul was at Thessalonica, he, “as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures.” Acts 17:2. Again, we read of Paul at Antioch in Pisidia: “And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. . . . And the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the Word of God.” Acts 13:42-44. If the Sunday institution had been in force, would it have been necessary for Paul to wait a whole week before preaching to the Gentiles? Such a delay might be necessary to get the Jews together, but this was a special sermon for the Gentiles. The substitution of Sunday for the Sabbath was a gradual one. The early Christians met together for the breaking of bread Sunday morning before commencing the duties of the day, but the Sabbath remained intact. “The earliest recognition of the observance of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in A.D. 321, enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and workshops were to be at rest on Sunday (venerabili die Solis), with an exception in favour of those engaged in agricultural labour.”—“Encyclopædia Britannica,” art. Sunday ninth edition, 1887. No sacred title is given to Sunday in the above enactment, it is simply “the venerable day of the sun.” Constantine, like his ancestors, was a worshipper of the sun. The first day of the week had for ages been dedicated to that worship, and from that fact retains the name Sunday. See Webster. But on acknowledging Christ, Constantine refused to surrender “the venerable day of the sun,” and brought it into Christianity with him, and thus it was handed down to the Christian Church. Prynne says, “The seventh day Sabbath was . . . solemnised by Christ, the apostles, and primitive Christians, till the Laodicean Council did, in a manner, quite abolish the observation of it . . . The council of Laodicea (A.D. 364) . . . first settled the observation of the Lord’s day.”—“Dissertation on the Lord’s Day Sabbath,” page 163, ed. 1633. This decree stated in regard to the Sabbath that “Christians ought not to Judaise, and be idle on the Sabbath, but to39work on that day. . . . Wherefore if they shall be found to Judaise, let them be accursed from Christ.”—Id. pages 33, 34. The foregoing are Protestant testimonies. See also Hefele’s “History of the Councils,” Laodicea, canon 29. The change of the Sabbath to Sunday is thus the work of the Roman Catholic Church, and they not only confess it but boast of it. “They (the Catholics) allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord’s Day, contrary to the decalogue, as it appears; neither is there any example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they, is the power and authority of the Church, since it dispensed with one of the ten commandments.”—Augsberg Confession, art. 28. “It [the Roman Church] has reversed the fourth commandment, doing away with the Sabbath of God’s Word, and instituting Sunday as a holy day.”—N. Summerbell, in “History of the Christians,” page 418. Sunday gradually acquired the title of “The Lord’s Day,” a title not given it in Scripture where only the Sabbath is designated by the title, as in Rev. 1:10. Prophecy, in speaking of the Apostate Church, reveals the audacious assumption of power to change God’s law, in the following words: “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hands until a time and times and the dividing of time.” Dan. 7:25. Protestants generally recognise what history abundantly reveals,—that the Roman Catholic Church did wear out the saints of the Most High, that millions of God’s people were tortured and put to death because they would not obey the decrees of the Church which were in opposition to the Word of God; but they are slow to recognise that in “thinking” to change the Sabbath to the first day of the week, they also fulfilled prophecy—“he shall think to change times and laws.”