Sunday Post-Office Closing
By Frederick M. Wilcox
THE recent action of Congress in providing that first- and second-class post-offices should not be opened for the purpose of delivering mail to the general public on the first day of the week, has come in for a great deal of criticism. The religious press, as a rule, looks with favor upon the passage of the act. On the other hand, the newspaper criticism of the measure has been quite marked. The New York City papers speak of it as "backwoods legislation," "exasperating folly," "the work of meddlesome and rash congressmen," "puritanic blue-laws," etc. The New York World feels that the action is not Puritanism, but "oppression of the people by the paid servants of the people." Other papers express themselves in similar terms. Of course the press of the country, both religious and secular, views this question from the standpoint of either religious prejudice or personal interest. But very few, in fact none that we have seen, recognize fully the real principle involved in such legislation. Those who have followed for years the trend of the religious controversy and the attempted legislation regarding religious questions, see in this measure another step in the fulfilment of the prophecy of Revelation 13. This Sunday-closing enactment commits the federal Congress to the principle of Sunday legislation, and that, too, in a far greater sense than the provision for the closing of the World's Fair on Sunday, attached to the appropriation made for that exposition. That proviso was limited both as to time and as to locality. The closing of the post-offices on Sunday affects the whole country. With the growing sentiment throughout the country in favor of Sunday laws, the probability is that this measure will be made more and more restrictive in its operations. Its influence, too, will be potent in that it will be used as an argument for the passage of similar enactments and Sunday laws which will be brought forward in the future, in both State and national affairs. The Congress of 1829 recognized this principle in adopting the famous Johnson Mail Report, which states the matter in the following convincing manner:— If the principle is once established that religion, or religious observances, shall be interwoven with our legislative acts, we must pursue it to its ultimatum. We shall, if consistent, provide for the erection of edifices for worship of the Creator, and for the support of Christian ministers, if we believe such measures will promote the interests of Christianity. It is the settled conviction of the committee that the only method of avoiding these consequences, with their attendant train of evils, is to adhere strictly to the spirit of the Constitution, which regards the general movement in no other light than that of a civil institution, wholly destitute of religious authority. What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government can not deprive any portion of citizens, however small. Despotic power may invade those rights, but justice still confirms them.
Let the national legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will then be established, and the foundation laid, for that usurpation of the divine prerogative in this country which has been the desolating scourge to the fairest portions of the Old World. This is but one of the many and growing indications on every side that we are nearing the final crisis. We may not hope to save the nation from taking the fateful step at last which will place it among the powers of earth that oppress and persecute the truth and people of God; but through God we may be the agents of saving individuals, and for the realization of this purpose we should labor earnestly.