358 some few of the Levitical laws while totally ignoring the balance. As to the charge that it was Con stantine who caused the change of or der, someone has recently done a great service to the church by compiling from patristic sources the testimony of seven church fathers (outside of the New Testament record), all but one of whom antedate the reign of Constantine. These testimonies show that the early church universally observed the first day of the week while the Jews still held to the seventh day. They follow: Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of John who survived him only a few years, wrote, in 101: “ Thpse who. were concerned with old things have come to newness of confi dence, no longer keeping Sabbaths but living according to the Lord’s Day, on which our life as risen again through Him depends. Let us no more Sab- bathize.” Barnabas in a letter dated at the be ginning of the second century wrote: “ We keep the eighth day with joy on which day Jesus also arose from the dead.” Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons who had associated with the apostles, wrote in 167: “ On the Lord’s Day every one of us Christians keeps the Sabbath.” Clement of Alexandria wrote in 194: “ The old Seventh Day has become nothing more than a working day.” Tertullian wrote in 300: “ The Lord’s Day is the holy day of the Christian Church. We have noth ing to do with the Sabbath.” Origen in 225 wrote: "To keep the Lord’s Day is one of the marks of the perfect Christian.” /Augustine declared that “ the Lord’s Day was established by Christ. The Lord’s Day was by the Resurrection declared to Christians and from that very time it began to be celebrated as the Christian festival.”
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S “ SURE ENOUGH” RESURRECTION
ET me put you to the test: I have met a few people who truly believe, they say, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and yet when they were put to the test they were forced to
admit they did not. Do you believe in the literal, “ sure-enough”— as they say down in Dixie Land— resurrection of the bodies of the saints of God at the sec ond coming of our Lord? Do you? There are so many theories and so many speculations as to that, and some are plausible, and they capture a great many people who are not wise enough to search the Scriptures to see whether these things are so and prove thereby that which is worth holding. I mean a literal, real resurrection of these mor tal bodies, because the word “ resurrec tion” means that and it means nothing else. Here is the testing: let me put you to it. “ If Christ be preached that He arose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrec tion of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God that He raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For . . . if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain.” No man can deny the resur rection of God’s people and consistently say Jesus was raised from the dead.— Dr. L. W. Munhall. We see new panoramas through our tears. Cur sorrows prove the occasion of our visions. No beauty ever steals into the human face comparable with the delicate pres ence of spirituality.
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