Referring to the Sunday Postal work which is conceded to be
one of the responsible agencies in promoting Sabbath desecration, the New York Christian Advocate says:
Any observer who will note those who call for their mail at
the carriers’ window of a city post office during the open hours on Sunday will
gain some new ideas about Sunday as a rest day. He will see the Sunday
automobilist receiving his mail preparatory to an all-day pleasure jaunt through
the countryside.
The Hebrew business man—not the orthodox, synagogue Jew, but
the unscrupulous getter of gain—takes his bundle of letters and hurries to his
office or store, where his clerks are kept busy behind curtained windows
filling the orders of the Sunday mail so as to overreach by one day his
Sabbath-resting competitor. The boy from the Christian household is there
getting the family mail, so that the folks at home may have the latest news
from friends or relatives. The careless and non-church-going people are there
in hope that the post may bring into the day something of business or pleasure
to stir the monotony of the long hours on which even the comic supplement of
the Sunday newspaper begins to pall. These and others from the queue at the
carrier’s window, and later disperse to home, office and pleasure-field—or
perhaps to church—each with thoughts partly or altogether preempted with
secular affairs.
And what should be said for the men inside the barrier? In
New York City alone 1,400 postal employees are compelled to work on Sunday. The
number who forfeit their rightful Sunday rest in other cities and towns would
make up a great army. Postmaster Morgan, who was once a postal clerk, says it
would not be possible to conduct the business of the New York office without a
certain amount of Sunday work, but he and his men and their fellow clerks and
carriers throughout the country are heartily in favor of such legislation as
will minimize the amount of Sunday labor and will compensate with another
rest-day those who must be at their desk on the Sabbath. Bills are pending in
congress which would further these ends.
But legislation would not curtail the queue at the carrier’s
window. The habit of calling for Sunday mail is on the increase, and will continue
to grow unless public sentiment can be aroused against it. So long as Christian
people practice the habit, no movement against it will be effective, however
forcibly the postal clerks may protest.
The special delivery system, which for a time insures the
immediate delivery of any letter of real importance, makes absurd the pleas
that the post office must be open on the Lord’s Day. For their own welfare, as
well as out of consideration for the men of the service, Christian people
should be willing to endure the seeming hardship of waiting until Monday
morning for the uncertain lottery of the post.
We know some men, businessmen too, whose regard for the
Sabbath has kept them from forming the habit of getting out their mail on
Sunday. These men get along in business matters quite as well as their
neighbors, and at the same maintain a sense of horror and self respect that is
worth no little to a man in this life.
We need a crusade against this habit of desecrating God’s
holy day. It blunts that keen and discriminating conscience which every
Christian ought to cultivate, and opens the way for a thousand in-roads which
if not checked will finally break down this great bulwark of our strength. The
only way to preserve a Sabbath that is anything more than a mere holiday is to
be very scrupulous as to its observance. It is painful to see men flicking from
the church service to the post office and loading themselves down with that
which, like birds of the beaten highway, will gather up and destroy the seed of
truth that have fallen by the way. Let the church people heed the admonition,
“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”
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