THIS valuable leaflet, to which we direct very special attention, is issued by the Sabbath Observance Society, 34 St. Andrew’s Square, Edinburgh. We have taken the liberty of changing the word “Sunday” into Sabbath, or Lord’s-Day, wherever the word occurs:—
“If the friends of Sabbath Observance only knew the labour which is occasioned to letter sorters and carriers by letters received on Sabbath morning at the several post offices, they would pause before they posted letters on Saturday evening.
The report issued from the General Post Office, London, January, 1896, shows that 76,438 persons are employed in the postal service, and 62,300 others in partial work. Of the above numbers, 28,000 are women. Thus, 138,738 persons in all are engaged in transacting the immense postal work of the nation. Of these, more than 42,000 (many of whom are women) are employed, for a longer or shorter time, on the Lord’s Day.
We invite the reader’s attention to a few words of suggestion, fitted, we think, to relieve a class of deserving public servants, greatly over-worked, and often deprived, wholly or in part, of their heavenly birthright—the rest of one day in seven.
We want you to give up using the post on the Lord’s Day. A little forethought and consideration may be the means of lessening the burdens of many a hard-worked son of toil, and of earning for yourself an amount of gratitude none the less substantial, that no outward manifestation of it may happen to reach you.
We ask you to adopt the following simple rules:—
- Do not post letters on Saturday afternoon or on Sabbath.
- Arrange, if possible, that letters requiring answers shall not reach their destination on Saturday, and thus hold out any inducement for replies to be sent by the Sabbath mails.
No. 1 may be subject to this qualification, that letters may be posted on Saturday morning for delivery the same day at places not far off; but even here, if they require answers, you may put yourself within the scope of the case regarded in Rule 2.
Consider whether these two suggestions are not easy of application. How many letters now posted on Saturday and Sabbath, would equally accomplish their end, if retained in the possession of their writers till Monday.
But, it may be said—perhaps you yourself may have said it—‘Where is the good of one, or even a few, doing what you suggest, unless everybody join?’ To this we reply, that we seek to stop Sabbath posts by so reducing the business to be done, that the Government shall find that there are no letters to carry. London, with nearly six millions of people, has no delivery of letters on Sabbath, and yet no one complains. The classes brought most into contact with the Post Office—the merchants and traders of London—are silent, which assuredly they would not be, if they had anything to complain about.
In England and Wales there are 893 post towns, 40 of which have no house-to-house delivery of letters on the Lord’s Day. The 40 towns in this honourable position are:—Aldershot Camp, Belvedere, Bexley Heath, Brize Norton, Charlton, Chathill, Chingford, Crawley Down, Crayford, Crewe, Edmonton, Eltham, Erith, Fence Houses, Ferry Hill, Gateshead, Hayes, Hexham, Ivybridge, Kew, Kirby-Stephen, Lakenheath, Leyton, London, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Normanton, Picardy, Ponder’s End, Purley, Richmond, Six Mile Bottom, Southborough, South Woodford, Spennymoor, Tetsworth, Tilbury, Tottenham, Walthamstow, Wimbledon, Woodford Green.
In Scotland there are 165 post towns, 145 of which have no house-to-house delivery on the Lord’s Day. The 20 towns in which the Sabbath is desecrated by delivery of letters are:—Annan, Banff, Carluke, Coldstream, Drem, Fordoun, Haddington, Huntly, Inverurie, Irvine, Kelso, Kirkcaldy, Langholm, Lerwick, Lockerbie, Markinch, Maybole, Newburgh, Port-Ellen, Prestonkirk.
No one will surely pretend that these towns require a delivery on the Lord’s Day, when the large commercial centres of Edinburgh and Leith, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Greenock, Paisley, etc., have no delivery on the Sabbath.
In Ireland there are 169 post towns, 11 of which have no house-to-house delivery on the Lord’s Day. The 11 towns in this honourable position are:—Antrim, Ballybrophy, Ballymoney, Belfast, Clones, Curragh, Letterkenny, Londonderry, Newtonards, Portadown, Randalstown.
Friends of the Sabbath should remember:—(1) That Sabbath posts in rural districts can be abolished by the receivers of two-thirds of the letters addressing a memorial to the Postmaster General to that effect. (2) In town districts the memorial must be supported by the magistrates, and show the substantial unanimity of the inhabitants.
The Post Office servants deserve well at our hands. Let us do all that lies in our power to abolish their Sabbath toil, and so secure them a day of rest. The letter-carrier—no less than other men—needs the Lord’s Day for himself and his family. We are ‘Our brother’s keeper,’ and should do to him as we would he should do to us.
We leave the matter in your hands, hoping that the claims of God’s Word, and kindness to your fellow-creatures, may induce you to take this matter into your serious consideration. The liberty of the sons of God is not disobedience to His commands, but the realisation of delight in keeping them. ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments,’ are the words of Christ, ‘and, in keeping of them there is great reward.’ They who are assured of their duty and privilege to appropriate the Lord’s Day unreservedly to Him, and do it, are not likely, when the few remaining Sabbaths on earth are past, to feel that they had spent too much time in preparing for an abundantly administered entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. Nor, when they behold the King in His beauty, will they regret having proved their love to Him by keeping His commandments. Christ declared that He will confess before His Father those who confess Him before men. And will not they who here most cordially devote the Lord’s Day to Him, enjoy His presence with the sweetest zest hereafter? Those who desire to make the most and best of earthly Sabbaths—these days when heaven kisses earth; these gardens of rest along life’s dusty road; these bright rifts through the clouded nights of care; these golden threads in time’s woof; these crystal rounds in the ladder toward heaven—will find help by carefully adhering to the command of Him who said, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, IN IT, THOU SHALT NOT DO ANY WORK, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.'”
Ministerial Flattery.—It is a sign of spiritual decay when an epidemic of fulsome flattery takes hold of the professed servants of Christ. Some ministers may have great virtues, but when their brethren consider it their duty in season and out of season to flatter them to their face the practice becomes peculiarly nauseous. Church courts are at times turned into mutual admiration coteries, and church papers devote paragraphs and columns to the remarkable gifts and virtues of some esteemed brother. Such things are not of the Spirit, but “of the flesh.”