~ 89 ~
At the same time it is obvious that the reason which was assigned in the second century for the observance of Sunday may not have been the original reason, or at any rate the sole original reason. It is probable enough that the infant Church, entirely composed of Jews, may have been led by some motive of convenience, which we cannot now discover, to its choice of a day. It was natural at any rate that they should choose some other day than the Sabbath and leave that free for the worship of the Synagogue. When the Church spread it is quite conceivable that the practice might have been changed, but that the day had already acquired a certain sanctity, and one of the causes of this sanctity I cannot doubt was the feeling that it commemorated the Resurrection. But was there another cause, namely, that it was the Sun's day?[1]
The French 'modernist' Loisy has adopted
- ↑ The degree of importance to be attributed to this consideration will no doubt largely depend on the currency which we suppose the planetary week to have obtained during the period in which the Lord's day was becoming an unquestioned and sacred element in Christian life. Now we certainly must not assume, and indeed I think it is improbable, that at this period, which may roughly be regarded as covering the later decades of the first and the earlier decades of the second century, the week had obtained anything like the general recognition of Dion's time. On the other hand it probably had all the vigour of a growing institution, and also we may suppose that the temperament which led men at one part of their lives to planetary devotion, would often lead them at another to Christianity.
