Respect Our Property! by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 12, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 11.

Respect Our Property!

By Editor

THE Missionary Societies of the Seventh-day Adventists have devised a "distributer" for their publications. It is a box or rack with compartments in which are put both papers and tracts for the benefit of the public. By this means our publications have reached many interested readers, who, without these, would never have seen them. These distributers cost money and time. They cost money in their manufacture, and sometimes it costs money to get the privilege to put them in very desirable places. It costs time to obtain the privilege, and to put them up, as well as to keep them supplied with our tracts and papers.

In one of these, in the city of Oakland, a little sect which has before this tried to act the part of a parasite, to obtain its nourishment from other parties, not having root in itself to live, has placed its publications, thus using our property to circulate its works; and, worse than this, trying to make us responsible before the public for the dissemination of its vagaries. We call no names, but if we learn of a repetition of the offense, we shall expose the parties.

In another city in this State a still more dishonorable act was committed. A certain man, so religious as to profess and teach holiness (not, however, belonging to the "holiness band," known as such), removed our publications from our own rack, throwing them on the floor, and put his own in their place! A man who is not a church-member, who has not learned that the ten commandments are abolished, and has therefore a due respect to the rights of property, reproved him, and replaced our publications where they belonged. This is a new, and perhaps the most effective, method to put a check on Adventism! to destroy our property, or appropriate it to their own uses. We expect that when all men become converted, and embrace the belief that the ten commandments were Jewish, and are abolished by the gospel, our property will not be safe anywhere, nor in anybody's hands, save in those of the "little flock" who keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." (Rev. 14:12.) But we are happy to know that there are yet some people who have not become so religious as to disregard the fundamental principles of morality!

Of course the law of the State would protect us from the depredations of such men, but we choose to put them on a few months' probation to see if our notice will put a "check" on their irreligious zeal.