We close these citations from Tertullian, with one which is of the greatest importance in proving that the early Christians observed the first day of the week, not as a mere holiday, but as a day of rest and worship—a holy Sabbath to the Lord. “On the Lord’s day, the day of the Resurrection, we should not only abstain from that,[13] [bending the knee,] but also from all anxiety of feeling, and from employments, setting aside all business, lest we should give place to the devil.” (_De Oratione_, cap. xxiii., vol. iv., p. 22.) Contemporary with Tertullian at the beginning of the third century was Origen of Alexandria, one of the most scholarly and learned of all the early fathers. This writer contrasts the Lord’s day with the Jewish Sabbath, and shows the superiority of the former. We may not agree with him when he maintains that the superiority was indicated by the giving of manna to the Israelites on the first day of the week, while it was withheld on the seventh. His testimony to the fact of the sacred observance of the Lord’s day instead of the seventh-day Sabbath is valid, though his reasons for the admitted superiority may not all be satisfactory. In the same connection he remarks: “On our Lord’s day the Lord always rains manna from heaven.” (_Comment on Exodus_, Delarue’s ed. of Works of Origen, Paris, 1733, vol. ii., p. 154.) In another of his works he contends that it is one of the evidences of a true Christian “always to keep the Lord’s day.” (_Contra Celsum_ lib. viii, vol. i., pp. 758, 759.) The most important passage in the writings of Origen is found in his Homilies on the Book of Numbers. Here we first meet with the name “Christian Sabbath” for the first day of the week, or the Lord’s day: “Leaving, then, the Jewish observance of the Sabbath, let us see what the observance of the Sabbath by the Christian ought to be. On the Sabbath should be performed no worldly acts. If, therefore, you desist from all secular works, and do nothing of a worldly nature, but occupy yourselves with spiritual duties, assembling at the church, listening to the sacred readings mad instructions, thinking of celestial things, concerned for the hopes of another life, keeping before your eyes the Judgment to come, and looking not at the things which are present and visible, but at those which are invisible and future—this is the observance of the Christian Sabbath.” (_Hom. xxiii in Numeros_, vol. ii., p. 358.)