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The Origin of Sunday

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 25, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 45.

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The Origin of Sunday.

FOLLOWING is a part of an article by the Rev. A. H. Lewis, D. D., which first appeared under the above heading in the Popular Science Monthly, and was copied into the Chicago Tribune of October 30, 1886. It contains nothing new, for it would be difficult to find anything new on this subject; but it is a very clear and concise statement of the origin of Sunday observance, and is worthy of a careful perusal. We are very glad to see articles of this class given a place in popular magazines and newspapers. It shows that the Sabbath question is rapidly coming to the front. W.
"The times demand a reconsideration of our Sunday laws. They are practically inoperative. There must be some essential reason for this, in the character of the people or in the character of the laws, perhaps both. Either the laws have a false basis and cannot rightly claim public regard, or the people are wickedly indifferent to rightful authority. This is true of the church as well as the 'world.' To know the origin of these laws will help to solve the problem.
"Sun-worship is the oldest and most widespread form of paganism. It reaches back to the prehistoric period. Under various phases it has always been the persistent foe to the worship of Jehovah. It was the prevailing and most corrupting form of idolatry which assailed the Hebrew nation. Its lowest form, Baal-worship, produced the deepest social and moral degradation. As the period of idolatry passed away sun-worship assumed a less materialistic form, without losing the virulence of its poison. It lay in waiting, like a beast of prey, to corrupt Christianity, as it had already corrupted Judaism. Transferred from the East and from Egypt to Greece and Rome, it became popular, and great efforts were made under Heliogabalus and others in the third and fourth centuries to exalt it above all other religions. Indeed, mithraicism came near gaining the field and driving apostolic religion out of the Roman Empire. It did corrupt it to an extent little understood.
"Pagan Rome made religion a part of the State. Long before the advent of Christianity, the emperor, as head of the State and therefore of the church—Pontifex Maximus—was accustomed to legislate upon all religious matters. He had supreme power in this direction. Scores of sacred days were set apart under the pagan empire, upon which judicial proceedings and certain forms of work were prohibited. It was the settled policy of the empire for the emperor thus to determine concerning ferial days.
"Apostolic Christianity forbade all appeal to the civil law in matters of Christian duty. Christ and his apostles sought only the rights of citizenship at the hand of civil Government. When these were refused they gladly yielded, suffering persecution, unto death if need be. Christ repeatedly declared, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' New Testament Christianity could not have instituted such a cultus as that which gave rise to Sunday legislation, the union of Church and State, under an emperor or an emperor-pope. 'Old Mixon' peach trees cannot bear crab-apples. All civil legislation concerning religious faith and practice, such as obtained in the Roman Empire, was the product of paganism. It was not an offshoot of Christianity or of the Hebrew theocracy.
"The first civil legislation concerning Sunday appears in the edict of Constantine the Great, 321 A. D. Nothing appears in history as demanding the legislation, or as wishing it, except the will of the emperor. He was a well-known devotee of the sun-god, as were his predecessors. His attitude toward Christianity, both before and long after the issuing of the Sunday edict, was the attitude of a shrewd politician; toward his rivals it was that of an unscrupulous, bloody-handed monarch. He gained power by intrigue, deceit, and murder. No accurate historian dares call him a 'Christian emperor.' Romish tradition and superficial literature have misnamed him the 'first Christian emperor.' The facts relative to his life and character forbid every such claim. He refused to unite with the Christian church until he lay on his death-bed, in 337 A. D., when he received baptism, hoping thus to make the most of both worlds. The text of his Sunday edict and the surroundings all show it to have been purely heathen. The text is as follows:—
" 'Let all judges, and all city people, and all tradesmen rest on the venerable day of the sun. But let those dwelling in the country freely and with full liberty attend to the culture of their fields, since it frequently happens that no other day is so fit for the sowing of grain or the planting of vines; hence the favorable time should not be allowed to pass lest the provisions of Heaven be lost.'
" 'Given the 7th of March, Crispus and Constantine being Consuls, each for the second time.'—Codex Justin. lib. 3, tit. 12, l. 3.
"If the foregoing law were associated with Christian laws, the testimony against it would be less damaging. But the following shows that the next day Constantine issued another edict, which, like the above, is unmixed paganism.
"Edict concerning haruspices:—
" 'The august Emperor Constantine to Maximus: If any part of the palace or other public works shall be struck by lightning, let the soothsayers, following old usages, inquire into the meaning of the portent, and let their written words, very carefully collected, be reported to our knowledge; and also let the liberty of making use of the custom be accorded to others, provided they abstain from private sacrifices, which are specially prohibited.
" 'Moreover, that declaration and exposition written in respect to the amphitheater being struck by lightning, concerning which you had written to Heraclianus, the tribune and master of offices, you may know has been reported to us.
" 'Dated the 16th, before the kalends of January, at Seridica (320), Acc. the 8th, before the ides of March, in the Consulship of Crispus II., and Constantine III., Caess, Coss, 321 A. D.'—Codex Theo., lib. 16, tit. 10, l. 1.
"The reader will note that nothing appears in the law, neither does anything appear in the accompanying evidence, showing that Christians desired the law, or were in any way interested therein. It applied to all the subjects of the empire alike. The day is not mentioned, except by its heathen title of the Sun. There is nothing in the restrictions placed upon it unlike the restrictions which already existed concerning many other pagan days. The following extract, from the work of an English barrister, is pertinent at this point:—
" 'That the division of days into juridici et feriati, judicial and non-judicial, did not arise out of the modes of thought peculiar to the Christian world, must be known to every classical scholar. Before the age of Augustus, the number of days upon which, out of reverence to the gods to whom they were consecrated, no trials could take place at Rome, had become a resource upon which a wealthy criminal could speculate as a means of evading justice; and Suetonius enumerates, among the praiseworthy acts of that emperor, the cutting off from the number thirty days, in order that crime might not go unpunished nor business be impeded.'—Feasts and Fasts, p. 6, by Edward V. Neale.
"Church historians have been obliged to recognize the purely heathen character of this legislation. Schaff says:—
" 'But the Sunday law of Constantine must not be overrated. He enjoined the observance, or rather forbade the public desecration, of Sunday, not under the name of Sabbatum or Dies Domini, but under its old astrological and heathen title, Dies Solis, familiar to all his subjects, so that the law was as applicable to the worshipers of Hercules, Apollo, and Mithras as to the Christians. There is no reference whatever in his law either to the fourth commandment or to the resurrection of Christ.'—Church History, vol. 3, p. 380.
"Milman says:—
" 'The rescript, indeed, for the religious observance of the Sunday, which enjoined the suspension of all public business and private labor except that of agriculture, was enacted, according to the apparent terms of the decree, for the whole Roman Empire. Yet, unless we had direct proof that the decree set forth the Christian reason for the sanctity of the day, it may be doubted whether the act would not be received by the greater part of the empire as merely adding one more festival to the fasti of the empire, as proceeding entirely from the will of the emperor, or even grounded on his authority as supreme pontiff, by which he had the plenary power of appointing holy days. In fact, as we have before observed, the day of the sun would be willingly hallowed by almost all the pagan world, especially that part which had admitted any tendency toward the oriental theology.'—History of Christianity, vol. 2, pp. 396, 397.
"No other legislation concerning Sunday appears for the next sixty-five years. Meanwhile the church was becoming paganized, the Papacy was developing, the empire was tottering, and all things were getting ready for the Dark Ages. From the close of the fourth century to the close of the fifth, the legislation was enlarged, including scores of other days, most of them pagan festivals, christened by new names, and but slightly modified in the manner of their observance. As Church and State became more thoroughly united, the pagan idea that the civil law ought to regulate religious actions and religious belief was so fully developed that the State determined not only what men should do, but what men should believe. Civil law practically decided what Christianity was. It defined orthodoxy and heresy, thus involving the whole realm of religious conscience in the meshes of political intrigue.
"As the holy Roman Empire grew upon the ruins of the pagan empire, it continued to secularize and corrupt Christianity. Civil legislation relative to Sunday and other festivals and fasts prevailed during the Dark Ages. Our Saxon ancestors, converted under this empire, received this inheritance, and transmitted through the Saxon and English laws, the entire genius of Sunday legislation to our own time. The chain is unbroken which binds the Sunday law of to-day to the first pagan Sunday law of 321 A. D."