296 NOTES. 



NOTE C— (From page 240.) 

 "The Lord's Day." — Rev. i. 10. 



Not only is tliere nothing wliatever to give plausibility to 

 the '^guess" that the apocalyptic '' Lord's day" signified Sun- 

 day, hut there are many considerations powerfully calculated 

 to discountenance it. 



1. The writer could not design to mark out a day of re- 

 iigious observance, since the subject of Christian ceremonies 

 was wholly foreign to the objects of his discourse. The book 

 professes to be a "Kevelation" of the hereafter: it has no- 

 thing to do with designating or upholding the observance of 

 temporal ^'holy days." 



2. If a current day was intended^ the only day bearing this 

 definition, in either the Old or New Testament, is Saturday, 

 ^'the seventh day'^ of the week. {Exod. xx. 10.) 



3. But it is altogether improbable that a literal day could 

 have been intended, in a work which is characterized through- 

 out by the most remarkable flights of figurative rhapsody. 

 The inspirations of the prophetic spirit were not confined to 

 particular days. It was neither the Jirst nor the 7a,^t day of 

 the week that could be signalized as the occasion of the influ- 

 ence; and it seems almost puerile to suppose that it should be 

 specified. 



4. There is extant no trace of evidence that the term 

 "Lord's day" was ever applied to Sunday till near the close of 

 the second century ! Throughout the first 150 years of the 

 Christian era, no writer, apostolic or patristic, ever happens 

 once to use the expression. The first instance I can discover 

 of its application to Sunday occurs in an epistle of Dionysius, 

 liishop of Corinth, whose earliest assignable date is A. D. 170. 

 Not only is it unknown in the canonical epistles (which cover 

 a space of thirty or forty years of ecclesiastical history), but 



