HELD FOR POSTAGE by E. L. Paulding

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 15, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 46.

HELD FOR POSTAGE.

By E. L. Paulding

WE were in the office waiting for our mail the other evening when a man called my attention to a letter tacked up in front of us, beside the office window, with the notice, "Held for postage," written across the face of it.

"How is that?" said he. "There is a two-cent stamp on it; why don't they send it on?"

"O, that is a revenue tax stamp," said I; "the government will not send mail with a revenue stamp. If it did it would get the business of its departments badly mixed."

The government furnishes a stamp the sale of which is intended to pay exclusively the expense incident to the carrying and delivery of the mails. It furnishes another, the sale of which is intended to pay the expenses incident to the carrying on of the war. If the postmaster should take a letter stamped with a revenue stamp, he would rob the Post-office Department of that amount of revenue.

Some people seem to think the government unreasonable in this, but it is a plain business principle.

So people take a precious parcel (Matt. 16:26), put upon it the working-day stamp, Sunday, for payment they owe the government of heaven for a Sabbath, then take the rest-day stamp, Sabbath—which was inscribed with the name of the Governor (Ex. 20:8-11), and intended to sanctify and bless them—and thus they degrade the Sabbath to a common working day, and expect the falsely-labeled parcel to go through into the kingdom of heaven.

The Governor has said, "My Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign [seal, Rom. 4:11] between Me and you throughout your generations [that is, to the close of time]; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you" (Ex. 31:13), "without which [sanctification, holiness] no man shall see the Lord" (Heb. 12:14).

Let us put on God's seal (stamp), that it be not said of us, Held for postage.

E. L. PAULDING. Arroyo Grande, Cal.