A. L. KING by A. L. King

Signs Publishing Co. · Melbourne, Victoria · Jun 28, 1920

FromAustraliasian Signs of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 26.

A. L. KING

By A. L. King

How Sunday Supplanted the Sabbath—No. 2

Sunday a Day of Work and Recreation

A. L. KING

As intimated in last week’s article, for centuries after Sunday began to creep into the Church, it was only a working day, such Christians as observed it merely attending a meeting in the early morning, and then going about their ordinary work and recreations. Justin Martyr, in his Apology (A.D. 150), refers to certain Christians at Rome holding a meeting on Sunday. Incidentally Justin shows that unscriptural practices had begun to creep into the Church, as he speaks of bread, wine, “and water” being offered in the Communion, and the consecrated elements “sent to the absent.”

But what shows conclusively that with Justin and his friends Sunday was not a day of rest, is the fact that in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (A.D. 155), Justin reproves Trypho for not working on the Sabbath (Saturday), declaring that God took no pleasure in rest-days. He says: “You, because you are idle for one day, suppose you are pious. . . . The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances.” (Chapter 12.) Inasmuch as Justin reproves Trypho for idleness on the Sabbath, he himself could not have observed Sunday as a day of rest. God, he declared, took no “pleasure in such observances.”

Justin never calls Sunday the Sabbath, nor does he ever call it the Lord’s day. He terms it “the first day of the week”; “the day after that of Saturn (Saturday)”; twice he terms it “the first day after the Sabbath”; and three times he gives it the heathen title, “the day of the sun.” But any sacred title he never once bestows upon it.

Christianity Darkened by Apostasy

Moreover, Justin does not give any scriptural reason for his practice of holding an assembly on Sunday. On the contrary, his reasons are really heathen—the worship of light—in a new setting. For at this very time various Oriental forms of sun-worship, such as the worship of Mithra, were mingling with that of the Roman Jupiter. We learn from later records in that second century, that in common with the practice of the heathen, some Christians assembled at sunrise on Sunday, the “day of the sun,” and directed their prayers towards the rising sun, which savours very much of a practice declared to be an “abomination” in Eze. 8:16. The assembly over, the remainder of Sunday was devoted to the usual duties and pleasures.

The well-known Church historian, Dr. Philip Schaff, speaking of a few centuries later, says: “Leo the Great speaks of Christians in Rome, who first worshipped the rising sun, doing homage to the pagan Apollo, before repairing to the basilica of St. Peter.”—“Church History,” Third Period, par. 74. The dark spirit of apostasy, already discernible in the second century, and by which the pure streams of Christianity became fouled and blackened with the dingy and muddy waters of paganism, had advanced enormously by the fourth and later centuries, and with it the spirit of Sunday exaltation went hand in hand.

Third and Fourth Centuries

Coming down fifty years from Justin Martyr’s time (A.D. 150) to the days of Tertullian (A.D. 200), we are given the following interesting information by the Church historian Heylyn (who is credited by the “Encyclopædia Britannica” with being “a diligent writer and investigator”): “Tertullian tells us that they did devote the Sunday partly unto mirth and recreation, not to devotion altogether.”—Heylyn’s “History of the Sabbath,” part 2, chapter 8.

In harmony with Heylyn is Dr. Kitto, the famous scholar, who, in his “Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature” (original edition), article “Lord’s Day,” says:—

Though in later times we find considerable reference to a sort of consecration of the day, it does not seem at any period of the ancient Church to have assumed the form of such an observance as some modern religious communities have contended for. Nor do these writers in any instance pretend to allege any Divine command, or even apostolic practice, in support of it. . . . Chrysostom (A.D. 360) concludes one of his homilies by dismissing his audience to their respective ordinary occupations.

In complete accord with the statement of Kitto that Sunday observance was never in the early centuries based on Divine command or apostolic practice, is the following quotation from “Chamber’s Encyclopædia,” article “Sabbath”: “None of the Fathers before the fourth century ground the duty of observing Sunday on the fourth commandment, or on the precept or example of Jesus or the apostles.” The great and encyclopædic “New English Dictionary on Historic Principles” (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1914), furnishes the information that the notion of Sunday being a Christian Sabbath did not become “popularly current before the Reformation.” And this authority further declares, “In English, Sabbath as a synonym for Sunday did not become common till the seventeenth century.” See under word “Sabbath.”

Referring to Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed orator of the fourth century (mentioned in the quotation from Dr. Kitto given above), the historian Heylyn informs us that Chrysostom “confessed it to be lawful for a man to look unto his worldly business on the Lord’s day, after the congregation was dismissed.” And Heylyn also declares that the learned Jerome, who gave his times the famous Latin Vulgate Version of the Scriptures, commended a lady disciple, Paula, in the following significant manner:

Paula, with the women, as soon as they returned home on the Lord’s day, they sat down severally to their work, and made clothes for themselves and others.—Heylyn’s “History of the Sabbath,” part 2, chapter 3.

It is therefore perfectly plain that were one at the present time to attend a religious service early on Sunday morning, and then devote the remainder of the day to his ordinary duties and recreations, he would be keeping Sunday in an identical manner with that in which it was kept by such Christians as observed it for over two centuries after New Testament times. This of course would not have been the case had there been a Divine command or apostolic example for Sunday observance.