as obligatory or perpetual any more than the circumcising of their children, or the rule about "clean" and "unclean" meats, or the offering of the accustomed sacrifices in the Temple while it stood. S. Paul himself, as we have already seen, on one occasion offered sacrifice along with other Christian Jews, and he caused Timothy to receive circumcision even after he became a Christian, in order to meet the prejudices of other Jewish Christians, because though his father was a Gentile his mother was a Jewess.1 The observance of "the first day of the week" or Sunday instead of Saturday as the Christian fulfilment of the Fourth Commandment (in which as the primal law there is no trace of Judaism) is evident from the account of the celebration of the Holy Communion on that day in Troas when S. Paul preached, and from the same apostle's direction to the Church in Corinth concerning a special weekly offering on the day for the poor Christians in Jerusalem.2 It may also be inferred from the account which S. John gives us of the place and the day when he first received his "Revelation." It was "the Lord's Day," he writes, though this might also mean Easter Day.3 But all this change of days came very gradually in deference to the very natural prejudices and devout feelings of Jewish converts. The "beggarly elements," as S. Paul calls the old customs and ceremonies of Israel, were allowed to continue for a time, even after the realities of which they were but the shadows and the husk had actually come. The Lord's Day was therefore necessarily slow in supplanting entirely the Saturday Sabbath. In fact the two days continued side by side 1 Acts xxi. 18, etc.; xvi. 4; Col. ii. 16, 17. 2 Acts xx. 7; 1 Cor. xvi. 2. 3 Rev. i. 10. Gal. iv. 9. "2 for several centuries as "sister days," as Gregory the Bishop of Nyssa in the fourth century calls them. The Apostolic Constitutions, so-called, which probably represent even an earlier period than the fourth century, have this exhortation: Christians must "gather together especially on the Sabbath, and on the Lord's Day, the day of the Resurrection "1; and again they say, "Keep the Sabbath and the Lord's Day as feasts, for the one is the commemoration of the Creation, and the other of the Resurrection." This was a common rule in the East, though curiously enough at Rome the Saturday Sabbath was a fast day in the time of S. Augustine, and the same is true of some other places in the West, though the majority of Western Churches did not so regard it. At Milan, for instance, the day was not treated as a fast; and S. Ambrose, in reply to a question put by Augustine at the instance of his mother Monica, stated that he regarded the matter as one of local discipline, and gave the sensible rule to "do in such matters at Rome as the Romans do."3 Another fact to be borne in mind in regard to the observance of Sunday as well as other festivals of the Church in the early days is that, during the first three centuries throughout the Roman Empire, Christianity was an illegal religion (religio illicita), and therefore frequently the subject of persecution by the State. Judaism on the other hand was a legal religion, and had its weekly Sabbath, but the Roman law recognized no weekly rest day for other nations. Gentile Christians therefore would naturally feel it doubly difficult to observe the Lord's Day as a complete day of Apos. Con. vii. 23. The Church Year and Kalendar, by Bp. Dowden, p. 8. The quotation from Augustine is from Ep. liv. 3, ad Bonifacium, rest and worship. This would be particularly true of slaves, who formed the majority of the population in most parts of the Empire, and of the working classes generally. This will probably account for the night service which we have seen at Troas, and may serve as an excuse for the sleep of the young man Eutychus after a day of hard toil either as a slave or a free laborer. (It should be remembered also that the Jewish day began at sunset, and not at midnight.) The day was not a legal holiday until the conversion of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, in the beginning of the fourth century, when toleration was first proclaimed, and Christianity became the religion of the state.1 1 It was in A.D. 321 that Constantine gave leave to the Christian soldiers in his army to be absent from duty in order that they might attend divine service on Sunday. The heathen soldiers had to assemble and offer prayers for the Emperor and his family. At the same time Constantine forbade the law courts to sit on Sunday. See Eusebius, Vita Const., 4. 19, 20; and Sozomen, His. Eccles., i. 18. CHAPTER VII THE VALUE OF CUSTOM AND TRADITION IN THE CHURCH "The keeping or omitting of a Ceremony, in itself considered, is but a small thing; yet the wilful and contemptuous transgression and breaking of a common order and discipline is no small offence before God."-Preface to the English Prayer Book: Of Ceremonies. THERE is nothing strange or unreasonable or unscriptural in this resting of the observance of these festival days merely on custom or tradition, instead of on a recorded command of our Lord or His apostles. It is remarkable, though too often overlooked, how frequently the words "tradition," "custom," and "way," or their equivalents, occur in the New Testament. Three times "The Way" is used as a name or designation of the Church itself. S. Paul in writing to correct certain evils in the Church in Corinth gives as a sufficient reason for some things his own "ways in Christ."2 As a sufficient argument against another practice in the same Church he writes, "We have no such custom, neither the Churches of God";3 and he says in the same chapter, "Hold fast the traditions, even as I delivered them unto you.' "4 To the Thessalonian Church he says, "Stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle"; and again, "We command you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh 21 Cor. iv. 17. 1 Acts xix. 9, 23; xxiv. 14, Rev. Ver. 41 Cor. xi. 2, Rev. Ver. disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us." 1 Few of us realize how much the fulness and richness of our common everyday life is dependent on customs and ways handed on to us and by us by tradition, sometimes written, but far more frequently not written. The characteristic, the most valuable features in fact of families and nations alike are these unwritten customs and traditions. They are things not wrought out by each generation, or each set of individuals for themselves, but are inherited and handed on to others. How much a nation or a family would have to give up, how much poorer it would be, if it abandoned all except what is inscribed in its laws or its records, the things "written in the bond." The great bulk of a nation's customs, the pith and heart of its character, is not found recorded in its histories or literature. It could not be described in words; it could not be transferred to another nation by means of written documents alone. If acquired at all by others, it must be acquired by close contact, almost by a new birth and a new life, an engrafting of one into the other, a suffusion of blood. Now if one will only give the matter a moment's thought it is evident that very much of the life of the Church must necessarily be of this same description. Even to-day, when missionaries go out to heathen lands, there are a thousand things they teach by word and act and "ways" that could not be conveyed by writing. When S. Columba set sail from Ireland to convert the heathen Picts and Scots he took with him many companions, not all ecclesiastics or teachers or preachers, but living examples of what the Christian faith had done, and therefore could do, for men. The business man 2 Thess. ii. 15; iii. 6. |