SUNDAY or LORD'S DAY.
(1) Name and Change of the Day. Sunday is the first day of the week, adopted by the first Christians from the Roman calendar (Lat. Dies Solis, Day of the Sun), because it was dedicated to the worship of the sun. The Christians reinterpreted the heathen name as implying the Sun of Right eousness, with reference to this "rising" (Mal. iv:2). It was also called Dies Panis (Day of Bread), because it was an early custom to break bread on that day. In The Teaching of the Twelve it is called the " Lord's Day of the Lord" (KvpLaKi'lv Se Kuptou).
(2) Sanctity and Ground of Observance. It seems impossible to doubt that from the earliest existence of the church the Lord's day was ob served as the characteristic Christian festival, hal lowed as a commemoration of that Resurrection of the Lord, which was the leading subject in the earliest forms of Christian preaching. To this primary consecration of the day was added a sec ond, in the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, which in that year fell on the first day of the week.
" 'Jesus and the resurrection' was the burden of the apostolic preaching. Hence the recollec tion of the day of the resurrection was so indelibly impressed upon the hearts of the first disciples that on its return they came together to pray and to recall the memory of the Lord by breaking of bread and the celebration of the eucharist. It was the dictate of the glowing love for Christ, whose followers they delighted to be reckoned.
. . . We fail to find the slightest trace of a law or apostolic edict instituting the observance of the 'day of the Lord ;' nor is there in the Scrip tures an intimation of a substitution of this for the Jewish Sabbath. The primal idea of the Jewish Sabbath was cessation of labor, rest ; the trans ference of this idea to the first day of the week does not appear in the teachings of Christ nor of his apostles; nor in the Council of Jerusalem, when the most important decisions are reached relative to the ground of union of Jewish and Gentile Christians, is one word found respecting the observance of the Sabbath. Contrariwise,
Paul distinctly warns against the imposition of burdens upon the Church respecting days, but declares for a conscientious freedom in these ob servances. 'Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind' (Rom. xiv :5, 6). Still more strongly does he upbraid the Galatian church for putting itself again in bondage to the weak and beggarly elements, as days, months, times, and years; while in his letter to the Colossians (ii:16, t7) he speaks of the entire abolition of the Jewish Sabbath." It is likely that in this case, as in so many others, the close of the apostolic age was a period of rapid development of formal church ordinance. The existence in A. D. 17o of a regular treatise on the subject by Melito, bishop of Sardis (see Eusebius, (fist. Eccl. iv, 26), connected apparently with the Paschal controversy, seems plainly indi cative of such a development. The well-known passage of Justin Martyr in his Apology, de scribes how "on the day called Sunday" there was a religious assembly of those who dwelt either in the cities or in the country. It notes the chief points of an established service—viz. the reading of the Apostles or the Prophets, the sermon, the prayers, the partaking of the bread and wine con secrated by thanksgiving and prayers, and the giv ing of alms, containing the germ of the clearly an cient liturgies. Nor is it possible to doubt that this celebration had become so marked as to, im press the mind of the heathen with the distinctive character of the status dies of Pliny's famous let ter to Trajan. (Smith, Diet. Chat. Antiq.) Justin Martyr, in his dialogue with the Jew Tryphon, who taunts the Christians with having no festivals nor Sabbaths, clearly claims that Sun day is to them a new Sabbath, and that the entire Mosaic law has been abrogated (Cum. Tryph•, chapters to, II). The new law binding upon Christians regards every day as a Sabbath, instead of passing one day in rest or absolute idleness.