day of worship and instruction in divine things, for the Christian Church.

But in order to a more complete knowledge and understanding of the subject, I wish to subjoin some special examples of historical evidence on these points:

"We are informed by Eusebius, that from the beginning the Christians assembled on the first day of the week, called by them 'the Lord's day,' for the purpose of religious worship, to read the Scriptures, to preach, and to celebrate the Lord's Supper'; and Justin Martyr observes: On the Lord's day, all Christians in the city or country meet together, because that is the day of our Lord's resurrection; and then we read the writings of the Apostles and Prophets, etc., etc.'"- N. J. Mag., Vol. xxii., p. 496.

"It was an ordinance with the early Christians not to kneel at prayer on the Lord's day, because that was the day of His resurrection; and the first Council of Nice, A.D. 327, made a solemn decree that none might pray kneeling, but only standing, on our Lord's day, because on that day is celebrated the joyful remembrance of our Lord's resurrection.'" N. J. Mag., Vol. xxxix., p. 239.

And further, Sunday is called the Lord's day, to this day, in the Greek language, and the names for this day in the Italian (Domenica), in Spanish (Domingo), and in French (Dimanche), are derived from the Latin Dominica (Dies understood), which means the same thing.

That the Lord rose on the morning of the first day of the Jewish week, and therefore on the third day after His crucifixion, is also commonly understood to be the sense of the Gospel narratives, and never disputed until recently, as far as I am aware. As, however, in the translation of the Gospels published by the Rev. John Clowes, in England, the words" one of the Sabbaths" are substituted for "the first day of the week," as we read in the authorized version, and as this translation may be supposed to carry some weight of authority with it, it seems necessary to set the matter forth in order in the light.

Nearly, if not quite all, I presume, will admit that the Gospels contain a literal record of facts, the general truthfulness of which, as such, is not invalidated by some dis

VOL. XLIV. 15

crepancies, which cannot be fully explained. But if the Evangelists did not say, or mean to say, that the Lord rose on the first day of the week, using language which, in their time, was understood to have that meaning, their account of that event is inconsistent with itself, and unintelligible, as a literal history. If it does not mean this, it is impossible to tell what it does mean. Take, for example, Mr. Clowes's translation of Matthew xxviii. 1: "But in the evening of the Sabbath, as it dawned to one of the Sabbaths." How can we understand that the evening of one Sabbath could be followed by the dawning of another Sabbath — the evening of one seventh day by the morning of another seventh day? If we turn to the account of Mark, we read in the first verse of chapter xvi., that "when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint Him." After which, according to Mr. Clowes, the second verse reads, "And very early on one of the Sabbaths, they came to the sepulchre, etc." Must we understand this of the Sabbath which, in the preceding verse, was said to be past, or did they wait seven days to another Sabbath, before they came to the sepulchre and found the Lord risen? Again, in Luke, at the end of chapter xxiii., it is plainly said that they "rested on the Sabbath day, according to the commandment," whence it is evident that the events described in the following chapter must have taken place on the next day, which was the first day of the week; although Mr. Clowes would have us read here, also, "on one of the Sabbaths, early in the morning." And yet it is said they rested on the Sabbath day, while the day of the Lord's resurrection, so far from being a day of rest, was one of unusual tumult and agitation. Thus the context evidently requires and obliges us to understand the language of the writer as meaning not any Sabbath, but the first day of the week.

Is it asserted that the Greek text means "one of the Sabbaths," and nothing else, and must therefore be so trans

lated, whether it makes an intelligible sense or not? This I feel obliged to deny.

It is true that the Greek word Sabbaton means Sabbath, so that the words mia Sabbaton do appear to mean "one of the Sabbaths"; yet they do not express this meaning with strict grammatical accuracy, because the numeral is feminine, whereas Sabbaton is neuter, and it may be presumed that, if they had meant to say "one of the Sabbaths," they would have written en ton Sabbaton, using the neuter numeral to correspond with the neuter gender of Sabbaton. But that this word signifies week, as well as Sabbath, appears not only from the necessary construction of the connection, but from Luke xviii. 12: "I fast twice in the week," where this same word is used, and where few, I imagine, would presume to give it any other meaning. Still further: by no other interpretation than the one commonly received, can it be made to appear that the Lord rose on the third day after His crucifixion, as He foretold to His disciples that He should, and as Swedenborg also affirms that He did.-A. C. 2405, 2788.

But why, some one may be tempted to ask, were the sacred historians led to use this doubtful phraseology when there was another Greek word for week, the substitution of which would have left the subject free from all ambiguity? Undoubtedly on account of the spiritual sense, and for a reason which some New Church writers on this subject have already hinted at, namely: that it might appear that the Lord, by rising on that day, made it a Sabbath, for the church which was then about to be instituted. But we must not confound the spiritual sense with the literal, nor substitute the one for the other, in our translation.

The Sabbath after the Lord's crucifixion was the last Sabbath of the Jewish dispensation, and the last Sabbath of the representative churches. By the Lord's lying apparently dead in the grave during that Sabbath, it was signified that there was no longer any life in the Jewish Church, or in mere representative worship, without a spiritual internal.

But by His rising on the first day of the week was signified the rise of a new and living church from Him, and a new Sabbath, which would differ, both as to its external observance and its internal character, from that which the Israelites kept under the law of Moses. The reason why the Lord made the day on which He rose a Sabbath was, because the Sabbath signifies the union of the Divine and Human in Him,* and because on that day he showed, by rising, that this union was then fully consummated. And therefore, in each of the four Gospels, the day of the Lord's resurrection, though actually the first day of the week, appears to be called a Sabbath.

But if the Lord designed that a change should be made in the day of worship, why did He not formally make known His will to men in regard to it? Presumably for this reason: that representatives of the Lord ceased, after His Glorification, and their fulfilment in Him, and thence the importance which had previously belonged to the Sabbath, as a representative day, no longer existed. The abrogation of representatives, which took effect in consequence of the Lord's Coming and Glorification, implies, as I understand it, these two things: 1st, That representative worship is now of no efficacy, and avails nothing towards effecting communication with heaven, independently of, or separate from, an internal spiritual principle of worship; and 2d, That therefore worship, in spirit and in truth, or from the heart and life, is all that the Lord requires as essential, so that worship, when sincere and hearty, is just as acceptable to God on one day as another. We may even believe that it sanctifies and makes a Sabbath of whatever day on which it is offered, in so far as it contains the true life and spirit of the Sabbath. This is in accordance with what the Lord taught, in what He said to the woman of Samaria (John iv. 21 and 23): "The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father." "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the

*See A. C., Nos. 8495, 10,367, 10,374, 10,730.

Father in spirit and in truth." To worship in this mountain and in Jerusalem signifies, in general, to perform representative worship, because mountains and Jerusalem were places especially devoted to such worship. Therefore not to worship in those places signifies that representative worship is no longer required. Since then, the observance of the Sabbath of the seventh day, as a representative day, was no longer obligatory, nor essential to the spiritual keeping of the Lord's precepts; and since, in regard to things nonessential, or of minor importance, the Lord gives no direct commands, but leaves the determination of them to man's free judgment and discretion, it may be seen why it might not have been deemed necessary to make this change a subject of especial Divine revelation.

But as the command to keep holy one day in seven still remained in force, and as some day must be assigned and agreed upon by the church for that purpose, in order to secure the great and almost indispensable advantage of uniformity, it was provided that the first day of the week, consecrated by the Lord's resurrection, should be selected as being, for more than one reason, the most fit and appropriate. For although it was not a matter of vital importance, yet it could not be one of entire indifference, inasmuch as not only the seventh, but each day of the week, had its representative signification. And it seems not unreasonable to suppose that a change in the character of the day should be accompanied by, if it did not actually bring about, a change in the day itself. As the Sabbath was to be thereafter, otherwise than it had previously been, a day of light and instruction in divine things, what could be more fit than that its observance should be transferred to the first day of the representative week-the day on which God said, in the beginning, "Let there be light"? And this reason for the change agrees and makes one with that already offered above: that the Lord, by His resurrection on the first day of the week, made that day a Sabbath. For as He came at first as "the Light of the World," so when He rose with His Humanity fully glorified,