ORIGIN OF SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.
3. It is time for us now to look to the Gentile practice of Sunday keeping, to show from whence the church received her precedent. According to the straight testimony of Sozomen, the historian, and also according to the testimony of Nicephorus, Sunday was kept throughout Greece, and, presumably, all the East, in honor of their chief god, the sun. Religious syncretism came to its height in Rome when Elagabalus, an Assyrian priest of the sun god, for whom he was named, came to the throne of the Roman Empire. The sun god was brought from Emesa to Rome. This Persian Mithras, the sun god of Elagabalus, came to be the patron of the warriors, and wherever the Roman armies went, there the images and caves of Mithras have been found; for his worship was always held in a cave. The one at Rome extended deep into Capitoline Hill. For all this we have the sure testimony of Uhlhorn. And to this Persian sun god, which came most universally to be worshiped, the Sunday was dedicated; for Elagabalus was contemporary with Tertullian, who said that Christians were accounted sun worshipers because they made Sunday a day of festivity. With reference to this, Tertullian said further, "Oh, thus believe that the sun is our god; we shall be accounted Persians, perhaps, though we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth!" And, further, he says to the sun worshipers, "It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week, and you have selected its day" for "taking rest and banqueting." We may see, therefore, that the Assyrian and Grecian custom of Sunday keeping came to its height in Rome in the times of Elagabalus and Tertullian. One hundred and twenty-one years after Tertullian wrote, Constantine made a famous Sunday edict, which I will quote:— Let all judges, and all city people, and all tradesmen rest upon the venerable day of the sun. But let those dwelling in the country freely and at 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 times should not be allowed to pass, lest the provisions of harvest be lost.6 "It seemed especially shameful," said the emperor, "that the sun's day, so celebrated for its venerable character, should be passed in brawls or legal controversies." Constantine was not a Christian, and this was not a Christian edict. "The sun's day, so celebrated for its venerable character," had been celebrated from of old, as we have shown. It was the sun's day, not Christ's day. Moreover, it is well known that the manners, morals, and religion of ancient Egypt were transferred to Greece, whence the "venerable day," covered with a mantle of hoary antiquity, was transferred to Rome; and everybody ought to know that sun worship was in its youth, its glory, its strength, in Egypt. The sun gods Ra and Osiris were everywhere worshiped, as will be seen by consulting the monolith transferred from Egypt to Central Park, New York, some years ago. "The sun god Ra ordained his victories in every land," is a model of the many inscriptions thereon. The word "pha-ra-oh," given to all the kings of Egypt, indicates a worshiper of Ra. The wonderful temple of Baalbeck was "the house of Baal," in Egypt. The sun god Baal is simply another name in another language of the same god. Morer, a learned divine and historian of England, says: "It is not to be denied that we borrow the name of this day from the ancient Greeks and Romans, and we allow that the old Egyptians worshiped the sun, and, as a standing memorial of their veneration, dedicated this day to him." So says Jennings, in "Jewish Antiquities." What havoc sun worship wrought in ancient Israel one can scarcely realize who has not read the Old Testament with reference to it. The sun god Bel, Baal, Belus, or Belinus, was worshiped from Babylon and India to England, and whoever reads ancient Scandinavian theology will find that our forefathers from the north of Germany were sun worshipers, and kept Sunday. (See "Imperial Dictionary," art. Sunday.) I will also quote from Vestergan:— The most ancient Germans being pagans, and having appropriated their first day of the week to the peculiar adoration of the sun, whereof that day doth yet, in our English tongue, retain the name of Sunday, and appropriated the next day unto it unto the especial adoration of the moon, whereof it yet retaineth with us the name of Monday, etc. So Tuisco, and Woden, and Thor, and Frigga, and Saturn gave names to the rest of the week—names which we still retain. No wonder the sun's day was so celebrated for its venerable character in Constantine's time. It was about as old as the world itself, the eternal rival of the true Sabbath, "the wild solar holiday of all pagan times." And the "pagan Christians," as Uhlhorn calls them, thought best to retain their honorable and aged institution still, together with the Saturnalia, Matronalia, and various other festivals which came down to us in the Catholic Church, as I have before shown, for so ordered Gregory; and Tertullian declared that the church was one with the heathen in the celebration of these old-time pagan church days. Milman says, referring to Constantine's edict:— The act would 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 [of the pagan religion, an office which he held until his death], 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.