considered merely as uninspired persons, and in that capacity to have debated by what day they should mark their religion, and carry out what may be conceived to be a religious instinct, the duty of worshipping God specially on one day (the cycle of seven being suggested by the form of religion from which they were gradually emancipating themselves), they would have been likely to choose the day of the resurrection." The promised "baptism in the Holy Spirit" made those Apostles infallible teachers. That wonderful gift came on the Day of Pentecost, which, in that year, occurred on the first day of the week. Was it by accident that on that day "they were all with one accord in one place?" Would not that gracious descent of the Spirit most signally mark as holy that day which was already associated with the fulfillment of one of the Master's promises-His resurrection? Every suggestion of grateful sentiment and eminent propriety would naturally elevate that day into peculiar prominence.

Many years after that glorious Pentecost, the history in the Acts (Ch. xx. 7) brings Paul to Troas, by which time Christianity had assumed a comparatively fixed form. There Paul and his companions "tarried seven days, and upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached." Passing by all discussion of the phrase "breaking bread," and of some irrelevant matters which have been forced into the consideration of this passage, certainly we have here just such a record as one should naturally expect to read upon the supposition that the first day of the week was then the recognized stated day of Christian assembling. The matter-of-course way in which the circumstances are introduced seems to indicate an established order. There is a similar unstudied reference to the first day of the week in 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2, where Paul seems to allude to this day as one recognized for the celebration of religious worship. It is most natural to suppose that this "laying by" was in some general treasury, where the contributions of the faithful could be stored against the Apostle's arrival. The

apostolic injunction was to provide against any such gathering of the sums from the several Christian homes as would have been necessitated if they had laid by their offerings each in "his own home," as some interpreters have suggested. The weekly assembling of the people on the first day of the week—" the day after the Sabbath"-would prove convenient for the storing up of their free-will gifts. "Do you sanctify your gifts by offering them on the day which you already reverence ?"

It was not till late in the first century (not till John wrote the Apocalypse, A. D. 90-96) that we meet the name “Lord's Day” (Rev. i. 10). By that time it had become usual by that term to designate its Divine origin and institution. There is no sufficient reason for objecting to the application of the term to the first day of the week. It is so understood by the oldest Christian writers. The phrase “day of the Lord" (ý huépa to Kopiou) was common in the apostolic age to denote the great day of the second coming of Christ-the judgment day. John used a different word for Lord in the Revelation. It is an adjective (Kupa), not the noun (xúprog) usually rendered Lord. It is found only in Rev. i. 10, and I Cor. xi. 20-" the Lord's Supper." It is a peculiar New Testament word, perhaps coined by Paul for the purpose of describing the holy feast. From the Supper it came to be applied to the sacred day on which Christians met for its observance. Sunday is still called Kopaz in the Levant, just as in most of the continental languages of Europe it is known by terms signifying the Lord's Day.

This argument is confirmed by an appeal to the interpretation of these Apostolic precedents by the earliest Christian writers. Those who immediately succeeded the New Testament age, though not infallible teachers, are certainly entitled to regard as witnesses to the established order delivered by the Apostles unto the churches. Barry, in Smith's Christian Antiquities, summing up the testimony, assures us

that "patristic usage from Ignatius downwards establishes the regular and technical use of the Lord's Day for the first day of the week." Ignatius was a disciple of the Apostle John, a fellow disciple with Polycarp, the renowned martyr. A very beautiful myth represents him as the little child whom the Lord placed in the midst of His disciples. This indicates the period when He is supposed to have been born and lived (A.D. 30-107). I quote from his Epistle to the Magnesians:

Be not deceived with strange doctrines, nor with old fables, which are unprofitable. For if we still live according to the Jewish law, we confess we have not received grace. * If, therefore, those who were brought up on the old order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord's Day, etc.

I use the recently published edition of the Ante-Nicene Fathers under the supervision of Bishop A. C. Coxe. In the Epistle ascribed to Barnabas, which, though not written by that apostle, was certainly in existence in the early part of the second century, in explanation of Isaiah i. 13, we have:

Wherefore we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day on which Jesus rose from the dead.

Justin Martyr flourished A.D. 140. In his First Apology, he says:

On the day called Sunday, all who live in the cities or in the country gather together in one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read. Sunday is the day

on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God dispelled the darkness and made the world; and because Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.

He appeared to His apostles and taught them these things. (Coxe's edition, chapter 67.)

Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, A.D. 178, has several references to the question, and applies the name Lord's Day to Sunday, all the while carefully distinguishing it from the Sabbath. Others might be mentioned, but I shall content myself by referring to the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, of which so much has been written within the past few years.

Whatever opinion may be entertained of the Didache, it is certainly, in part, as early as the second or third century, and on this question may be cited. In Chapter 14, we read: "Coming together on the Lord's Day, break bread and give thanks," etc.

Thus with one voice these Christian "fathers" speak of the Lord's Day, just as they speak of baptism and the supper, and other matters of church order, which they received from the original promulgators of Christianity. As soon as the churches pass out of the Apostolic guidance into history, we find the first day of the week established and universally accepted as the divinely instituted Κυριακὴ ἡμέρα, on which the Kopazov deiлvoy was celebrated. The Lord's Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the Lord's Day are originally and peculiarly of the Gospel, the "Ministration of the Spirit," and are alike of Divine institution and authority.

The argument seems conclusive. We rest content upon so convincing proof of the Divine origin of this Gospel institution. We would not dishonor our Redeemer, whose glorious resurrection it ever commemorates, by degrading the Lord's Day to the lower level of the Sabbath; nor would we lessen its Gospel significance by seeking authority and prescription for its observance in the effete Sinaic decalogue! Rather let us take our stand reverently by the open tomb, that could not hold the Prince of Life in bond, and rejoice in the day which our Lord hath made.

Columbus, Miss.

C. E. W. DOBBS.

VI.

SABBATH FOR MAN;

OR,

THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT FUNDAMENTAL, NOT

CEREMONIAL.

When Chateaubriand was writing his Genius of Christianity, a friend of his said to him, "People will not care anything for your learning, but they will care everything for your eloquence. Be eloquent and you may spare to be learned."

I shall assume that, contrariwise, my readers will not care anything for my eloquence, and will care everything for my arguments. I shall try hard to be convincing, and not try at all to be eloquent.

My purpose is single. I wish to show from Scripture, as briefly and simply as possible, this one thing only, that the law of sabbath has been neither abolished nor changed, that it is still, and is to be forever, in force.

Jesus said that. That, therefore, is the end of contro

"The sabbath was made for man."

versy; when we arrive to know exactly what it means.

Un

til then it is the beginning of controversy.

"The sabbath was made for man." For "man."

Not

for the Jew, then, alone. Not solely for the age before Christ. But for man-every age, and every race. Not for Christian people only, not for Protestants, not for Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, but for man, every creed, and every form of no-creed. If i man" is a universal term, including all men, whatever their time, whatever their clime, whatever their character, then here is a universal provision, something designed for all men without exception.