378 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
of the pagan Saturnalia. And even in the celebraticQ of Sunday, as it was introduced by Constantine, and still continues on the whole continent of Europe, the cultns of the old sun-god Apollo mingles with the remembrance of the resurrection of Christ ; and the wide-spread profanation of tho Lord's Day, especially on the continent of Europe, demonstrates the great influence which heathenism still exerts upon Roman and Greek Catholic, and even upon Protestant, Christendom.
§ 75. The Civil and Religious Sunday.
Geo, Holden: The Christian Sabbath. Lond. 1825 (see ch. v.). John T. Batlee: History of the Sabbath. Lond. 1857 (sec chs. x.-xiii.). James Aug. Hessey: Sunday, its Origin, History, and present Oi^ligation; Bampton Lectures preached before the University of Oxford. Lond. 1860 (Patristic and high-Anglican). James Gilfillan: The Sabbath viewed in the Light of Reason, Kevelation, and History, with Sketches of its Literature. Edinb. and New York, 1862 (The Puritan and Anglo- American view). Robert Cox : The Literature on the Sabbath Ques tion. Edinb. 1865, 2 vuls. (Latitudinarian, but very full and learned).
The observance of Sunday originated in the time of the apostles, and ever since forms the basis of public worship, with its ennobling, sanctifying, and cheering influences, in all Christian lands.
The Christian Sabbath is, on the one hand, the continuation and the regeneration of the Jewish Sabbath, based upon God's resting from the creation and upon the fourth commandment of the decalogue, which, as to its substance, is not of merely national application, like the ceremonial and civil law, but of universal import and perpetual validity for mankind- It is, on the other hand, a new creation of the gospel, a memorial of the resurrection of Christ and of the work of redemption completed and divinely sealed thereby. It rests, we may say, upon the threefold basis of the original creation, the Jewish legislation, and the Christian redemption, and is rooted in the physical, the moral, and the religious wants of our nature. It has a legal and an evangelical aspect. Like the law in general, the institution of the Christian Sabbath is a wholesome restraint
§ 75. THE CrVIL AND RELIGIOUS SUNDAY. 379
Upon the people, and a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ But it is also strictly evangelical : it was originally made for the benefit of man, like the family, with which it goes back beyond the fall to the paradise of innocence, as the second institution of God Dn earth ; it was " a delight " to the pious of the old dispensation (Isa. Iviii. 13), and now, under the new, it ia fraught with the glorious memories and blessings of Christ's resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Christian Sabbath is the ancient Sabbath baptized with fire and the Holy Ghost, regenerated, spiritualized, and glorified. It is the connecting link of creation and redemption, of paradise lost find paradise regained, and a pledge and j)reparation for the saints' everlasting rest in heaven.'
The ancient church viewed the Sunday mainly, we may say, one-sidedly and exclusively, from its Christian aspect as a new institution, and not in any way as a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath. It observed it as the day of the commemoration of the resurrection or of the new spiritual creation, and hence as a day of sacred joy and thanksgiving, standing in bold contrast to the days of humiliation and fasting, as the Easter festival contrasts with Good Friday.
So long as Christianity was not recognized and protected by the state, the observance of Sunday was purely religious, a strictly voluntary service, but exposed to continual interruption from the bustle of the world and a hostile community. The pagan Romans paid no more regard to the Christian Sunday than to the Jewish Sabbath.
In this matter, as in others, the accession of Constantine marks the beginning of a new era, and did good service to the church and to the cause of public order and m'orality. Constantine is the founder, in part at least, of the civil observance of Sunday, by which alone the religious observance of it in the church could be made universal and could be properly secured. In the year 321 he issued a law prohibiting manual labor in the cities and all judicial transactions, at a later period also
' For a fuller exposition of the Author's views on the Christian Sabbath, see \ai Essay on the Anglo-American Sabbath (English and German), New York, 1863.