PAUL'S EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT.
By G.
CONCERNING the observance of Sunday, we have Paul’s attitude very plainly indicated in the Scriptures. At Troas, on the first day of the week, Paul preached till midnight. As Paul and all the New Testament writers were Jews, they reckoned time as did all the Jews, beginning the day at sunset. So this first day of the week began at sunset, and midnight of the first day of the week would be twelve o’clock that night—what we would now call Saturday night. Paul had been in Troas a week, and this evening after the Sabbath was to be his last meeting with the brethren there. So the occasion was taken to celebrate the ordinances, as Paul was to depart the next day, and he also gave a very long farewell discourse. In the morning he continued his journey toward Palestine, walking twenty miles5across the country to Assos, while his companions in travel went around the peninsula in the vessel in which they were all journeying. So much for Paul's example. In 1 Corinthians 16 Paul mentions a special effort to raise a "collection for the saints" in Judea, who had been placed in straitened circumstances by a famine. In giving directions as to the most convenient means of raising the money for this beneficence, Paul wrote to that church, as he had to other churches: "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. And when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem." This was a plain matter of home business—a reckoning as to how much one could put aside consistently with his income. It had nothing to do with any weekly meeting, or weekly church collection. It was simply a deliberate, charitable calculation as to how much to give to a worthy cause. So Paul would start out Sunday morning on a journey of twenty miles, on foot, while his companions went a different route by sea to the same point. And he would counsel the churches in different parts to make business calculations at home on that day. And in no part of his writings is there any intimation that he regarded the first day of the week as the Sabbath. Both his practise and his precept are against it. It is, however, a very proper business proposition for a man to begin the labors of the week with a consideration of how much he can give from the last week's income for the cause of the Lord. G.