The Scriptural obligation of public worship is partly founded
upon example, and partly upon precept; so that no person who admits that
authority, can question this great duty without manifest and criminal
inconsistency. The institution of public worship under the law, and the
practice of synagogue worship among the Jews, from at least the time of
Ezra, cannot be questioned; both of which were sanctioned by the
practice of our Lord and his Apostles. The preceptive authority for our
regular attendance upon public worship, is either inferential or direct.
The command to publish the Gospel includes the obligation of assembling
to hear it; the name by which a Christian society is designated in
Scripture is a church; which signifies an assembly for the transaction
of business; and, in the case of a Christian assembly, that business
must necessarily be spiritual, and include the sacred exercises of
prayer, praise, and hearing the Scriptures. But we have more direct
precepts, although the practice was obviously continued from Judaism,
and was therefore consuetudinary. Some of the epistles of St. Paul are
commanded to be read in the churches. The singing of psalms, hymns, and
spiritual songs is enjoined as an act of solemn worship to the Lord; and
St. Paul cautions the Hebrews that they “forsake not the assembling of
themselves together.” The practice of the primitive age is also manifest
from the epistles of St. Paul. The Lord’s Supper was celebrated by the
body of believers collectively; and this Apostle prescribes to the
Corinthians regulations for the exercises of prayer and prophesyings,
“when they came together in the church,”--the assembly. The statedness
and order of these holy offices in the primitive church, appear also
from the apostolical epistle of St. Clement: “We ought also, looking
into the depths of the divine knowledge, to do all things in order,
whatsoever the Lord hath commanded to be done. We ought to make our
oblations, and perform our holy offices, at their appointed seasons; for
these he hath commanded to be done, not irregularly or by chance, but at
determinate times and hours; as he hath likewise ordained by his supreme
will, where, and by what persons, they shall be performed; that so all
things being done according to his pleasure, may be acceptable in his
sight.” This passage is remarkable for urging a divine authority for the
public services of the church, by which St. Clement, no doubt, means the
authority of the inspired directions of the Apostles. The ends of the
institution of public worship are of such obvious importance, that it
must ever be considered as one of the most condescending and gracious
dispensations of God to man. By this his church confesses his name
before the world; by this the public teaching of his word is associated
with acts calculated to affect the mind with that solemnity which is the
best preparation for hearing it to edification. It is thus that the
ignorant and the vicious are collected together, and instructed and
warned; the invitations of mercy are published to the guilty, and the
sorrowful and afflicted are comforted. In these assemblies God, by his
Holy Spirit, diffuses his vital and sanctifying influence, and takes the
devout into a fellowship with himself, from which they derive strength
to do and to suffer his will in the various scenes of life, while he
there affords them a foretaste of the deep and hallowed pleasures which
are reserved for them at his right hand for evermore. Prayers and
intercessions are offered for national and public interests; and while
the benefit of these exercises descends upon a country, all are kept
sensible of the dependence of every public and personal interest upon
God. Praise calls forth the grateful emotions, and gives cheerfulness to
piety; and that instruction in righteousness which is so perpetually
repeated, diffuses the principles of morality and religion throughout
society; enlightens and gives activity to conscience; raises the
standard of morals; attaches shame to vice, and praise to virtue; and
thus exerts a powerfully purifying influence upon mankind. Laws thus
receive a force, which, in other circumstances, they could not acquire,
even were they enacted in as great perfection; and the administration of
justice is aided by the strongest possible obligation and sanction being
given to legal oaths. The domestic relations are rendered more strong
and interesting by the very habit of the attendance of families upon the
sacred services of the sanctuary of the Lord; and the rich and the poor
meeting together, and standing on the same common ground as sinners
before God, equally dependent upon him, and equally suing for his mercy,
has a powerful, though often an insensible, influence in humbling the
pride which is nourished by superior rank, and in raising the lower
classes above abjectness of spirit, without injuring their humility.
Piety, benevolence, and patriotism are equally dependent for their
purity and vigour upon the regular and devout worship of God in the
simplicity of the Christian dispensation.
The following is an abridgment of Dr. Neander’s account of the mode of
conducting public worship among the primitive Christians, which, though
questionable on some points, is upon the whole just and
interesting:--Since the religion of the New Testament did not admit of
any peculiar outward priesthood, similar to that of the Old, the same
outward kind of worship, dependent on certain places, times, and outward
actions and demeanours, would also have no place in its composition. The
kingdom of God, the temple of the Lord, were to be present, not in this
or that place, but in every place where Christ himself is active in the
Spirit, and where through him the worship of God in spirit and in truth
is established. Every Christian in particular, and every church in
general, were to represent a spiritual temple of the Lord; the true
worship of God was to be only in the inward heart, and the whole life
proceeding from such inward disposition, sanctified by faith, was to be
a continued spiritual service; this is the great fundamental idea of the
Gospel, which prevails throughout the New Testament, by which the whole
outward appearance of religion was to assume a different form, and all
that once was carnal was to be converted into spiritual, and ennobled.
This notion came forward most strongly in the original inward life of
the first Christians, particularly when contrasted with Judaism, and
still more so when contrasted with Heathenism; a contrast which taught
the Christians to avoid all pomp that caught the eye, and all
multiplication of means of devotion addressed to the senses, while it
made them hold fast the simple, spiritual character of the Christian
worship of God. It was this which always struck the Heathen so much in
the Christian worship; namely, that nothing was found among them of the
outward pomp of all other religions; no temples, no altars, no images.
This reproach was made to the Christians by Celsus, and answered thus by
Origen: “In the highest sense the temple and image of God are in the
human nature of Christ; and hence, also, in all the faithful, who are
animated by the Spirit of Christ,--living images! with which no statue
of Jove by Phidias is fit to be compared.” Christianity impelled men
frequently to seek for the stillness of the inward sanctuary, and here
to pour forth their heart to God, who dwells in such temples; but then
the flames of love were also lighted in their hearts, which sought
communion in order to strengthen each other mutually, and to unite
themselves into one holy flame which pointed toward heaven. The
communion of prayer and devotion was thought a source of sanctification,
inasmuch as men knew that the Lord was present by his Spirit among those
who were gathered together in his name; but then they were far from
ascribing any peculiar sacredness and sanctity to the place of assembly.
Such an idea would appear to partake of Heathenism; and men were at
first in less danger of being seduced into such an idea, because the
first general places of assembly of the Christians were only common
rooms in private houses, just according as it happened that any member
of the church had sufficient accommodation for the purpose. Thus Gaius
of Corinth, Rom. xvi, is called the host of the church, because the
church was in the habit of assembling in a room of his house. Origen
says, “The place where believers come together to pray has something
agreeable and useful about it;” but then he only says this in respect to
that spiritual communion. Man, we must avow, is very easily led to fall
away from the worship of God in spirit and in truth, and to connect the
religion of the Spirit with outward and earthly things; as the Apostle
says, “Having begun in the Spirit, to wish to end in the flesh.”
Watchfulness on this point was constantly needed, lest the Jewish or the
Heathen notions should here intrude themselves on those of the Gospel,
which was likely enough to happen as soon as the Old and the New
Testament notions of the priesthood had been confused. Even in the time
of Clemens of Alexandria he found himself obliged to combat the notion,
which allowed the essentials of a Christian life to be of one kind in,
and of another out of, the church. “The disciples of Christ,” he says,
“must form the whole course of their life and conduct on the model which
they assume in the churches, for the sake of propriety; they must be
such, and not merely seem so; as mild, as pious, and as charitable. But
now, I know not how it is, they change their habits and their manners
with the change of place, as the polypus, they say, changes its colour,
and becomes like the rock on which it hangs. They lay aside the
spiritual habit which they had assumed in the church, as soon as they
have left the church, and assimilate themselves to the multitude among
whom they live. I should rather say, that they convict themselves of
hypocrisy, and show what they really are in their inward nature, by
laying aside the mask of piety which they had assumed; and while they
honour the word of God, they leave it behind them in the place where
they heard it.”
The Christian places of assembly were, at first, in the rooms of private
houses; it may perhaps be the case, that in large towns, where the
number of Christians was soon considerable, and no member of the church
had any room in his house sufficient to contain all his brethren, or in
places where men did not fear any prejudicial consequences from large
assemblies, the church divided itself into different sections, according
to the habitations of its members, of which each section held its
assemblies in one particular chamber of the house of some wealthy member
of the church; or, perhaps, while it was usual to unite on Sundays in
one general assembly, yet each individual part of the church met
together daily in the rooms which lay the most convenient to it. Perhaps
the passages in St. Paul’s epistles, which speak of churches in the
houses of particular persons, are thus to be understood. The answer of
Justin Martyr to the question of the prefect, “Where do you assemble?”
exactly corresponds to the genuine Christian spirit on this point. This
answer was, “Where each one can and will. You believe, no doubt, that we
all meet together in one place; but it is not so, for the God of the
Christians is not shut up in a room, but, being invisible, he fills both
heaven and earth, and is honoured every where by the faithful.” Justin
adds, that when he came to Rome, he was accustomed to dwell in one
particular spot, and that those Christians who were instructed by him,
and wished to hear his discourses, assembled at his house. He had not
visited any other congregations of the church. The arrangements which
the peculiarities of the Christian worship required, were gradually made
in these places of assembly, such as an elevated seat for the purpose of
reading the Scriptures and preaching, a table for the distribution of
the sacrament, to which as early as the time of Tertullian the name of
altar, _ara_ or _altare_, was given, and perhaps not without some
mixture of the unevangelical Old Testament notion of a sacrifice; or at
least this idea might easily attach itself to this name. When the
churches increased, and their circumstances improved, there were, during
the course of the third century, already separate church buildings for
the Christians, as the name θρησκεύσιμοι τοπόι, [religious places,] of
the Christians occurs in the edict of Gallienus. In the time of the
external prosperity of the church, during the reign of Diocletian, many
handsome churches arose in the great towns. The use of images was
originally quite foreign to the Christian worship and churches, and it
remained so during this whole period. The intermixture of art and
religion, and the use of images for the latter, appeared to the first
Christians a Heathenish practice. As in Heathenism the divine becomes
desecrated and tarnished by intermixture with the natural; and as men
have often paid homage to the beauties of nature, with injury to the
cause of holiness, the first warmth of Christian zeal, which opposed the
idolatry of nature, so common to Heathenism, and sought to maintain the
divine in all its purity and elevation, was inclined rather to set
holiness in the strongest contrast with what is beautiful by nature,
than to endeavour to grace it by lending it a beautiful form. Men were
more inclined in general to carry into extremes the idea of the
appearance of the Divinity in the form of a servant, which suited the
oppressed condition of the church in these centuries than to throw it
into the back ground, and overwhelm it under the predominance of their
æsthetic dispositions, and their love of art. This is peculiarly shown
by the general belief of the early church, that Christ had clothed his
inward divine glory in a mean outward form, which was in direct
contradiction to it; a conclusion which was drawn from interpreting the
prophecy of the Messiah in Isa. liii, 2, too literally. Thus, Clemens of
Alexandria warns the Christians, from the example of Christ, not to
attribute too much value to outward beauty: “The Lord himself was mean
in outward form; and who is better than the Lord? But he revealed
himself not in the beauty of the body, perceptible to our senses, but in
the true beauty of the soul as well as of the body; the beauty of the
soul consisting in benevolence, and that of the body in immortality!”
Fathers of entirely opposite habits of mind, the adherents of two
different systems of conceiving divine things, were nevertheless united
on this point by their common opposition to the mixture of the natural
and the divine in Heathenism, and by the endeavour to maintain the
devotion to God, in spirit and in truth, pure and undefiled. Clemens of
Alexandria is as little favourable as Tertullian to the use of images.
Heathens, who, like Alexander Severus, saw something divine in Christ’s
personal form, and sects which mixed Heathenism and Christianity
together, were the first who made use of images of Christ; as, for
instance, the Gnostic sect of the followers of Carpocratian, who put his
image beside those of Plato and Aristotle. The use of religious images
among the Christians did not proceed from their ecclesiastical but from
their domestic life. In the intercourse of daily life, the Christians
saw themselves every where surrounded by objects of Heathen mythology,
or by such as shocked their moral and Christian feelings. Similar
objects adorned the walls of chambers, the drinking vessels, and the
signet rings, (on which the Heathen had constantly idolatrous images,)
to which, whenever they pleased, they could address their devotions; and
the Christians naturally felt themselves obliged to replace these
objects, which wounded their moral and religious feelings, with others
more suited to those feelings. Therefore, they gladly put the likeness
of a shepherd carrying a lamb upon his shoulders, on their cups, as a
symbol of the Redeemer, who saves the sinners that return to him,
according to the parable in the Gospel. And Clemens of Alexandria says,
in reference to the signet rings of the Christians, “Let our signet
rings consist of a dove,” the emblem of the Holy Ghost, “or a fish, or a
ship sailing toward heaven,” the emblem of the Christian church, or of
individual Christian souls, “or a lyre,” the emblem of Christian joy,
“or an anchor,” the emblem of Christian hope; “and he who is a
fisherman, let him remember the Apostle, and the children who were
dragged out from the water; for those men ought not to engrave
idolatrous forms, to whom the use of them is forbidden; those can
engrave no sword and no bow, who seek for peace; the friends of
temperance cannot engrave drinking cups.” And yet, perhaps, religious
images made their way from domestic life into the churches as early as
the end of the third century, and the walls of the churches were painted
in the same way. The council of Elvira set itself against this
innovation as an abuse, for it made the following order: “Objects of
reverence and worship shall not be painted on the walls.” It is probable
that the visible representation of the cross found its way very early
into domestic and ecclesiastical life. This token was remarkably common
among them; it was used to consecrate their rising and their going to
bed, their going out and their coming in, and all the actions of daily
life; it was the sign which Christians made involuntarily whenever any
thing of a fearful nature surprised them. This was a mode of expressing,
by means perceptible to the senses, the purely Christian idea, that all
the actions of Christians, as well as the whole course of their life,
must be sanctified by faith in the crucified Jesus, and by dependence
upon him; and that this faith is the most powerful means of conquering
all evil, and preserving oneself against it. But here also, again, men
were too apt to confuse the idea and the token which represented it; and
they attributed the effects of faith in the crucified Redeemer to the
outward sign, to which they ascribed a supernatural, sanctifying, and
preservative power; an error of which we find traces as early as the
third century.
We now pass from the consideration of the places of public worship, to
that of the seasons of worship, and the festivals of the early
Christians. It is here shown again, that the Gospel, as it remodelled
the former conceptions of the priesthood, of worship in general, and of
holy places, also entirely changed the then views of sacred seasons. And
here again, also, the character of the theocracy of the New Testament
revealed itself, a theocracy spiritualized, ennobled, and freed from its
outward garb of sense, and from the limits which bounded its
generalization. The Jewish laws relating to their festivals were not
merely abrogated by the Gospel, in such a manner as to transfer these
festivals to different seasons; but they were entirely abolished, as far
as fixing religious worship to particular times is concerned. St. Paul
expressly declares all sanctifying of certain seasons, as far as men
deduced this from the divine command, to be Jewish and unevangelical,
and to be like returning to the slavery of the law, and to captivity to
outward precepts. Such was the opinion of the early church. At first the
churches assembled every day; as, for instance, the first church of
Jerusalem, which assembled daily for prayer in common, and for the
public consideration of the divine word, for the common celebration of
the Lord’s Supper and the _agapæ_, as well as to maintain the connection
between the common head of the spiritual body of the church and
themselves, and between one another as members of this body. Traces of
this are also found in later times in the daily assembling of the
churches for the purpose of hearing the Scriptures read, and of
celebrating the communion. Although, in order to meet the wants of human
nature generally, consisting as it does of sense as well as soul, and
those of a large body of Christians in particular, who were only in a
state of education, and were to be brought up to the ripeness of
Christian manhood, men soon selected definite times [beside the
authorized Christian Sabbath, the first day of the week] for religious
admonitions, and to consecrate them to a fuller occupation with
religious things, as well as to public devotion, with the intention,
that the influence of these definite times should animate and sanctify
the rest of their lives, and that Christians who withdrew themselves
from the distractions of business on these days, and collected their
hearts before God in the stillness of solitude, as well as in public
devotion, might make these seasons of service to the other parts of
their life; yet this was in itself, and of itself, nothing
unevangelical. It was only a dropping down from the purely spiritual
point of view, on which even the Christian, as he still carries about
two natures in himself, cannot always maintain himself, to the carnal; a
dropping down which became constantly more necessary, the more the fire
of the first animation and the warmth of the first love of the
Christians died away. It was no more unevangelic than the gradual
limitation of the exercise of many rights, belonging to the common
priesthood of all Christians, to a certain class in the church, which
circumstances rendered necessary. But just as the unevangelic made its
appearance, men supposed certain days distinguished from others, and
hallowed by divine right, when they introduced a distinction between
holy and common days into the life of the Christian, and in this
distinction forgot his calling to sanctify all days alike. When the
Montanists wished to introduce and make imperative new fasts, which were
fixed to certain days, the Epistle to the Galatians was very properly
brought to oppose them; but Tertullian, who stood on the boundary
between the original pure evangelic times and those when the
intermixture of Jewish and Christian notions first took place, confuses
here the views of the two religions, because he makes the evangelical to
consist, not in a wholly different method of considering festivals
altogether, but in the celebration of different particular festivals;
and he makes the Judaizing, which the Apostle condemns, to consist only
in the observation of the Jewish instead of the peculiarly Christian
festivals. The weekly and the yearly festivals originally arose from the
self-same fundamental idea, which was the centre point of the whole
Christian life; the idea of imitating Christ, the crucified and the
risen; to follow him in his death, by appropriating to ourselves, in
penitence and faith, the effects of his death, by dying to ourselves and
to the world; to follow him in his resurrection, by rising again with
him, by faith in him and by his power, to a new and holy life, devoted
to God, which, beginning here below in the seed, is matured in heaven.
Hence the festival of joy was the festival of the resurrection; and the
preparation for it, the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ, with
mortification and crucifixion of the flesh, was the day of fasting and
penitence. Thus in the week the Sunday was the joyful festival; and the
preparation for it was a day of penitence and prayer, consecrated to
remembrance of the sufferings of Christ and the preparations for them,
and this was celebrated on the Friday; and thus also the yearly
festivals were to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, and the
operations of the Redeemer after he had risen again; the preparation for
this day was in commemoration of the sufferings and fastings of our
Saviour. Allusion is made to Sunday under the character of a festival,
as a symbol of a new life, consecrated to the Lord in opposition to the
old Sabbath, in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians: “If they who
were brought up under the Old Testament have attained to a new hope, and
no longer keep [Jewish] Sabbaths holy, but have consecrated their life
to the day of the Lord, on which also our life rose up in him, how shall
we be able to live without him?” Sunday was distinguished as a day of
joy by the circumstances, that men did not fast upon it, and that they
prayed standing up and not kneeling, as Christ had raised up fallen man
to heaven again through his resurrection. And farther: two other days in
the week, Friday and Wednesday, particularly the former, were
consecrated to the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ, and of the
circumstances preparatory to them; congregations were held on them, and
a fast till three o’clock in the afternoon, but nothing was positively
appointed concerning them; in respect to joining in these solemnities
every one consulted his own convenience or inclination. Such fasts,
joined with prayer, were considered as the watches of the _milites
Christi_ [soldiers of Christ] on their post by the Christians, who
compared their calling to a warfare, the _militia Christi_, and they
were _stationes_, and the days on which they took place were called
_dies stationum_, [day of their stations.] The churches, which were a
graft of a Christian on a Jewish spirit, although they received the
Sunday, retained also that of the Sabbath; and from them the custom
spread abroad in the oriental church, of distinguishing this day, as
well as the Sunday, by not fasting and by praying in an erect posture;
in the western churches, particularly the Roman, where opposition to
Judaism was the prevailing tendency, this very opposition produced the
custom of celebrating the Saturday in particular as a fast day. This
difference in customs would of course be striking, where members of the
oriental church spent their Sabbath day in the western church. It was
only too soon that men lost sight of the principle of the apostolic
church, which retained the unity of faith and spirit in the bond of
love, but allowed all kinds of difference in external things; and then
they began to require uniformity in these things. The first yearly
festivals of the Christians proceeded from similar views; and at first
the contrast which had in early times the most powerful influence on the
developement as well of the churchly life, as of the doctrines of
Christianity, is peculiarly prominent; I mean the contrast between the
Jewish churches and those of the Gentile converts. The former retained
all the Jewish festivals as well as the whole ceremonial law; although
by degrees they introduced into them a Christian meaning which
spontaneously offered itself. On the contrary, there was probably no
yearly festival at all, from the beginning, among the Heathen converts;
for no trace of any thing of the sort is found in the whole of the New
Testament. The passover of the Old Testament was easily ennobled and
converted to a passover which suited the New Testament, by merely
substituting the idea of deliverance from spiritual bondage, that is,
from the slavery of sin, for that of deliverance from earthly bondage.
The paschal lamb was a type of Christ, by whom that deliverance was
wrought. These representations went on the supposition, that Christ had
partaken his last meal with his disciples, as a proper passover, at the
very time that the Jews were celebrating theirs. This passover was,
therefore, always celebrated on the night between the fourteenth and
fifteenth of the Jewish month Nisan, as a remembrance at the same time
of the last supper of Christ. This was the fundamental notion of the
whole Jewish Christian passover, on which all the rest was built. The
day following this passover was consecrated to the remembrance of the
sufferings of Christ, and the third day from it to the remembrance of
his resurrection. On the contrary, in the greater number of Heathen
churches, as soon as men began to celebrate yearly festivals, (a time
which cannot be determined very precisely,) they followed the method
observed in the weekly festivals. They appointed one Sunday in the year
for the festival of the resurrection, and one Friday as a day of
penitence and fasting preparatory to this Sunday, in remembrance of the
sufferings of Christ; and they gradually lengthened this time of
penitence and fasting, as a preparation for that high and joyful
festival. In these churches they were more inclined to take up a kind of
antithetical turn against the Jewish festivals, than to graft Christian
ones upon them. It was far from their notions to think of observing a
yearly passover with the Jews. The following was the view which they
took of the matter: “Every typical feast has lost its true meaning by
the realization of that which is typified; in the sacrifice of Christ,
the Lord’s Supper, as the new covenant, has taken the place of that of
the old covenant.” This difference of outward customs between the Jewish
Christian churches and the churches allied to them on the one hand, and
the Heathen Christian churches founded by St. Paul on the other, existed
at first without its being supposed that external things of this nature
were of importance enough to lead to a controversy. A fast formed the
introduction to the passover; and this was the only fast formally
established by the church. The necessity of this fast was deduced from
Matthew ix, 15; but it was by a carnal interpretation of the passage,
and an application of it quite contrary to its real sense. For it does
not relate to the time of Christ’s suffering, but to the time when he
should be with his disciples no more. As long as they enjoyed his
society they were to give themselves up to joy, and to be disturbed in
it by no forced asceticism. But a time of sorrow was to follow this time
of joy, although only for a season, after which a time of higher and
imperishable joy, in invisible communion with him, was to follow, John
xvi, 22. The duration of this fast, however, was not determined; the
imitation of the temptation of our Lord for forty days introduced the
custom of fasting forty hours in some places, which afterward was
extended to forty days; and thus the fast of forty days, the
quadrigesimal fast, arose. The festival of pentecost, Whitsuntide, was
closely connected with that of the resurrection; and this was dedicated
to commemorating the first visible effects of the operations of the
glorified Christ upon human nature, now also ennobled by him, the lively
proofs of his resurrection and reception into glory; and therefore
Origen joins the festivals of the resurrection and of pentecost together
as one whole. The means of transition from an Old Testament festival to
one befitting the New Testament, were here near at hand. The first
fruits of harvest in the kingdom of nature; the first fruits of harvest
in the kingdom of grace; the law of the letter from Mount Sinai--the law
of the Spirit from the heavenly Jerusalem. This festival originally
embraced the whole season of fifty days from Easter, and was celebrated
like a Sunday, that is to say, no fasts were kept during the whole of
it, and men prayed standing, and not kneeling; and perhaps also in some
places assemblies of the church were held, and the communion was
celebrated every day. Afterward, two peculiar points of time, the
ascension of Christ and the effusion of the Holy Spirit, were selected
from this whole interval. These were the only festivals generally
celebrated at that time, as the passage cited from Origen proves. The
fundamental notion of the whole Christian life, which referred every
thing to the suffering, the resurrection, and the glorification of
Christ, as well as the adherence, or, on the other hand, the opposition,
to the Jewish celebration of festivals, were the cause that these were
the only general festivals. The notion of a birth-day festival was far
from the ideas of the Christians of this period in general; they looked
upon the second birth as the true birth of men. The case must have been
somewhat different with the birth of the Redeemer; human nature was to
be sanctified by him from its first developement; but then this last
notion could not at first come so prominently forward among the early
Christians, because so many of them were first converted to Christianity
when well advanced in years, after some decisive excitement of their
life; but then it may have entered generally into domestic life, though
at first gradually. Nevertheless, we find in this period apparently one
trace of Christmas as a festival. Its history is intimately connected
with the history of a kindred festival; the festival of the
manifestation of Jesus in his character of Messiah, his consecration to
the office of Messiah by the baptism of John, and the beginning of his
public ministry as the Messiah, which was afterward called Epiphany, the
ἑυρτη τῶν ἐπιφανίων, or τῆς ἐπιφανείας τοῦ Χριϛοῦ, [the festival of
Epiphany, or of the appearance of Christ.] We find in later times that
these festivals extended themselves in opposite directions, that of
Christmas spreading from west to east, and the other from east to west.
Clemens of Alexandria merely relates, that the Gnostic sect of the
Basilidians celebrated the festival of the Epiphany at Alexandria in his
time. We can hardly suppose that this sect invented the festival,
although they may have had some dogmatical reason for celebrating it;
for it is highly improbable that the catholic church should have
afterward received a festival from the Gnostics; and these Gnostics most
probably received it from the Jewish Christian churches in Palestine or
Syria. For this time of our Saviour’s life would appear the most
important to the notions of the Jewish Christians; and the Gnostics
would afterward explain it according to their own ideas.
The character of a spiritual worship of God distinguished the Christian
worship from that of other religions, which consisted in symbolical
pageantry and lifeless ceremonies. As a general elevation of spirit and
sanctification of heart was the object of every thing in this religion,
instruction and edification, through a common study of the divine word,
and through prayer in common, were the leading features in the Christian
worship. And in this respect it might in its form adhere to the
arrangements made about the congregations in the Jewish synagogues, in
which also the element of a spiritual religious worship was the
prevailing ingredient. As the reading of portions of the Old Testament
had formed the ground work of religious instruction in the Jewish
synagogues, this custom also passed into the Christian congregations.
First the Old Testament, and especially the prophetic parts of it, were
read as things that pointed to the Messiah; then followed the Gospels,
and after that the epistles of the Apostles. The reading of the
Scriptures was of still greater consequence then, because it was
desirable that every Christian should be acquainted with them; and yet,
by reason of the rarity and dearness of manuscripts, and the poverty of
a great proportion of the Christians, or perhaps also because all were
not able to read, the Bible itself could not be put into the hands of
all. Frequent hearing was therefore with many to supply the place of
their own reading. The Scriptures were therefore read in the language
which all could understand, and that was, in most parts of the Roman
empire, the Greek or the Latin. In very early times different
translations of the Bible into Latin were in existence; as every one who
knew a little of Greek, found it needful to have his own Bible in his
own mother tongue. In places where the Greek or the Latin language was
understood only by a part of the church, that is to say, by the educated
classes, while the rest understood only their native language, as was
the case in many Egyptian and Syrian towns, church interpreters were
appointed, as in the Jewish synagogues, and they immediately translated
what had been read into the language of the country, so that it might be
intelligible to all. After the reading of the Scripture there followed,
as there had previously in the Jewish synagogues, short, and at first
very simple, addresses in familiar language, the momentary effusions of
the heart, which contained an explanation and application of what had
just been read. Justin Martyr expresses himself thus on the subject:
“After the reading of the Scriptures, the president instructs the people
in a discourse, and incites them to the imitation of these good
examples.” Among the Greeks, where the taste was more rhetorical, the
sermon from the very earliest times was of a more lengthened kind, and
formed a very important part of the service. Singing also passed from
the Jewish service into that of the Christian church. St. Paul exhorts
the early churches to sing spiritual songs. What was used for this
purpose were partly the Psalms of the Old Testament, and partly songs
composed with this very object, especially songs of praise and thanks to
God and Christ; and these, we know, Pliny found to be customary among
the Christians. In the controversies with the Unitarians, about the end
of the second century, and the beginning of the third, the hymns, in
which from early times Christ had been honoured as a God, were appealed
to. The power of church singing over the heart was soon recognized; and
hence those who wished to propagate any peculiar opinions, like
Bardasanes, or Paul of Samosata, endeavoured to spread them by means of
hymns. In compliance with the infirmities of human nature, composed as
it is of sense and spirit, the divine Founder of the church, beside his
word, ordained two outward signs, as symbols of the invisible communion
which existed between him, the Head of the spiritual body, and the
faithful, its members; and also of the connection of these members, as
with him, so also with one another. These were visible means to
represent the invisible, heavenly benefits to be bestowed on the members
of this body through him; and while man received in faith the sign
presented to his senses, the enjoyment of that heavenly communion and
those heavenly advantages was to gladden his inward heart. As nothing in
all Christianity and in the whole Christian life stands isolated, but
all forms one whole, proceeding from one centre, therefore, also, that
which this outward sign represented must be something which should
continue through the whole of the inward Christian life, something
which, spreading itself forth from this one moment over the whole
Christian life, should be capable of being especially excited again and
promoted in return, by the influence of isolated moments. Thus, baptism
was to be the sign of a first entrance into communion with the Redeemer,
and with the church, the first appropriation of those advantages which
Christ has bestowed on man, namely, of the forgiveness of sins and the
inward union of life, which proceeds from it, as well as of the
participation in a sanctifying divine Spirit of life. And the Lord’s
Supper was to be the sign of a constant continuance in this communion,
in the appropriation and enjoyment of these advantages; and thus were
represented the essentials of the whole inward Christian life, in its
earliest rise and its continued progress. The whole peculiar spirit of
Christianity was particularly stamped in the mode in which these
external things were administered; and the mode of their administration
in return exerted a powerful influence on the whole nature of the
Christian worship. The connection of the moments, represented by these
signs, with the whole Christian life, the connection of inward and
divine things with the outward act was present to the lively Christian
feelings of the first Christians.
upon example, and partly upon precept; so that no person who admits that
authority, can question this great duty without manifest and criminal
inconsistency. The institution of public worship under the law, and the
practice of synagogue worship among the Jews, from at least the time of
Ezra, cannot be questioned; both of which were sanctioned by the
practice of our Lord and his Apostles. The preceptive authority for our
regular attendance upon public worship, is either inferential or direct.
The command to publish the Gospel includes the obligation of assembling
to hear it; the name by which a Christian society is designated in
Scripture is a church; which signifies an assembly for the transaction
of business; and, in the case of a Christian assembly, that business
must necessarily be spiritual, and include the sacred exercises of
prayer, praise, and hearing the Scriptures. But we have more direct
precepts, although the practice was obviously continued from Judaism,
and was therefore consuetudinary. Some of the epistles of St. Paul are
commanded to be read in the churches. The singing of psalms, hymns, and
spiritual songs is enjoined as an act of solemn worship to the Lord; and
St. Paul cautions the Hebrews that they “forsake not the assembling of
themselves together.” The practice of the primitive age is also manifest
from the epistles of St. Paul. The Lord’s Supper was celebrated by the
body of believers collectively; and this Apostle prescribes to the
Corinthians regulations for the exercises of prayer and prophesyings,
“when they came together in the church,”--the assembly. The statedness
and order of these holy offices in the primitive church, appear also
from the apostolical epistle of St. Clement: “We ought also, looking
into the depths of the divine knowledge, to do all things in order,
whatsoever the Lord hath commanded to be done. We ought to make our
oblations, and perform our holy offices, at their appointed seasons; for
these he hath commanded to be done, not irregularly or by chance, but at
determinate times and hours; as he hath likewise ordained by his supreme
will, where, and by what persons, they shall be performed; that so all
things being done according to his pleasure, may be acceptable in his
sight.” This passage is remarkable for urging a divine authority for the
public services of the church, by which St. Clement, no doubt, means the
authority of the inspired directions of the Apostles. The ends of the
institution of public worship are of such obvious importance, that it
must ever be considered as one of the most condescending and gracious
dispensations of God to man. By this his church confesses his name
before the world; by this the public teaching of his word is associated
with acts calculated to affect the mind with that solemnity which is the
best preparation for hearing it to edification. It is thus that the
ignorant and the vicious are collected together, and instructed and
warned; the invitations of mercy are published to the guilty, and the
sorrowful and afflicted are comforted. In these assemblies God, by his
Holy Spirit, diffuses his vital and sanctifying influence, and takes the
devout into a fellowship with himself, from which they derive strength
to do and to suffer his will in the various scenes of life, while he
there affords them a foretaste of the deep and hallowed pleasures which
are reserved for them at his right hand for evermore. Prayers and
intercessions are offered for national and public interests; and while
the benefit of these exercises descends upon a country, all are kept
sensible of the dependence of every public and personal interest upon
God. Praise calls forth the grateful emotions, and gives cheerfulness to
piety; and that instruction in righteousness which is so perpetually
repeated, diffuses the principles of morality and religion throughout
society; enlightens and gives activity to conscience; raises the
standard of morals; attaches shame to vice, and praise to virtue; and
thus exerts a powerfully purifying influence upon mankind. Laws thus
receive a force, which, in other circumstances, they could not acquire,
even were they enacted in as great perfection; and the administration of
justice is aided by the strongest possible obligation and sanction being
given to legal oaths. The domestic relations are rendered more strong
and interesting by the very habit of the attendance of families upon the
sacred services of the sanctuary of the Lord; and the rich and the poor
meeting together, and standing on the same common ground as sinners
before God, equally dependent upon him, and equally suing for his mercy,
has a powerful, though often an insensible, influence in humbling the
pride which is nourished by superior rank, and in raising the lower
classes above abjectness of spirit, without injuring their humility.
Piety, benevolence, and patriotism are equally dependent for their
purity and vigour upon the regular and devout worship of God in the
simplicity of the Christian dispensation.
The following is an abridgment of Dr. Neander’s account of the mode of
conducting public worship among the primitive Christians, which, though
questionable on some points, is upon the whole just and
interesting:--Since the religion of the New Testament did not admit of
any peculiar outward priesthood, similar to that of the Old, the same
outward kind of worship, dependent on certain places, times, and outward
actions and demeanours, would also have no place in its composition. The
kingdom of God, the temple of the Lord, were to be present, not in this
or that place, but in every place where Christ himself is active in the
Spirit, and where through him the worship of God in spirit and in truth
is established. Every Christian in particular, and every church in
general, were to represent a spiritual temple of the Lord; the true
worship of God was to be only in the inward heart, and the whole life
proceeding from such inward disposition, sanctified by faith, was to be
a continued spiritual service; this is the great fundamental idea of the
Gospel, which prevails throughout the New Testament, by which the whole
outward appearance of religion was to assume a different form, and all
that once was carnal was to be converted into spiritual, and ennobled.
This notion came forward most strongly in the original inward life of
the first Christians, particularly when contrasted with Judaism, and
still more so when contrasted with Heathenism; a contrast which taught
the Christians to avoid all pomp that caught the eye, and all
multiplication of means of devotion addressed to the senses, while it
made them hold fast the simple, spiritual character of the Christian
worship of God. It was this which always struck the Heathen so much in
the Christian worship; namely, that nothing was found among them of the
outward pomp of all other religions; no temples, no altars, no images.
This reproach was made to the Christians by Celsus, and answered thus by
Origen: “In the highest sense the temple and image of God are in the
human nature of Christ; and hence, also, in all the faithful, who are
animated by the Spirit of Christ,--living images! with which no statue
of Jove by Phidias is fit to be compared.” Christianity impelled men
frequently to seek for the stillness of the inward sanctuary, and here
to pour forth their heart to God, who dwells in such temples; but then
the flames of love were also lighted in their hearts, which sought
communion in order to strengthen each other mutually, and to unite
themselves into one holy flame which pointed toward heaven. The
communion of prayer and devotion was thought a source of sanctification,
inasmuch as men knew that the Lord was present by his Spirit among those
who were gathered together in his name; but then they were far from
ascribing any peculiar sacredness and sanctity to the place of assembly.
Such an idea would appear to partake of Heathenism; and men were at
first in less danger of being seduced into such an idea, because the
first general places of assembly of the Christians were only common
rooms in private houses, just according as it happened that any member
of the church had sufficient accommodation for the purpose. Thus Gaius
of Corinth, Rom. xvi, is called the host of the church, because the
church was in the habit of assembling in a room of his house. Origen
says, “The place where believers come together to pray has something
agreeable and useful about it;” but then he only says this in respect to
that spiritual communion. Man, we must avow, is very easily led to fall
away from the worship of God in spirit and in truth, and to connect the
religion of the Spirit with outward and earthly things; as the Apostle
says, “Having begun in the Spirit, to wish to end in the flesh.”
Watchfulness on this point was constantly needed, lest the Jewish or the
Heathen notions should here intrude themselves on those of the Gospel,
which was likely enough to happen as soon as the Old and the New
Testament notions of the priesthood had been confused. Even in the time
of Clemens of Alexandria he found himself obliged to combat the notion,
which allowed the essentials of a Christian life to be of one kind in,
and of another out of, the church. “The disciples of Christ,” he says,
“must form the whole course of their life and conduct on the model which
they assume in the churches, for the sake of propriety; they must be
such, and not merely seem so; as mild, as pious, and as charitable. But
now, I know not how it is, they change their habits and their manners
with the change of place, as the polypus, they say, changes its colour,
and becomes like the rock on which it hangs. They lay aside the
spiritual habit which they had assumed in the church, as soon as they
have left the church, and assimilate themselves to the multitude among
whom they live. I should rather say, that they convict themselves of
hypocrisy, and show what they really are in their inward nature, by
laying aside the mask of piety which they had assumed; and while they
honour the word of God, they leave it behind them in the place where
they heard it.”
The Christian places of assembly were, at first, in the rooms of private
houses; it may perhaps be the case, that in large towns, where the
number of Christians was soon considerable, and no member of the church
had any room in his house sufficient to contain all his brethren, or in
places where men did not fear any prejudicial consequences from large
assemblies, the church divided itself into different sections, according
to the habitations of its members, of which each section held its
assemblies in one particular chamber of the house of some wealthy member
of the church; or, perhaps, while it was usual to unite on Sundays in
one general assembly, yet each individual part of the church met
together daily in the rooms which lay the most convenient to it. Perhaps
the passages in St. Paul’s epistles, which speak of churches in the
houses of particular persons, are thus to be understood. The answer of
Justin Martyr to the question of the prefect, “Where do you assemble?”
exactly corresponds to the genuine Christian spirit on this point. This
answer was, “Where each one can and will. You believe, no doubt, that we
all meet together in one place; but it is not so, for the God of the
Christians is not shut up in a room, but, being invisible, he fills both
heaven and earth, and is honoured every where by the faithful.” Justin
adds, that when he came to Rome, he was accustomed to dwell in one
particular spot, and that those Christians who were instructed by him,
and wished to hear his discourses, assembled at his house. He had not
visited any other congregations of the church. The arrangements which
the peculiarities of the Christian worship required, were gradually made
in these places of assembly, such as an elevated seat for the purpose of
reading the Scriptures and preaching, a table for the distribution of
the sacrament, to which as early as the time of Tertullian the name of
altar, _ara_ or _altare_, was given, and perhaps not without some
mixture of the unevangelical Old Testament notion of a sacrifice; or at
least this idea might easily attach itself to this name. When the
churches increased, and their circumstances improved, there were, during
the course of the third century, already separate church buildings for
the Christians, as the name θρησκεύσιμοι τοπόι, [religious places,] of
the Christians occurs in the edict of Gallienus. In the time of the
external prosperity of the church, during the reign of Diocletian, many
handsome churches arose in the great towns. The use of images was
originally quite foreign to the Christian worship and churches, and it
remained so during this whole period. The intermixture of art and
religion, and the use of images for the latter, appeared to the first
Christians a Heathenish practice. As in Heathenism the divine becomes
desecrated and tarnished by intermixture with the natural; and as men
have often paid homage to the beauties of nature, with injury to the
cause of holiness, the first warmth of Christian zeal, which opposed the
idolatry of nature, so common to Heathenism, and sought to maintain the
divine in all its purity and elevation, was inclined rather to set
holiness in the strongest contrast with what is beautiful by nature,
than to endeavour to grace it by lending it a beautiful form. Men were
more inclined in general to carry into extremes the idea of the
appearance of the Divinity in the form of a servant, which suited the
oppressed condition of the church in these centuries than to throw it
into the back ground, and overwhelm it under the predominance of their
æsthetic dispositions, and their love of art. This is peculiarly shown
by the general belief of the early church, that Christ had clothed his
inward divine glory in a mean outward form, which was in direct
contradiction to it; a conclusion which was drawn from interpreting the
prophecy of the Messiah in Isa. liii, 2, too literally. Thus, Clemens of
Alexandria warns the Christians, from the example of Christ, not to
attribute too much value to outward beauty: “The Lord himself was mean
in outward form; and who is better than the Lord? But he revealed
himself not in the beauty of the body, perceptible to our senses, but in
the true beauty of the soul as well as of the body; the beauty of the
soul consisting in benevolence, and that of the body in immortality!”
Fathers of entirely opposite habits of mind, the adherents of two
different systems of conceiving divine things, were nevertheless united
on this point by their common opposition to the mixture of the natural
and the divine in Heathenism, and by the endeavour to maintain the
devotion to God, in spirit and in truth, pure and undefiled. Clemens of
Alexandria is as little favourable as Tertullian to the use of images.
Heathens, who, like Alexander Severus, saw something divine in Christ’s
personal form, and sects which mixed Heathenism and Christianity
together, were the first who made use of images of Christ; as, for
instance, the Gnostic sect of the followers of Carpocratian, who put his
image beside those of Plato and Aristotle. The use of religious images
among the Christians did not proceed from their ecclesiastical but from
their domestic life. In the intercourse of daily life, the Christians
saw themselves every where surrounded by objects of Heathen mythology,
or by such as shocked their moral and Christian feelings. Similar
objects adorned the walls of chambers, the drinking vessels, and the
signet rings, (on which the Heathen had constantly idolatrous images,)
to which, whenever they pleased, they could address their devotions; and
the Christians naturally felt themselves obliged to replace these
objects, which wounded their moral and religious feelings, with others
more suited to those feelings. Therefore, they gladly put the likeness
of a shepherd carrying a lamb upon his shoulders, on their cups, as a
symbol of the Redeemer, who saves the sinners that return to him,
according to the parable in the Gospel. And Clemens of Alexandria says,
in reference to the signet rings of the Christians, “Let our signet
rings consist of a dove,” the emblem of the Holy Ghost, “or a fish, or a
ship sailing toward heaven,” the emblem of the Christian church, or of
individual Christian souls, “or a lyre,” the emblem of Christian joy,
“or an anchor,” the emblem of Christian hope; “and he who is a
fisherman, let him remember the Apostle, and the children who were
dragged out from the water; for those men ought not to engrave
idolatrous forms, to whom the use of them is forbidden; those can
engrave no sword and no bow, who seek for peace; the friends of
temperance cannot engrave drinking cups.” And yet, perhaps, religious
images made their way from domestic life into the churches as early as
the end of the third century, and the walls of the churches were painted
in the same way. The council of Elvira set itself against this
innovation as an abuse, for it made the following order: “Objects of
reverence and worship shall not be painted on the walls.” It is probable
that the visible representation of the cross found its way very early
into domestic and ecclesiastical life. This token was remarkably common
among them; it was used to consecrate their rising and their going to
bed, their going out and their coming in, and all the actions of daily
life; it was the sign which Christians made involuntarily whenever any
thing of a fearful nature surprised them. This was a mode of expressing,
by means perceptible to the senses, the purely Christian idea, that all
the actions of Christians, as well as the whole course of their life,
must be sanctified by faith in the crucified Jesus, and by dependence
upon him; and that this faith is the most powerful means of conquering
all evil, and preserving oneself against it. But here also, again, men
were too apt to confuse the idea and the token which represented it; and
they attributed the effects of faith in the crucified Redeemer to the
outward sign, to which they ascribed a supernatural, sanctifying, and
preservative power; an error of which we find traces as early as the
third century.
We now pass from the consideration of the places of public worship, to
that of the seasons of worship, and the festivals of the early
Christians. It is here shown again, that the Gospel, as it remodelled
the former conceptions of the priesthood, of worship in general, and of
holy places, also entirely changed the then views of sacred seasons. And
here again, also, the character of the theocracy of the New Testament
revealed itself, a theocracy spiritualized, ennobled, and freed from its
outward garb of sense, and from the limits which bounded its
generalization. The Jewish laws relating to their festivals were not
merely abrogated by the Gospel, in such a manner as to transfer these
festivals to different seasons; but they were entirely abolished, as far
as fixing religious worship to particular times is concerned. St. Paul
expressly declares all sanctifying of certain seasons, as far as men
deduced this from the divine command, to be Jewish and unevangelical,
and to be like returning to the slavery of the law, and to captivity to
outward precepts. Such was the opinion of the early church. At first the
churches assembled every day; as, for instance, the first church of
Jerusalem, which assembled daily for prayer in common, and for the
public consideration of the divine word, for the common celebration of
the Lord’s Supper and the _agapæ_, as well as to maintain the connection
between the common head of the spiritual body of the church and
themselves, and between one another as members of this body. Traces of
this are also found in later times in the daily assembling of the
churches for the purpose of hearing the Scriptures read, and of
celebrating the communion. Although, in order to meet the wants of human
nature generally, consisting as it does of sense as well as soul, and
those of a large body of Christians in particular, who were only in a
state of education, and were to be brought up to the ripeness of
Christian manhood, men soon selected definite times [beside the
authorized Christian Sabbath, the first day of the week] for religious
admonitions, and to consecrate them to a fuller occupation with
religious things, as well as to public devotion, with the intention,
that the influence of these definite times should animate and sanctify
the rest of their lives, and that Christians who withdrew themselves
from the distractions of business on these days, and collected their
hearts before God in the stillness of solitude, as well as in public
devotion, might make these seasons of service to the other parts of
their life; yet this was in itself, and of itself, nothing
unevangelical. It was only a dropping down from the purely spiritual
point of view, on which even the Christian, as he still carries about
two natures in himself, cannot always maintain himself, to the carnal; a
dropping down which became constantly more necessary, the more the fire
of the first animation and the warmth of the first love of the
Christians died away. It was no more unevangelic than the gradual
limitation of the exercise of many rights, belonging to the common
priesthood of all Christians, to a certain class in the church, which
circumstances rendered necessary. But just as the unevangelic made its
appearance, men supposed certain days distinguished from others, and
hallowed by divine right, when they introduced a distinction between
holy and common days into the life of the Christian, and in this
distinction forgot his calling to sanctify all days alike. When the
Montanists wished to introduce and make imperative new fasts, which were
fixed to certain days, the Epistle to the Galatians was very properly
brought to oppose them; but Tertullian, who stood on the boundary
between the original pure evangelic times and those when the
intermixture of Jewish and Christian notions first took place, confuses
here the views of the two religions, because he makes the evangelical to
consist, not in a wholly different method of considering festivals
altogether, but in the celebration of different particular festivals;
and he makes the Judaizing, which the Apostle condemns, to consist only
in the observation of the Jewish instead of the peculiarly Christian
festivals. The weekly and the yearly festivals originally arose from the
self-same fundamental idea, which was the centre point of the whole
Christian life; the idea of imitating Christ, the crucified and the
risen; to follow him in his death, by appropriating to ourselves, in
penitence and faith, the effects of his death, by dying to ourselves and
to the world; to follow him in his resurrection, by rising again with
him, by faith in him and by his power, to a new and holy life, devoted
to God, which, beginning here below in the seed, is matured in heaven.
Hence the festival of joy was the festival of the resurrection; and the
preparation for it, the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ, with
mortification and crucifixion of the flesh, was the day of fasting and
penitence. Thus in the week the Sunday was the joyful festival; and the
preparation for it was a day of penitence and prayer, consecrated to
remembrance of the sufferings of Christ and the preparations for them,
and this was celebrated on the Friday; and thus also the yearly
festivals were to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, and the
operations of the Redeemer after he had risen again; the preparation for
this day was in commemoration of the sufferings and fastings of our
Saviour. Allusion is made to Sunday under the character of a festival,
as a symbol of a new life, consecrated to the Lord in opposition to the
old Sabbath, in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians: “If they who
were brought up under the Old Testament have attained to a new hope, and
no longer keep [Jewish] Sabbaths holy, but have consecrated their life
to the day of the Lord, on which also our life rose up in him, how shall
we be able to live without him?” Sunday was distinguished as a day of
joy by the circumstances, that men did not fast upon it, and that they
prayed standing up and not kneeling, as Christ had raised up fallen man
to heaven again through his resurrection. And farther: two other days in
the week, Friday and Wednesday, particularly the former, were
consecrated to the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ, and of the
circumstances preparatory to them; congregations were held on them, and
a fast till three o’clock in the afternoon, but nothing was positively
appointed concerning them; in respect to joining in these solemnities
every one consulted his own convenience or inclination. Such fasts,
joined with prayer, were considered as the watches of the _milites
Christi_ [soldiers of Christ] on their post by the Christians, who
compared their calling to a warfare, the _militia Christi_, and they
were _stationes_, and the days on which they took place were called
_dies stationum_, [day of their stations.] The churches, which were a
graft of a Christian on a Jewish spirit, although they received the
Sunday, retained also that of the Sabbath; and from them the custom
spread abroad in the oriental church, of distinguishing this day, as
well as the Sunday, by not fasting and by praying in an erect posture;
in the western churches, particularly the Roman, where opposition to
Judaism was the prevailing tendency, this very opposition produced the
custom of celebrating the Saturday in particular as a fast day. This
difference in customs would of course be striking, where members of the
oriental church spent their Sabbath day in the western church. It was
only too soon that men lost sight of the principle of the apostolic
church, which retained the unity of faith and spirit in the bond of
love, but allowed all kinds of difference in external things; and then
they began to require uniformity in these things. The first yearly
festivals of the Christians proceeded from similar views; and at first
the contrast which had in early times the most powerful influence on the
developement as well of the churchly life, as of the doctrines of
Christianity, is peculiarly prominent; I mean the contrast between the
Jewish churches and those of the Gentile converts. The former retained
all the Jewish festivals as well as the whole ceremonial law; although
by degrees they introduced into them a Christian meaning which
spontaneously offered itself. On the contrary, there was probably no
yearly festival at all, from the beginning, among the Heathen converts;
for no trace of any thing of the sort is found in the whole of the New
Testament. The passover of the Old Testament was easily ennobled and
converted to a passover which suited the New Testament, by merely
substituting the idea of deliverance from spiritual bondage, that is,
from the slavery of sin, for that of deliverance from earthly bondage.
The paschal lamb was a type of Christ, by whom that deliverance was
wrought. These representations went on the supposition, that Christ had
partaken his last meal with his disciples, as a proper passover, at the
very time that the Jews were celebrating theirs. This passover was,
therefore, always celebrated on the night between the fourteenth and
fifteenth of the Jewish month Nisan, as a remembrance at the same time
of the last supper of Christ. This was the fundamental notion of the
whole Jewish Christian passover, on which all the rest was built. The
day following this passover was consecrated to the remembrance of the
sufferings of Christ, and the third day from it to the remembrance of
his resurrection. On the contrary, in the greater number of Heathen
churches, as soon as men began to celebrate yearly festivals, (a time
which cannot be determined very precisely,) they followed the method
observed in the weekly festivals. They appointed one Sunday in the year
for the festival of the resurrection, and one Friday as a day of
penitence and fasting preparatory to this Sunday, in remembrance of the
sufferings of Christ; and they gradually lengthened this time of
penitence and fasting, as a preparation for that high and joyful
festival. In these churches they were more inclined to take up a kind of
antithetical turn against the Jewish festivals, than to graft Christian
ones upon them. It was far from their notions to think of observing a
yearly passover with the Jews. The following was the view which they
took of the matter: “Every typical feast has lost its true meaning by
the realization of that which is typified; in the sacrifice of Christ,
the Lord’s Supper, as the new covenant, has taken the place of that of
the old covenant.” This difference of outward customs between the Jewish
Christian churches and the churches allied to them on the one hand, and
the Heathen Christian churches founded by St. Paul on the other, existed
at first without its being supposed that external things of this nature
were of importance enough to lead to a controversy. A fast formed the
introduction to the passover; and this was the only fast formally
established by the church. The necessity of this fast was deduced from
Matthew ix, 15; but it was by a carnal interpretation of the passage,
and an application of it quite contrary to its real sense. For it does
not relate to the time of Christ’s suffering, but to the time when he
should be with his disciples no more. As long as they enjoyed his
society they were to give themselves up to joy, and to be disturbed in
it by no forced asceticism. But a time of sorrow was to follow this time
of joy, although only for a season, after which a time of higher and
imperishable joy, in invisible communion with him, was to follow, John
xvi, 22. The duration of this fast, however, was not determined; the
imitation of the temptation of our Lord for forty days introduced the
custom of fasting forty hours in some places, which afterward was
extended to forty days; and thus the fast of forty days, the
quadrigesimal fast, arose. The festival of pentecost, Whitsuntide, was
closely connected with that of the resurrection; and this was dedicated
to commemorating the first visible effects of the operations of the
glorified Christ upon human nature, now also ennobled by him, the lively
proofs of his resurrection and reception into glory; and therefore
Origen joins the festivals of the resurrection and of pentecost together
as one whole. The means of transition from an Old Testament festival to
one befitting the New Testament, were here near at hand. The first
fruits of harvest in the kingdom of nature; the first fruits of harvest
in the kingdom of grace; the law of the letter from Mount Sinai--the law
of the Spirit from the heavenly Jerusalem. This festival originally
embraced the whole season of fifty days from Easter, and was celebrated
like a Sunday, that is to say, no fasts were kept during the whole of
it, and men prayed standing, and not kneeling; and perhaps also in some
places assemblies of the church were held, and the communion was
celebrated every day. Afterward, two peculiar points of time, the
ascension of Christ and the effusion of the Holy Spirit, were selected
from this whole interval. These were the only festivals generally
celebrated at that time, as the passage cited from Origen proves. The
fundamental notion of the whole Christian life, which referred every
thing to the suffering, the resurrection, and the glorification of
Christ, as well as the adherence, or, on the other hand, the opposition,
to the Jewish celebration of festivals, were the cause that these were
the only general festivals. The notion of a birth-day festival was far
from the ideas of the Christians of this period in general; they looked
upon the second birth as the true birth of men. The case must have been
somewhat different with the birth of the Redeemer; human nature was to
be sanctified by him from its first developement; but then this last
notion could not at first come so prominently forward among the early
Christians, because so many of them were first converted to Christianity
when well advanced in years, after some decisive excitement of their
life; but then it may have entered generally into domestic life, though
at first gradually. Nevertheless, we find in this period apparently one
trace of Christmas as a festival. Its history is intimately connected
with the history of a kindred festival; the festival of the
manifestation of Jesus in his character of Messiah, his consecration to
the office of Messiah by the baptism of John, and the beginning of his
public ministry as the Messiah, which was afterward called Epiphany, the
ἑυρτη τῶν ἐπιφανίων, or τῆς ἐπιφανείας τοῦ Χριϛοῦ, [the festival of
Epiphany, or of the appearance of Christ.] We find in later times that
these festivals extended themselves in opposite directions, that of
Christmas spreading from west to east, and the other from east to west.
Clemens of Alexandria merely relates, that the Gnostic sect of the
Basilidians celebrated the festival of the Epiphany at Alexandria in his
time. We can hardly suppose that this sect invented the festival,
although they may have had some dogmatical reason for celebrating it;
for it is highly improbable that the catholic church should have
afterward received a festival from the Gnostics; and these Gnostics most
probably received it from the Jewish Christian churches in Palestine or
Syria. For this time of our Saviour’s life would appear the most
important to the notions of the Jewish Christians; and the Gnostics
would afterward explain it according to their own ideas.
The character of a spiritual worship of God distinguished the Christian
worship from that of other religions, which consisted in symbolical
pageantry and lifeless ceremonies. As a general elevation of spirit and
sanctification of heart was the object of every thing in this religion,
instruction and edification, through a common study of the divine word,
and through prayer in common, were the leading features in the Christian
worship. And in this respect it might in its form adhere to the
arrangements made about the congregations in the Jewish synagogues, in
which also the element of a spiritual religious worship was the
prevailing ingredient. As the reading of portions of the Old Testament
had formed the ground work of religious instruction in the Jewish
synagogues, this custom also passed into the Christian congregations.
First the Old Testament, and especially the prophetic parts of it, were
read as things that pointed to the Messiah; then followed the Gospels,
and after that the epistles of the Apostles. The reading of the
Scriptures was of still greater consequence then, because it was
desirable that every Christian should be acquainted with them; and yet,
by reason of the rarity and dearness of manuscripts, and the poverty of
a great proportion of the Christians, or perhaps also because all were
not able to read, the Bible itself could not be put into the hands of
all. Frequent hearing was therefore with many to supply the place of
their own reading. The Scriptures were therefore read in the language
which all could understand, and that was, in most parts of the Roman
empire, the Greek or the Latin. In very early times different
translations of the Bible into Latin were in existence; as every one who
knew a little of Greek, found it needful to have his own Bible in his
own mother tongue. In places where the Greek or the Latin language was
understood only by a part of the church, that is to say, by the educated
classes, while the rest understood only their native language, as was
the case in many Egyptian and Syrian towns, church interpreters were
appointed, as in the Jewish synagogues, and they immediately translated
what had been read into the language of the country, so that it might be
intelligible to all. After the reading of the Scripture there followed,
as there had previously in the Jewish synagogues, short, and at first
very simple, addresses in familiar language, the momentary effusions of
the heart, which contained an explanation and application of what had
just been read. Justin Martyr expresses himself thus on the subject:
“After the reading of the Scriptures, the president instructs the people
in a discourse, and incites them to the imitation of these good
examples.” Among the Greeks, where the taste was more rhetorical, the
sermon from the very earliest times was of a more lengthened kind, and
formed a very important part of the service. Singing also passed from
the Jewish service into that of the Christian church. St. Paul exhorts
the early churches to sing spiritual songs. What was used for this
purpose were partly the Psalms of the Old Testament, and partly songs
composed with this very object, especially songs of praise and thanks to
God and Christ; and these, we know, Pliny found to be customary among
the Christians. In the controversies with the Unitarians, about the end
of the second century, and the beginning of the third, the hymns, in
which from early times Christ had been honoured as a God, were appealed
to. The power of church singing over the heart was soon recognized; and
hence those who wished to propagate any peculiar opinions, like
Bardasanes, or Paul of Samosata, endeavoured to spread them by means of
hymns. In compliance with the infirmities of human nature, composed as
it is of sense and spirit, the divine Founder of the church, beside his
word, ordained two outward signs, as symbols of the invisible communion
which existed between him, the Head of the spiritual body, and the
faithful, its members; and also of the connection of these members, as
with him, so also with one another. These were visible means to
represent the invisible, heavenly benefits to be bestowed on the members
of this body through him; and while man received in faith the sign
presented to his senses, the enjoyment of that heavenly communion and
those heavenly advantages was to gladden his inward heart. As nothing in
all Christianity and in the whole Christian life stands isolated, but
all forms one whole, proceeding from one centre, therefore, also, that
which this outward sign represented must be something which should
continue through the whole of the inward Christian life, something
which, spreading itself forth from this one moment over the whole
Christian life, should be capable of being especially excited again and
promoted in return, by the influence of isolated moments. Thus, baptism
was to be the sign of a first entrance into communion with the Redeemer,
and with the church, the first appropriation of those advantages which
Christ has bestowed on man, namely, of the forgiveness of sins and the
inward union of life, which proceeds from it, as well as of the
participation in a sanctifying divine Spirit of life. And the Lord’s
Supper was to be the sign of a constant continuance in this communion,
in the appropriation and enjoyment of these advantages; and thus were
represented the essentials of the whole inward Christian life, in its
earliest rise and its continued progress. The whole peculiar spirit of
Christianity was particularly stamped in the mode in which these
external things were administered; and the mode of their administration
in return exerted a powerful influence on the whole nature of the
Christian worship. The connection of the moments, represented by these
signs, with the whole Christian life, the connection of inward and
divine things with the outward act was present to the lively Christian
feelings of the first Christians.