The normal six-days-a-week of work (usually 12 hours a day) is fine, but seven-days-a-week just isn’t Christian, according to this item in the London Advertiser, February 6, 1902.

Most of us have to work in this country, and practically all of us feel and respond to that need. It is in working that we learn the need of resting; rest is just as much a law of life as work. A preacher in Australia, recently expounding the fourth commandment, laid emphasis on working six days of the seven, and pointed out that those who did not keep that part, did not deserve the blessing of the other part. There is something in that. The idlers in society are often those who do not appreciate the needed blessing of the day of rest. The toiler appreciates his rest and is the man who ought to have his rest guarded. The demands of modern civilization make inroads into the day of rest, and it will require determination on the part of all classes of citizens to keep them within proper bounds, that, is keep Sunday labor at the lowest point.

We have a lesson from Belgium now; there and in other continental nations, there is a desire on the part of public-spirited men to win back part at least of Sunday for the workingman. It is becoming very hard to do even that; when once a precious boon has been lost or given up to carelessness or selfishness, it is not easy to regain.

In many places it has been shown that the final result of Sunday labor is seven days work for six days’ pay, an increase of slavery and of degradation. The man who is kept at unnecessary toil has no time to attend to his higher needs, and is reduced to the level of a beast of burden. Apart from the religious reason which many of us regard as fundamental, from the mere physical point of view, the day of rest is one of the blessings of a Christian civilization, for which men should be willing to make some sacrifice. The men who care for their noble, better self will do better work in every sphere.

Unfamiliar Canadian history stories 091