THE LORD’S DAY
‘The same day at evening, being the first day of the week … came Jesus and stood in the midst.’
‘Very early in the morning, the first day of the week,’ the Lord Jesus by His Resurrection proclaimed His victory over sin and death, and in consequence that first day has become the Lord’s-day, the day in every week on which we commemorate with joy and gladness the triumph of the Lord’s redeeming work. What wonder, then, is it that from that day forward new and hallowed associations were connected in the minds of the Apostles with the first day of the week.
I. The origin of the Lord’s-day.—Of this I would affirm that it is not Jewish. This, indeed, might sufficiently appear from the fact that in the early days of the Church both the first and seventh day of the week were generally observed by Christians, at any rate by those who had been converted from Judaism. All that is Jewish, all the ceremonies, all the observances, all the restrictions and restraints have been altogether swept away, and of these no single trace remains. So far as Christianity is concerned, no single part of the discarded system of Judaism finds a place.
II. What is the governing principle which underlies the observance alike of the Jewish Sabbath and of the Lord’s-day? It cannot be forgotten that our Divine Master has maintained that love is the great, the first commandment. On this governing principle of love to God and love to man hang all the law and the prophets. Religion is not a mere restraint; it is an enthusiasm. Love is the power which is to control all our motives and to direct all our conduct. Whatever there may be in the Divine enactments which appears to be in the nature of restriction or of prohibition of man’s liberty, is imposed in obedience to the demands of this supreme law of love.
III. Guided, then, in our search by this law of love, and applying to the question before us, what does it reveal?
(a) What does love to God demand from us with reference to the observance of the Lord’s-day? Does it not at least require this—that we should remember the day to keep it holy? Love to Him demands our worship. The grateful heart longs to use every opportunity for showing forth His praise, and in His mercy and goodness towards us He has shown us the way, and provided the means by which we may satisfy this need—a need which grows up until it becomes a yearning desire and ardent longing to every true child of God.
(b) Nor is it less important to remember that the fundamental principle of love to man is embodied in the observance of the Lord’s-day. In the old Jewish law this principle was recognised in the commandment which ordained that no work should be performed upon the Sabbath, and on the reason given for the command, ‘That thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.’ We are not unmindful of the fact that our Blessed Lord swept away all those perversions of this grand principle, by which the Pharisees of His day had distorted the Divine command, so that it had become a mere formal observance of legal and burdensome enactments. But the general rule of abstinence from work, except indeed in the performance of duties of necessity and charity, remained. Is it consistent with God’s supreme law of love, that multitudes of weary toilers should be needlessly condemned to the slavery of continuous labour on the day of rest?
—Prebendary Kitto.
Illustration
‘In these latter days there have been constant controversies, not only between the Church and the world, between the religious and the ungodly, but even amongst religious people themselves, as to the claims of the Lord’s-day, and as to the extent and manner of its observance. The vast increase within the present generation of every form of Sunday entertainment; the boating and cycling excursions, the lawn-tennis parties, the Sunday visiting and Sunday “At Homes” and dinner-parties and dances, and dramatic performances and smoking concerts and boxing clubs, all these are now tolerated and allowed, where they would have been repudiated and condemned a very few years ago.’