The first day of the week now claims to be the Christian Sabbath, and enforces its authority by means of the fourth commandment, having set aside the seventh day, which that commandment enjoins, and usurped its place. Its advocates assert that this position and this authority were given to it by Christ. As no record of such gift is found in the Scriptures, the principal argument in its support is furnished by tracing first-day observance back to the early Christians, who, it is said, would not have hallowed the day if they had not been instructed to do it by the apostles; and the apostles would not have taught them to do it if Christ had not, in their presence, changed the Sabbath. But first-day observance can be traced no nearer to apostolic times than A. D. 140, while the bishops of Rome can trace their line to the very times of the apostles. Herein is the papal claim to apostolic authority better than is that of the first-day Sabbath. But with this exception, the historical argument in behalf of each is the same. Both began with very moderate pretensions, and gradually gaining in power and sacredness, grew up in strength together. Let us now go to those who were the earliest observers of Sunday and learn from them the nature of that observance at its commencement. We shall find, first, that no one claimed for first-day observance any divine authority; second, that none of them had ever heard of the change of the Sabbath, and none believed the first-day festival to be a continuation of the Sabbatic institution; third, that labor on that day is never set forth as sinful, and that abstinence from labor is never mentioned as a feature of its observance, nor even implied, only so far as necessary in order to spend a portion of the day in worship; fourth, that if we put together all the hints respecting Sunday observance, which are scattered through the fathers of the first three centuries, for no one of them gives more than two of these, and generally a single hint is all that is found in one writer, we shall find just four items: (1) an assembly on that day in which the Bible was read and expounded, and the supper celebrated, and money collected; (2) that the day must be one of rejoicing; (3) that it must not be a day of fasting; (4) that the knee must not be bent in prayer on that day.