work their invention as a secret process, but the formula appears either to have leaked out or to have been discovered, so that the process is, perhaps with slight variations, used under numerous names. With the aid of the various systems of rotary copiers, by which blue prints of almost any length can be secured, Dorel prints identical in scale with the originals have been made of the length of 22 feet. An interesting kindred process but with well defined variations is known as velography.
For the technical and chemical details of the various methods reference may be made to Ferric and Heliographic Processes by G. E. Brown (Dawbarn & Ward). (F. V. B.)
SUNDA ISLANDS, the collective name of the islands in the Malay Archipelago which extend from the Malay Peninsula to the Moluccas. They are divided into the Great Sunda Islands—i.e. Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, Banka and Billiton, with their adjacent islands—and the Little Sunda Islands, of which the more important are Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba and Timor.
Sunda Strait is the channel separating Sumatra from Java. and uniting the Indian Ocean with the Java Sea. It is 15 m. broad between the south-eastern extremity of Sumatra and the town of Anjer in Java. In the middle is the low-lying well-wooded island of Dwars-in-den-Weg (“right in the way”), otherwise Middle Island or Sungian. In 1883 Sunda Strait was the scene of the most terrific results of the eruption of Krakatoa (q.v.), a volcanic island further west in the strait.
SUNDARBANS, or Sunderbunds, a tract of waste country in Bengal, India, forming the seaward fringe of the Gangetic delta. It has never been surveyed, nor has the census been extended to it. It stretches for about 165 m., from the mouth of the Hugli to the mouth of the Meghna, and is bordered inland by the three settled districts of the Twenty-four Parganas, Khulna and Backergunje. The total area (including water) is estimated at 6526 sq. m. It is a water-logged jungle, in which tigers and other wild beasts abound. Attempts at reclamation have not been very successful. The forest department realizes a large revenue, chiefly by tolls on produce removed. The characteristic tree is the sundri (Heritiera littoralis), from which the name of the tract has been derived. It yields a hard wood, used for building, and for making boats, furniture, &c. The Sundarbans are everywhere intersected by river channels and creeks, some of which afford water communication between Calcutta and the Brahmaputra valley, both for steamers and for native boats.
SUNDAY, or the Lord's Day (ἡ τοῦ ἡλίου ἡμέρα, dies solis; ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα, dies dominica, dies dominicus[1]), in the Christian world, the first day of the week, celebrated in memory of the resurrection of Christ, as the principal day for public worship. An additional reason for the sanctity of the day may have been found in its association with Pentecost or Whitsun.[2] There is no evidence that in the earliest years of Christianity there was any formal observance of Sunday as a day of rest or any general cessation of work. But it seems to have from the first been set apart for worship. Thus according to Acts xx. 7, the disciples in Troas met weekly on the first day of the Week for exhortation and the breaking of bread; 1 Cor. xvi. 2 implies at least some observance of the day; and the solemn commemorative character it had very early acquired is strikingly indicated by an incidental expression of the writer of the Apocalypse (i. 10), who for the first time gives it that name (“the Lord's Day”) by which it is almost invariably referred to by all writers of the century immediately succeeding apostolic times.[3] Indications of the manner of its observance during this period are not wanting. Teaching of the Apostles (c. 14) contains the precept: “And on the Lord's day of the Lord (κατὰ κυριακὴν κυρίου) come together and break bread and give thanks after confessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure.” Ignatius (Ad Magn. c. 9) speaks of those whom he addresses as “no longer Sabbatizing but living in the observance of the Lord's day (κατὰ κυριακὴν ζῶντες) on which also our life sprang up again.”[4] Eusebius (H.E. iv. 23) has preserved a letter of Dionysius of Corinth (A.D. 175) to Soter, bishop of Rome, in which he says: “To-day we have passed the Lord's holy day, in which we have read your epistle”, and the same historian (H.E. iv. 26) mentions that Melito of Sardis (A.D. 170) had written a treatise on the Lord's day. Pliny's letter to Trajan in which he speaks of the meetings of the Christians “on a stated day” need only be alluded to. The first writer who mentions the name of Sunday as applicable to the Lord's day is Justin Martyr; this designation of the first day of the week, which is of heathen origin (see Sabbath), had come into general use in the Roman world shortly before Justin wrote. He describes (Apol. i. 67) how “on the day called Sunday” town and country Christians alike gathered together in one place for instruction and prayer and charitable offerings and the distribution of bread and wine; they thus meet together on that day, he says, because it is the first day in which God made the world, and because Jesus Christ on the same day rose from the dead.
As long as the Jewish Christian element continued to have any influence in the Church, a tendency to observe Sabbath as well as Sunday naturally persisted. Eusebius (H.E. iii. 27) mentions that the Ebionites continued to keep both days, and there is abundant evidence from Tertullian onwards that so far as public worship and abstention from fasting are concerned the practice was widely spread among the Gentile churches. Thus we learn from Socrates (H.E. vi. c. 8), that in his time public worship was held in the churches of Constantinople on both days; the Apostolic Canons (can. 66 [65]) sternly prohibit fasting on Sunday or Saturday (except Holy Saturday); and the injunction of the Apostolic Constitutions (v. 20; cf. ii. 59, vii. 23) is to “hold your solemn assemblies and rejoice every Sabbath day (excepting one), and every Lord's day.” Thus the earliest observance of the day was confined to congregational worship, either in the early morning or late evening. The social condition of the early Christians naturally forbade any general suspension of work. Irenaeus (c. 140-202) is the first of the early fathers to refer to a tendency to make Sunday a day of rest in his mention that harvesting was forbidden by the Church on the day. Tertullian, writing in 202, says “On the Lord's day we ought abstain from all habit and labour of anxiety, putting off even our business.” But the whole matter was placed on a new footing when the civil power, by the constitution of Constantine mentioned below, began to legislate as to the Sunday rest. The fourth commandment, holding as it does a conspicuous place in the Decalogue, the precepts of which could not for the most part be regarded as of merely transitory obligation, and never of course escaped the attention of the fathers of the Church; but, remembering the liberty given in the Pauline writings “in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath” (Col. 16; cf. Rom. xiv. 5, Gal. iv. 10, 11), they usually explained the “Sabbath day” of the commandment as meaning the new era that had been introduced by the advent of Christ, and interpreted the rest enjoined as meaning cessation from sin. But when a series of imperial decrees had enjoined with increasing stringency an abstinence from labour on Sunday, it was inevitable that the Christian conscience should be roused on the subject of the Sabbath rest also, and in many minds the tendency would be such as finds expression in the Apostolic Constitutions (viii. 33): “Let the slaves work five days; but on the Sabbath day and the Lord's day let them have
- ↑ The Teutonic and Scandinavian nations adopt the former designation (Sunday, Sonntag, Söndag, &c.), the Latin nations the latter (dimanche, domenica, domingo, &c.).
- ↑ From an expression in the Epistle of Barnabas (c. 15), it would almost seem as if the Ascension also was believed by some to have taken place on a Sunday.
- ↑ In the Epistle of Barnabas already referred to (c. 15) it is called “the eighth day”: “We keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also in which Jesus rose again from the dead.” Cf. Justin Martyr, Dial. c. Tryph. c. 138.
- ↑ The longer recension runs: “But let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner . . . And after the observance of the Sabbath let every friend of Christ keep the Lord's day as a festival, the resurrection day, the queen and chief of all the days.” The writer finds a reference to the Lord's day in the titles to Ps. vi. and xii, which are “set to the eighth.”
