"\Vith respect to the strictness with which the first day of the week was observed during the first three centuries, the following facts are important to notice: Between the death of the apostles and the edict of Milan, the Lord's Day was sanctified by a Church unrecognized by the State and ex posed to opposition and sometimes to bitter perse cution. The motive for its observance was, there fore, purely moral and religious. The social posi tion of the early Church, drawing its members for the most part from the poorer artisans, traders, and slaves, forbade the strict and general keeping of the Lord's Day, much more of both the Sabbath and Sunday. Thus the universal hallowing of the day of resurrection was impossible" (Bennett, Christ. Arch., p. 444, sq.).
(3) Legal Observance. In the midst of the corrupt influence of heathenism and the growing indifference of the Church, it was thought neces sary to bring some stress of authority upon the Christian conscience to hold it to the faithful ob servance of the first day, as the Jews had known the power of a positive enactment in keeping them steadfast in the hallowing of their Sabbath. "The constant temptation of the Christians to attend upon the heathen spectacles and festivities could, in the case of such whose piety was low, no longer, as at first, be broken by considerations of the high privileges of Christian worship and of the commemoration of the resurrection of Christ, but the restraints coming from a quasi legal enact: ment were found to be more and more necessary" (ibid., p. 45o).
(4) Conclusions Regarding the Observance of Sunday. (1) The Lord's day must be re girded as a festival, coeval with the existence of Christianity itself—growing up naturally from the apostles' time, gradually assuming the character of the one distinctively Christian festival, and drawing to itself, as by an irresistible gravitation, the periodical rest, which is enjoined in the fourth commandment on grounds applicable to man as man, and which was provided for under the Mosaic law by the special observance of the Sab bath. (2) The idea of the Lord's day is wholly distinct from that of the Sabbath, never for a moment confused with it in the early church, in which, indeed, the observance of the Sabbath long survived, sometimes as a festival, sometimes as a fast. Wherever rest is associated with it, such
rest is invariably regarded as entirely secondary. as simply a means to a higher end. Accordingly the original regulation of observances connected with the Lord's day is positive and not negative, and directed by principle rather than by formal rule. (3) The tendency to sabbatize the Lord's day is due chiefly to the necessities of legal en forcement—first, as exemplified in the series of imperial laws, then in the decrees of councils, generally backed by the secular power—dealing inevitably in prohibition more than in injunction. and so tending to emphasize negative instead of positive observance. For such enactments the law of the Old Testament "mutatis mutandis" became naturally a model, and the step was an easy one, from regarding it as a model to taking it as an authority. (4) The direct connection however, of such observance with the obligation of the fourth commandment can claim no scriptural and no high ecclesiastical authority. Either the observation of that commandment is expressly de clared to be figurative (consisting of rest from sin, rest enjoyed in Christ, and rest foreseen in heaven), or careful distinction is made between the moral obligation of religious observance in general, and the positive obligation, now passed away, to keep the Sabbath in particular. The notion of connecting it with the keeping of the Lord's day grows up in the first instance through the natural supersession of the Sabbath by the Lord's day in the Christian church, and the temp tation to transfer to the latter the positive divine sanction of the former ; and, once introduced. maintains itself by the very fact presenting a strong and intelligible plea against any degrada tion of the high Christian festival (Smith. Diet. Chrn. Antiq.). (See SABBATH.) SUP (sup), nzeg-am-maw', a gather ing host, Flab. i:9).
In the Greek form the word is applied to a meal (Luke xvii :8 ; t Cor. xi:25; Rev. iii :2o).