Volume Ii Part 2 (1/2)

To answer these questions, it is necessary to go back a little into the history of the Hebrew Sabbath and the Christian Sunday. However, it is not needful to go much into detail, or consume this precious hour in a learned discussion on antiquarian matters which concern none but scholars.

With the Hebrews the actual observance of Sat.u.r.day--the Sabbath--as a day rest, seems to be of pretty late origin. The first mention of it in authentic Hebrew history, as actually observed, occurs about two hundred years after Samuel, and about six hundred after Moses--a little less than nine hundred before Christ. The pa.s.sage is found in 2 Kings 4: 23; a child had died, as the narrative relates--the mother wished to send for Elisha, ”the man of G.o.d.” Her husband objects, saying, ”Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day? it is neither new moon nor Sabbath.” This connection with the new moon is significant. In the earlier historical books of Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, and the first of Kings, there is no mention of the Sabbath, not the least allusion to it.

This seems to have been the origin of its observance:--The wors.h.i.+p of one G.o.d, with the distinctive name Jehovah, gradually got established in the Hebrew nation; for this they seem largely indebted to Moses.

Gradually this wors.h.i.+p of Jehovah became connected with a body of priests, who were regularly organized at length, and claimed descent from Levi--some of them from Aaron, his celebrated descendant, the elder brother of Moses. The rise of the Levitical priesthood is remarkable, and easily traced in the Old Testament. Some books are entirely dest.i.tute of a Levitical spirit, such as Genesis and Judges; others are filled with it, as Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the books of Chronicles.

With the priesthood it seems there came the observance of certain days for religious or festal purposes--New Moon days, Full Moon days, and the like. These seem to have been derived from the nations about them, with whom the moon--deified as Astarte, the Queen and Mother of Heaven, and under other names--was long an object of wors.h.i.+p. The observance of those days points back to the period when Fetichism, the wors.h.i.+p of Nature, was the prominent form of religion. With the other days of religious observance came the seventh day, called the Sabbath. No one knows its true historical origin. The statement respecting its origin, in the fourth commandment, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, can hardly be accepted as literally true by any one in this century. No scientific man, in the present stage of philosophic inquiry, will believe that G.o.d created the universe in six days, and then rested on the seventh. Did other nations observe this day before the Hebrews; was it also connected with some Fetichistic form of wors.h.i.+p; what was the historical event which led to the selection of that day in special? This it is easy to ask, but perhaps not possible to answer. These are curious questions; they are of little practical importance to us at this moment.

After the Hebrew inst.i.tutions of religion got fixed--the wors.h.i.+p of Jehovah, the Levitical priesthood, and the peculiar forms of sacrifice--it became common to refer their origin back to the time of Moses, who lived fourteen or fifteen hundred years before Christ. Since few memorials from his age have come down to us, it is plain we can know little of him. But from the impression which his character left on his nation, and through them on the whole world; from the myths so early connected with his name, it seems pretty clear that he was one of the greatest and most extraordinary men that ever lived. Mankind seldom tell great things of little men. It is difficult to say what share he had in making the laws of the Hebrew nation which are commonly referred to him,--and, as it is popularly taught, revealed to him directly by Jehovah. Perhaps we are not safe in referring to him even the whole of the ten commandments; surely not in any one of their present forms.[3]

Was the Sabbath observed as a day of rest before Moses? Was its observance enforced by him? Was it even known to him? These questions are not easily answered. This is only certain: from the time of Moses to that of Jehoram, a period of about six hundred years, there is no historical mention of its observance, not the least allusion to it. Yet we have doc.u.ments which treat of that period,--the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and the Kings,--some of them historical doc.u.ments, which go into the minute detail of the national peculiarities, and were evidently written with a good deal of concern for strict integrity and truth; they refer to the national rite of circ.u.mcision. Now, if the Sabbath had been observed during that period, it is difficult to believe it would have received no pa.s.sing notice in those historical books. But not only is there no mention of it therein, none even in the times of David and Solomon, who favored the priesthood so strongly; but in the book of Chronicles, the most Levitical book in the Bible, at a date more than two hundred years later than the time of Jehoram, it is distinctly declared that the Sabbath had not been kept for nearly five hundred years.[4] But even if this statement is true, which is scarcely probable, it is plain from the frequent mention of the Sabbath in the writings of the latter part of that period--Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others--that the inst.i.tution was one well known and highly regarded by religious men. After the return from the Babylonian exile, it seems to have been kept with considerable rigor; this we learn from the book of Nehemiah.

The Hebrew law, as it is contained in the Pentateuch, is a singular mixture of conflicting statutes, evidently belonging to different ages, many of them wholly unsuitable to the condition of the people when the laws are alleged to have been given. However, they are all referred back to the time of Moses in the Pentateuch itself, and by the popular theology at the present day. In the law the command is given to keep the seventh day as a day of rest, and that command is referred distinctly to Jehovah himself. The reason is given for choosing that day:--”For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed;” the Sabbath, therefore, was to be kept in commemoration of the fact, that after Jehovah had spent the week in creating the world, ”he rested and was refreshed.” It was to be a day of rest for master and slave, for man and beast. A special sacrifice was offered on that day, in addition to the usual ceremonies, but no provision was made for the religious instruction of the people.

The Sabbath was what its Hebrew name implies, a rest from all labor. The law, in general terms, forbade all work; but, not content with that, it descends to minute details, specifically prohibiting by statute the gathering or preparation of food on the Sabbath, even of food to be consumed on that day itself; the lighting of a fire, or the removal from one's place; and, by a decision where the statute did not apply, forbade the gathering of sticks of wood. The punishment for violating the Sabbath in general, or in any one of these particulars, was death: ”Whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.” However, amus.e.m.e.nt was not prohibited, nor eating and drinking, only work. The command, ”Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day,” at a later period, was liberally interpreted, and a man was allowed to go two thousand cubits, a Sabbath-day's journey.

Long after the time of Moses, some of the Hebrews returned from exile amongst a more civilized and refined people. It seems probable that only the stricter portion returned and established themselves in the land of their fathers. Nehemiah, their leader, enforced the observance of the Sabbath with a strictness and rigor of which earlier times afford no evidence. But the nation was not content with making it a day of idleness. They established synagogues, where the people freely a.s.sembled on the Sabbath and other public days, for religious instruction, and thus founded an excellent inst.i.tution which has shown itself fruitful of good results. So far as I know, that is the earliest instance on record of provision being made for the regular religious instruction of the whole people. Experience has shown its value, and now all the most highly civilized nations of the earth have established similar inst.i.tutions. However, in the synagogues the business of religious instruction was not at all in the hands of the priests, but in those of the people, acting in their primary character without regard to Levitical establishments. A priest, as such, is never an instructor of the people; he is to go through his ritual, not beyond it.

It is easy to learn from the New Testament what were the current opinions about the Sabbath in the time of Christ. It was unlawful to gather a head of wheat on the Sabbath, as a man walked through the fields; it was unlawful to cure a sick man, though that cure could be effected by a touch or a word; unlawful for a man to walk home and carry the light cus.h.i.+on on which he had lain. What was unlawful was reckoned wicked also; for what is a crime in the eyes of the priest, he commonly pretends is likewise a sin before the eyes of G.o.d. Yet it was not unlawful to eat, drink, and be merry on the Sabbath; nor to lift a sheep out of the ditch; nor to quarrel with a man who came to deliver mankind from their worst enemies. It was lawful to perform the rite of circ.u.mcision on the Sabbath, but unlawful to cure a man of any sickness.

Jesus once placed these two, the allowing of that ritual mutilation and the prohibition of the humane act of curing the sick on the Sabbath, in ridiculous contrast. In the fourth gospel he goes further, and actually denies the alleged ground for the original inst.i.tution of the Sabbath; he denies that G.o.d had ever ceased from his work, or rested: ”My father worketh hitherto.”[5] However, in effecting these cures he committed a capital offence; the Pharisees so regarded it, and took measures to insure his punishment. It does not appear that they were illegal measures. It is probable they took regular and legal means to bring him to condign punishment as a Sabbath-breaker. He escaped by flight.

Such was the Sabbath with the Hebrews, such the recorded opinion of Jesus concerning it. There were also other days in which labor was forbidden, but with them we have nothing to do at present. Jesus taught piety and goodness without the Hebrew limitations; of course, then, the new wine of Christianity could not be put into the old bottles of the Jews. Their fast days and Sabbath days, their rites and forms, were not for him.

Now, not long after the death of Christ, his followers became gradually divided into two parties. First, there were the Jewish Christians; that was the oldest portion, the old school of Christians. They are mentioned in ecclesiastical history as the Ebionites, Nazarines, and under yet other names. Peter and James were the great men in that division of the early Christians. Matthew, and the author of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, were their evangelists. The church at Jerusalem was their strong-hold. They kept the whole Hebrew law; all its burdensome ritual, its circ.u.mcision and its sacrifices, its new-moon days and its full-moon days, Sabbath, fasts, and feasts; the first fifteen bishops of the church at Jerusalem were circ.u.mcised Jews. It seems to me they misunderstood Jesus fatally; counting him nothing but the Messiah of the Old Testament, and Christianity, therefore, nothing but Judaism brightened up and restored to its original purity.

I have often mentioned how strongly Matthew, taking him for the author of the first gospel, favors this way of thinking. He represents Jesus as commanding his disciples to observe all the Mosaic law, as the Pharisees interpreted that law,[6] though such a command is utterly inconsistent with the general spirit of Christ's teachings, and even with his plain declaration, as preserved in other parts of the same gospel. It is worthy of note, that this command is peculiar to Matthew. But there is another instance of the same Jewish tendency, though not so obvious at first sight. Matthew represents Jesus as saying, ”The Son of man,” that is, the Messiah, ”is Lord even of the Sabbath day.” Accordingly, he is competent to expound the law correctly, and determine what is lawful to do on that day. In Matthew, therefore, Jesus, in his character of Messiah, is represented as giving a judicial opinion, and ruling that it ”is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days.” Now, Mark and Luke represent it a little different. In Mark, Jesus himself declares that ”The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” Matthew entirely omits that remarkable saying. According to Mark, Jesus declares in general terms, that man is of more consequence than the observance of the Sabbath, while Matthew only considers that the Messiah is ”Lord of the Sabbath day.” The cause of this diversity is quite plain. Matthew was a Jewish Christian, and thought Christianity was nothing but restored Judaism.

The other party may be called liberal Christians, though they must not be confounded with the party which now bears that name. They were the new school of the early Christians. They rejected the Hebrew law, so far as it did not rest on human nature, and considered that Christianity was a new thing; Christ, not a mere Jew, but a universal man, who had thrown down the wall of part.i.tion between Jews and Gentiles. All the old, artificial distinctions, therefore, were done away with at once. Paul was the head of the liberal party among the primitive Christians. He was considered a heretic; and though he was more efficient than any of the other early preachers of Christianity, yet the author of the Apocalypse thought him not worthy of a place in the foundation of the new Jerusalem, which rests on the twelve apostles.[7] The fourth gospel with peculiarities of its own, is written wholly in the interest of this party; James is not mentioned in it at all, and Peter plays but quite a subordinate part, and is thrown into the shade by John. The disciples are spoken of as often misunderstanding their great Teacher. These peculiarities cannot be considered as accidental; they are monuments of the controversy then going on between the two parties. Paul stood in direct opposition to the Jewish Christians. This is plain from the epistle to the Galatians, in which the heads of the rival sects appear very unlike the description given of them in the book of Acts. The observance of Jewish sacred days was one of the subjects of controversy.

Let us look only at the matter of the Sabbath, as it came in question between the two parties. Paul exalts Christ far above the Messianic predictions of the Old Testament, calling him an image of the invisible G.o.d, and declaring that all the fulness of divinity dwells in him, and adds, that he had annulled the old Hebrew law. ”Therefore,” says Paul, ”let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath.”[8] Here he distinctly states the issue between the two Christian sects. Elsewhere he speaks of the Jewish party, as men that ”would pervert the gospel of Christ,” by teaching that a man was ”justified by the works of the law;” that is, by a minute observance of the Hebrew ritual.[9] Paul rejects the authority of the Old Testament. The law of Moses was but a schoolmaster's servant, to bring us to Christ; man had come to Christ, and needed that servant no longer; the law was a taskmaster and guardian set over man in his minority, now he had come of age, and was free; the law was a shadow of good things, and they had come; it was a law of sin and death, which no man could bear, and now the law of the spirit of life, as revealed by Jesus Christ, had made men free from the law of sin and death. Such was the work of the glorious gospel of the blessed G.o.d. Thus sweeping off the authority of the old law in general, he proceeds to particulars: he rejects circ.u.mcision, and the offering of sacrifices; rejects the distinction of nations as Jew and Gentile; the distinction of meats as clean and unclean, and all distinction of days, as holy and not holy. If one man thought one day holier than another day; if another man thought all days equally holy, he would have each man true to his conviction, but not seek to impose that conviction on his brothers. Such was Paul's opinion of ”The law of Moses;” such, of the Sabbath; the Christians were not ”subject to ordinances.”

Let us come now to the common practice of the early Christians. The apostles went about and preached Christianity, as they severally understood it. They spoke as they found opportunity; on the Sabbath to the Jews in the synagogues, and on other days, as they found time and hearers. It does not appear from the New Testament, that they limited themselves to any particular day; they were missionaries, some of them remained but a little while in a place, making the most of their time.

It seems that the early Christians, who lived in large towns, met every day for religious purposes. But as that would be found inconvenient, one day came to be regarded as the regular time of their meetings. The Jewish Christians observed the Sabbath with pharisaic rigor, while the liberal Christians neglected it. But both parties of Christians observed, at length, the first day of the week as a peculiar day. No one knows when this observance of the Sunday began; it is difficult to find proof in the New Testament, that the apostles regarded it as a peculiar day; it seems plain that Paul did not. But it is certain that in the second century after Jesus, the Christians in general did so regard it, and perhaps all of them.

Why was the Sunday chosen as the regular day for religious meeting? It was regarded as the day on which Jesus rose from the dead; and, following the mythical account in Genesis, it was the day on which G.o.d began the creation, and actually created the light. Here there were two reasons for the selection of that day; both are frequently mentioned by the early Christian writers. Sunday, therefore, was to them a symbol of the new creation, and of the light that had come into the world. The liberal Christians, in separating from the Jewish Sabbath, would naturally exalt the new religious day. Athanasius, I think, is the first who ascribes a divine origin to the inst.i.tution of Sunday. He says, ”The Lord changed this day from the Sabbath to the Sunday;” but Athanasius lived three centuries after Christ, and seems to have known little about the matter.

The officers and the order of services in the churches on the Sunday seem derived from the usages of the Jewish synagogues. The Sunday was thus observed: the people came together in the morning; the exercises consisted of readings from the Old Testament and such writings of the Christians as the a.s.sembly saw fit to have read to them. In respect to these writings there was a wide difference in the different churches, some accepting more and others less. The overseer, or bishop, made an address, perhaps an exposition of the pa.s.sage of Scripture. Prayers were said and hymns chanted; the Lord's supper was celebrated. The form no doubt differed, and widely, too, in different places. It was not the form of servitude but the spirit of freedom, they observed. But all these things were done, likewise, on other days; the Lord's supper could be celebrated on any day, and is on every day by the Catholic church, even now; for the Catholics have been true to the early practices in more points than the Protestants are willing to admit. In some places it is certain there was a ”communion” every day. Sunday was regarded holy by the early Christians, just as certain festivals are regarded holy by the Catholics, the Episcopalians, and the Lutherans, at this day; as the New Englanders regard Thanksgiving day as holy. Other days, likewise, were regarded as holy; were used in the same manner as the Sunday. Such days were observed in honor of particular events in the life of Jesus, or in honor of saints and martyrs, or they were days consecrated by older festivals belonging to the more ancient forms of religion. In the Catholic church such days are still numerous. It is only the Puritans who have completely rejected them, and they have been obliged to subst.i.tute new ones in their place. However, there was one peculiarity of the Sunday which distinguished it from most or all other days. It was a day of religious rejoicing. On other days the Christians knelt in prayer; on the Sunday they stood up on joyful feet, for light had come into the world. Sunday was a day of gladness and rejoicing. The early Christians had many fasts; they were commonly held on Wednesdays and Fridays, often on Sat.u.r.day also, the more completely to get rid of the Jewish superst.i.tion which consecrated that day; but on Sunday there must be no fast. He would be a heretic who should fast on Sunday. It is strictly forbidden in the ”canons of the apostles;” a clergyman must be degraded and a layman excommunicated, for the offence. Says St.

Ignatius, in the second century, if the epistle be genuine, ”Every lover of Christ feasts on the Lord's day.” ”We deem it wicked,” says Tertullian in the third century, ”to fast on the Sunday, or to pray on our knees.” ”Oh,” says St. Jerome, ”that we could fast on the Sunday, as Paul did and they that were with him.” St. Ambrose says, the ”Manichees were d.a.m.ned for fasting on the Lord's day.” At this day the Catholic church allows no fast on Sunday, save the Sunday before the crucifixion; even Lent ceases on that day.

It does not appear that labor ceased on Sunday, in the earliest age of Christianity. But when Sunday became the regular and most important day for holding religious meetings, less labor must of course be performed on that day. At length it became common in some places to abstain from ordinary work on the Sunday. It is not easy to say how early this was brought about. But after Christianity had become ”respectable,” and found its way to the ranks of the wealthy, cultivated and powerful, laws got enacted in its favor. Now, the Romans, like all other ancient nations, had certain festal days in which it was not thought proper to labor unless work was pressing. It was disreputable to continue common labor on such days without an urgent reason; they were pretty numerous in the Roman calendar. Courts did not sit on those days; no public business was transacted. They were observed as Christmas and the more important saints' days in Catholic countries; as Thanksgiving day and the Fourth of July with us. In the year three hundred and twenty-one, Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, placed Sunday among their ferial days. This was perhaps the first legislative action concerning the day. The statute forbids labor in towns, but expressly excludes all prohibition of field-labor in the country.[10] About three hundred and sixty-six or seven, the Council of Laodicea decreed that Christians ”ought not to Judaize and be idle on the Sabbath, but to work on that day; especially observing the Lord's day, and if it is possible, as Christians, resting from labor.” Afterwards the Emperor Theodosius forbade certain public games on Sunday, Christmas, Epiphany, and the whole time from Easter to Pentecost. Justinian likewise forbade theatrical exhibitions, races in the circus, and the fights of wild beasts, on Sunday, under severe penalties. This was done in order that the religious services of the Christians might not be disturbed. By his laws the Sunday continued to be a day in which public business was not to be transacted. But the Christmas days, the fifteen days of Easter, and numerous other days previously observed by Christians or pagans, were put in the same cla.s.s by the law. All this it seems was done from no superst.i.tious notions respecting those days, but for the sake of public utility and convenience. However, the rigor of the Jewish Sabbatical laws was by no means followed. Labors of love, _opera caritatis_, were considered as suitable business for those days. The very statute of Theodosius recommended the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves on Sunday. All impediments to their liberation were removed on that day, and though judicial proceedings in all other matters were forbidden on Sunday, an exception was expressly made in favor of emanc.i.p.ating slaves.

This statute was preserved in the code of Justinian.[11] All these laws go to show that there were similar customs previously established among the Christians, without the aid of legislation.

About the middle of the sixth century the Council of Orleans forbade labor in the fields, though it did not forbid travelling with cattle and oxen, the preparation of food, or any work necessary to the cleanliness of the house or the person--declaring that rigors of that sort belong more to a Jewish than to a Christian observance of the day. That, I think, is the earliest ecclesiastical decree which has come down to us forbidding field-labor in the country; a decree unknown till five hundred and thirty-eight years after Christ. But before that, in the year three hundred and thirteen, the Council of Elvira in Spain decreed, that if any one in a city absented himself three Sundays consecutively from the church, he should be suspended from communion for a short time. Such a regulation, however, was founded purely on considerations of public utility. Many church establishments have thought it necessary to protect themselves from desertion by similar penal laws.

In Catholic countries, at the present day, the morning of Sunday is appropriated to public wors.h.i.+p, the people flocking to church. But the afternoon and evening are devoted to society, to amus.e.m.e.nt of various kinds. Nothing appears sombre, but every thing has a festive air; even the theatres are open. Sunday is like Christmas, or a Thanksgiving day in Boston, only the festive demonstrations are more public. It is so in the Protestant countries on the continent of Europe. Work is suspended, public and private, except what is necessary for the observance of the day; public lectures are suspended; public libraries closed; but galleries of paintings and statues are thrown open and crowded; the public walks are thronged. In Southern Germany, and, doubtless, elsewhere, young men and women have I seen in summer, of a Sunday afternoon, dancing on the green, the clergyman, Protestant or Catholic, looking on and enjoying the cheerfulness of the young people. Americans think their mode of keeping Sunday is unholy; they, that ours is Jewish and pharisaical. In Paris, sometimes, courses of scientific lectures are delivered after the hours of religious services, to men who are busy during the week with other cares, and who gladly take the hours of their only leisure day to gain a little intellectual instruction.

When England was a Catholic country, Catholic notions of Sunday of course prevailed. Labor was suspended; there was service in the churches, and afterwards there were sports for the people, but they were attended with quarrelling, noise, uproar, and continual drunkenness. It was so after the Reformation. In the time of Elizabeth, the laws forbade labor except in time of harvest, when it was thought right to work, if need were, and ”save the thing that G.o.d hath sent.” Some of the Protestants wished to reform those disorders, and convert the Sunday to a higher use. The government, and sometimes the superior clergy, for a long time interfered to prevent the reform, often to protect the abuse.