HISTORICAL EVIDENCE that OUR LORD’SDAY was OBSERVED from TIME OF THE APOSTLES
By
-
Rev. D. M. Canright
Note.—The assertion is constantly made by the Seventh Day Adventist teachers an'd advocates that Sunday observance originated with *Constantine or with the Pope, or the Papacy or the Roman Catholic Church. Sometimes they put it one way, sometimes-the other. Their whole argument against the observance of the first day instead of the seventh day of the. week rests upon this position which they take. Rev D M. Canright, who was for twenty-eight years a minister among the Seventh Day Adventists, and who discovered that Seventh Day Adventism is wrong upon this^point, as well as on many other fundamental points, and who therefore renounced Seventh Day Advehtism, has written a number of books on the subject. The Fleming H Revell Company, New York, has recently published a new book by him, entitled “ The Lord’s Day from Neither Catholic nor Pagan.” It is a book of 260 pages, 12-vo. cldth net $1.00. It is a perfect armory of facts and invaluable to put in the hands of deluded Seventh Day Adventists. We give below a portion of the sixth chapter. Though a very small part of the whole book, it shows how absolutely untenable the
ijeventn u ay Aavennsis iiosmuu
meet together, on a stated day before it- was light,' and sing among themselv.es alternately a hymn to Christ as God. . . . When these things were per formed, it was their custom to separate and then to come together again to a meal which they ate in common without any disorder.” That this was Sunday is evi dent. 1. They came together to worship Christ. 2. They assembled to eat "a meal together, the Lord’s Supper. The “ stated day” for this was Sunday. . “ Upon the first day o f the week when the disciples came together to break bread” (Acts xx. 7). This is exactly parallel to Pliny’s statement.
E W ILL now present histori- ; cal evidence, proving that 1the observance o f the first |day o f the week, as a day of ____j w o r s h i p , was universal among Christians in the days immediately fAllowing the apostles. If Sunday observ ance existed here, then it did not originate several hundred years later with Constan tine, or with the Papacy. W e will begin soon after the close of the New Testament. PLINY ’ S LETTER. Pliny was governor o f Bithynia, Asia Minor, A. D. 106-108. He. wrote A. D. 107 to Trajan, the emperor, concerning the Christians, thus: “They were wont to
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker