Moule (H. C. G.), Thoughts for the Sundays of the Year, 14.
Nicoll (W. R.), Sunday Evening, 189.
Ogden (S.), Sermons, 248.
Paget (F.), Studies in the Christian Character, 32.
Pearson (A.), The Claims of the Faith, 140.
Rowland (A.), Open Windows, 20.
Smith (D.), Christian Counsel, 53.
Stanley (A. P.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 78.
Vallings (J. F.), The Holy Spirit of Promise, 207.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxviii. 275 (W. H. Bliss) ; lii. 56 (A. M. Fair- bairn) ; Ixvii. 361 (H. H. Henson). Church of England Magazine, xvii. 369 (G. Burgess) ; xxxv. 185 (G.
Venables). Church of England Pulpit, Hx. 313 (J. Pattison) ; Ixi. 379 (W. M.
Sinclair) ; Ixiii. 252 (M. P. Maturin). Expositor, Ist Ser., ii. 115 (E. H. Plumptre). Eomiletic Review, xxxi. 323 (A. Da Montefeltro).
The LORD'S Day.
I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day.— Rev. i. lo.
1. The religious importance of the first day of the week arose from the conviction that Christ had risen from the dead on that day. The conviction is certainly found to exist very early in the Church, and we can hardly resist the conclusion that its origin must be sought in the fact that, in some mode which we shall never exactly understand, it was on " the first day of the week " that Christ so manifested Himself to His Apostles as to create in them the assurance of His being actually alive among them in the fulness of personal life. The phrase of the Apoc- alypse, then, is not hard of explanation. The first day of the week was known as " the Lord's Day," because in truth the Lord had then made clear His title to the lordship He claimed. It was on that day, so the Church believed, that the Son of Man, "who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh," was " declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead." It was as an " Easter Day in every week " that the first day of the week first secured its religious importance.
The Church had no definite command from the Lord to change the date of its rest-day, nor indeed did the Church do that all at once ; it was not possible. But the first day of the week, the day on which He rose from the dead and appeared to His disciples, the day, too, on which the Holy Spirit came, the Church has, by a sort of inspired instinct, set apart to Christian fellowship, meetings for prayer and worship, and the celebration of the Holy Supper. Gradually it took the place of the seventh day as the day of rest.
There is no historical fact that enjoys better proof than this — that the observance of the day by intermission of toil and by special religious exercises was the constant practice ©f the Chrifitian
RIV. — 3
34 THE LORD'S DAY
Church from the days of the Apostles. The civil laws, when the secular arm was extended to the Church, tell the same tale. Constantine forbade lawsuits on this day : the courts were to be closed. The Valentians, elder and younger, follow. Theodosius enacts that all Sundays in the year be days of vacation from all business of the law whatsoever.
Secular business of a more private kind was also strictly forbidden, though ploughing and harvesting were at first excepted from the prohibition. Christian soldiers were required to attend church. And what is of special interest, in view of present-day tendencies, no public games or shows or frivolous recreations were allowed by law on the Lord's Day.
T[ From the very beginning the English people believed that this was a day apart, a day given of God, a day in which men could recover their connection with spiritual things, and refresh their hearts by waiting upon the invisible God. Perhaps no one has described the English Sunday better than the Koyalist poet, George Herbert :
Sundays the pillars are On which heav'n's palace arched lies; The other days fill up the spare And hollow room with vanities: They are the fruitful beds and borders In God's rich garden; that is bare
Which parts their ranks and orders.
2. The spirit of man is tidal and " the soul wins its victories as the sea wins hers." The tides of the spirit are known to us all — the great reactions, the swinging tides of feeling, interest, and energy. These are from above, coming down upon us, unlike the pedestrian guides of common sense and principle which direct us evenly on our way. This does not apply merely to the ebb and flow of sweet or tender feeling, though it includes that also. Kather one thinks of the occasional heightening of life all round, the intensification of its powers in moments when it "means intensely, and means good." Now this occasional quality of human nature is the explanation of the common delight in the observance of special days. Birthdays and other anniversaries, the return of friends from afar, the festivals commemorating national and religious events, are all of them times of spiritual rising tide. It
REVELATION i. lo 35
is fitting to give them their opportunity, to set time apart, and to forbid encroaching duties.