Sunday Postal Service in Washington
IN his “Washington News and Notes,” contributed to a recent issue of the United Presbyterian, Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts devotes a paragraph to the postal service in the District of Columbia. He says:— The city postmaster of the national capital, and probably other postmasters, has ordered that post-office banking, the registration of money letters, shall hereafter go forward on Sabbaths as on other days, apparently oblivious of the fact that recent scandals have shown that there is too little conscience already in the postal service, and that steps should be taken to increase rather than decrease it. To some of us it seems logical that those whom the government taught to break the fourth commandment should also break the eighth. But it is amazing that postal authorities should at this critical time take a step calculated to diminish conscience in the very men who handle the most valuable mail. From a one-hour opening of a few post-offices, with no carrier delivery anywhere, government Sabbath-breaking has gone steadily on for years, the carriers being first sent out with official mail in Washington, following which has come carrier delivery to hotels and Sunday papers, and, in Chicago, to Sunday theaters. As the Sunday mail introduced Sunday trains, Sunday papers, and Sunday traffic, it is logical to start a recovery by insisting that the government shall no longer use the mails as a battering ram to destroy this American Christian institution. London and Toronto prove that all Sabbath work in post-offices may be suspended. Let the labor unions and churches again, as in 1888, demand the entire cessation of Sabbath postal work. Will the time ever come when intelligent men will cease to quote the fourth commandment as a basis of obligation for observing the first day of the week as the Sabbath? There is no more authority in the fourth commandment for Sunday-keeping than there is in the second commandment for image worship. It may be proper for Mr. Crafts to speak of Sunday as “this American . . . institution,” but we must omit “Christian” from the phrase, and forever object to its being defended as a divine institution. We note also that Mr. Crafts is inviting the labor unions, against whose methods the secular press is emphatically protesting, to join with the churches to compel the observance of Sunday. When this is done, we may look for a revival of the times of persecution for the faith.