~ 94 ~
the following comment: 'The Lord's day, the day of the Resurrection, the day of Christians, our day. Why is it called the Lord's day? Because on it he ascended victoriously to his Father. But if the Gentiles call it the Sun's day, we gladly admit it. For in this day the light of the world rose, on this day the sun of righteousness rose.'[1] In the fifth century Maximus of Turin in a homily on Pentecost says: 'The Lord's day is reverenced by us because on it the Saviour of the world like the rising sun, dispelling the darkness of hell, shone with the light of resurrection, and therefore is the day called by the men of the world the Sun's day, because Christ the sun of righteousness illumines it.'[2] These quotations belong, as I have said, to a later day. But the fact on which they are based, the coincidence of the Christian Lord's day with the pagan Sun's day, was the same for the men of the first and second centuries as for those of the fourth and fifth: and what the Christians of the later epoch wrote may well have been said and thought by them of the earlier, even if it was not written; though indeed it is possible that we have glimpses of the association in the writings of these earlier times. I have already noted the thought that may lie behind the words of Ignatius, and it is perhaps worth noting also that the divine figure which appears to the seer of the Apocalypse on the