SUNDAY.

PROBABLY very few Christians are aware of the fact

that what they call the Christian Sabbath is (like almost everything pertaining to Christianity) of Pagan origin.

The first observance of Sunday that history records is in the fourth century, when Constantine issued an edict (not requiring its religious observance, but simply abstinence from work) reading, "Let all the judges and people of the town rest and all the various trades be suspended on the venerable day of the Sun." At the time of the issue of this edict, Constantine was a Sun-worshipper; therefore it could have had no relation whatever to Christianity.

Dean Stanley says: "Our present legal institution of Sunday was appointed by Constantine's authority, but not as a Christian Sabbath."

Rev. A. H. Lewis, D. D., says: "Constantine was a wellknown devotee of the Sun-God, as were his predecessors. His attitude towards Christianity was that of a shrewd politician. Towards his rivals that of an unscrupulous, bloody-handed monarch. He gained power by intrigue, deceit and murder. No accurate historian dares call him a Christian emperor. He refused to unite with the Church until on his death-bed," (337).

Rev. Philip Schaff, D. D., says: "In the celebration of Sunday, as it was introduced by Constantine (and still continues on the whole continent of Europe), the cultus of the old Sun-God Apollo mingles with the remembrance of the resurrection of Christ."

At the Church Council in 538 the religious observance of Sunday was recommended, but very little attention was paid to it.

In 780 Alcuin, an English prelate, became the spiritual adviser of Charlemagne, when, for the first time, it was formally declared that the fourth commandment covered the first day of the week; but this declaration was observed by comparatively few; and for eight centuries thereafter Sunday was observed far more as a day of sport and festivity than as a religious one. The English parliament sat on Sundays and English courts were held on that day, down to the reign of Elizabeth.

In 1595, Dr. Nicholas Bound, of Suffolk County, England, published a work called "The True Doctrine of the Sabbath," in which he maintained, not that Sunday was divinely appointed as a Sabbath, but that the obligation to observe a Sabbath was divine. This idea seemed to take root and to grow rapidly, preparing the way for the rigid observance of Sunday as a Sabbath by the Puritans. To quote a Christian writer: "At the opening of the seventeenth century, the Puritans in England began the unscriptural and deceptive practice of calling Sunday the Sabbath."

W. H. Burr says: "The Christian Sabbath was instituted, not in Judea, but in Great Britain; not in the first, but in the seventeenth century; not by Christ or his apostles, but by the Puritans."

Another writer says: The story of the establishment and reign of the Puritan Sabbath-whose decrepit form is still supported by State laws-constitutes one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of ecclesiastical despotism."

Rev. M. J. Savage says: "The Puritan Sabbath was an outright creation of something which never existed in the world before."

The gloom and absurdity of a Puritanical Sabbath is well illustrated by Macaulay: "The Puritans opposed bear-baiting on Sunday, not because it gave pain to the bears, but because it gave pleasure to the people."

As showing that the inheritance of Puritanism, by its ignorance and bigotry, does violence to the kindly feelings of our nature, even to-day, we quote from a recent issue of the

Toronto World: "You might as well commit murder, as vioalate the fourth command; of the two evils murder is the least."

Why will not Christian people investigate and find out for themselves (which they easily can), that the keeping of Sunday as a "holy Sabbath day," is wholly without warrant.

I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion, to show me the slightest authority for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such cannot be shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about Sunday as a holy day? Are they not open to the suspicion of imposing upon the confidence and credulity of their hearers? Surely they are deliberately and knowingly practicing deception upon those who look to them for candor and for truth, unless they can give satisfactory reasons for teaching that Sunday is a sacred day. There never was, and is not now, any such "satisfactory reasons." No student of the Bible has ever brought to light a single verse, line or word, which can, by any possibility, be construed into a warrant for the religious observance of Sunday. Quotations from the writings of the "Church Fathers," and others familiar with Church history, support this statement, and include the names of Tertulian, Eusebius, Ireneus, Victorinus, Theodoretus, Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, Luther, Melancthon, Zwingle, Knox, Tyndale, Grotius, Neander, Mosheim, Heylyn, Frith, Milton, Priestley, Domville. John Calvin had so little respect for the day that he could be found playing bowls most any Sunday.

The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and that because the Jews were supposed to be commanded to keep the seventh day of the week holy, therefore that the first day of the week should be so kept by Christians, is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering.

"The only authority for observing Sunday as a Sabbath, is the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church."- (Brooklyn Examiner, R. C.)

"All the great exegetes deny that the fourth commandment covers the Lord's Day."-(Rev. E. H. Johnson.)

"The Sunday law has neither scriptural authority nor standing room in the law of God."—(Rev. A. H. Lewis, D. D.) "Sunday, as a hoiy day, was unknown to the early Christians."—(Judge Reed, Supreme Court, Pennsylvania.)

"To call any day of the week a Christian Sabbath is not Christian, but Jewish. Give us one scripture for it, and I will give you two against it."-(William Penn.)

"The new doctrine (that the prescriptions of the fourth commandment have been transferred to the first day of the week) was for a long time strenuously opposed by the leading divines of the English Church, but warmly contended for by the Puritans."-(Bannerman.)

In 1848 an anti-Sabbath convention was held in Boston to protest against the popular delusion of a Puritan Sabbath, and which convention was earnestly supported by William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, Charles K. Whipple, Charles E. Pratt and William C. Gannett.

"The commandment distinctly specifies the seventh day of the week (Saturday), and not the first (Sunday), as the Sabbath; and it is wholly by tradition, by extra scriptural authority, that Sunday has been so designated instead of Saturday."-(Catholic Review.)

"Sunday is no Christian institution.”—(B. F. Underwood.) "Christians carried on their work on Sunday, the same as on any other day, down to the time of Constantine.”—(President Andrews, of Brown University.)

"In the first place, the fourth commandment refers to the seventh day; in the second place, it was never binding upon anybody but the Jews; in the third place, the Decalogue was abolished by Christ."-(Rev. B. B. Taylor.)

"The Sabbath of the commandment is the seventh day of the week, not the first."-(Prof. Smith, of Andover.)

"Thousands of sincere Christians know that calling Sunday the Holy Sabbath' has no warrant whatever from Christ or his Apostles."-(Christian Standard, of Cincinnati.)

"Their (the Puritans) warrant for what they did (with reference to the observance of Sunday as a Sabbath), whether

we look for it in the pages of the New Testament, or in the traditions of Catholic Christendom, was neither substantial nor sufficient. He has not suddenly become a Godless and profane person, because he differs from others about Sunday, or because he holds that there are inherited views as to the observance of that day, which cannot by any process of ingenuity be read into the pages of the New Testament, nor into any canon by which Christendom is bound."—(Bishop Potter.)

It has been claimed by some Christians that Sunday should be kept holy because Christ was said to have arisen on that day. This cannot be true, for if Christ died on Friday, and if he rose on Sunday, it was not in accordance with the usually accepted Christian belief that he "rose on the third day, " for there would be but two days from Friday to Sunday. Besides, if "the Gospel according to Matthew" is to be believed, he must have risen on (not later than) Saturday, for in Matthew xxviii. it distinctly states that it was "at the end of the Sabbath" (Saturday) that the sepulchre was found to be vacant.

It is also claimed that the Apostles met on Sundays for religious exercises. So they did on other days of the week. "Religious worship was more fully attended to on Wednesday and Friday than on Sunday."-(Rev. Dr. Lewis.)

"Not long after Justin Martyr's time, we are sure the Christians observed the custom of meeting solemnly for divine worship on Wednesday and Friday."—(Joseph Bingham.)

Rev. E. Nesbitt, D. D., of Santa Barbara, says: "In only one instance is an Apostle said to have met with any company of persons on the first day of the week, viz. : Acts xx: 7." And in that it appears to give as a reason, that Paul was to depart on the next day. That Paul habitually observed and preached on the seventh day of the week, is shown in Acts xviii: 4,-" And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath" (Saturday).

It is certainly not from Paul that these Sabbatarians get their persistence and intolerance, for, in his Epistle to the