Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

146 SPIRITUAL SABBATHISM
serve the Sabbath. In the Book of Acts there Is a
clear record for several years of Sabbath observance
by the apostolic missionaries. But it is equally sure
that a variety of motives impelled many Christians
toward the Sunday observance which was undoubtedly
common by the middle of the second century.
There was the instinct for a weekly Sabbath.
There was the tremendous influence
of the Mithraic Sunday in Asia Minor, which
unquestionably is to be assigned to that absorption
of paganism spoken of in §18. There was
hatred for everything Jewish. There was more
or less early belief that Sunday was the resurrection
day, though we can neither say how much there
was, nor what were Its sources. "The greatest gap
In our knowledge," says Harnack, "consists In the
fact that we know so little about the course of things
from about the year 61 to the beginning of the reign
We can only speculate as to why the
of Trajan."
records of that forty years are so scanty. But It Is no
wild speculation to surmise that the Church sedulously
destroyed a great deal of compromising literature.
The many Gnostic gospels, for Instance,
were burned as unscrupulously as they had been Invented.
The PIstIs Sophia escaped. In Its Coptic
dress. Only the other day the so-called Gospel of
Peter (second century) was recovered from a grave,