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Page:Colson - The Week (1926, IA weekessayonorigi0000fhco).djvu/99

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rate serious consideration in this connexion. I mean the change by which the Church adopted as its day of meeting the first instead of the seventh in the Jewish week—the Sun's day instead of Saturn's day in the planetary system.

We have, of course, glimpses of this change in the New Testament itself. In the Acts we are told that the Christians of Troas met on the first day of the week for the 'breaking of bread.'[1] Paul himself bids the Corinthians lay aside their contributions for the relief of the Church at Jerusalem on that day[2], and though he does not expressly mention a meeting, it is reasonable to conclude that they were collected at a meeting. The writer of the Apocalypse sees his vision on 'the Lord's day,'[3] and though many sober critics have thought that this means the day on which the Lord appeared to the seer, or the day of Judgment which he saw in vision, it does not seem to me reasonable to doubt that he means Sunday, in face of the fact that this name for Sunday is undoubtedly found some thirty years later and remained afterwards in universal use.

The meagre Christian literature which bridges over the gap between the writings of the New Testament and Justin contains several allusions to the festival or meeting-day on the first day of the week. Ignatius in one of the famous letters[4] which he addressed to various Churches as he

  1. xx, 7.
  2. 1 Cor. xvi, 2.
  3. i, 10.
  4. Ignatius, ad Magnesios, 9.