Just for Fun by D. T. Taylor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 15, 1871

“Just for Fun.”

By D. T. Taylor

So said a gay young lady who in company with pleasant friends was walking one summer day near the railway in a Canadian city. The train was coming. Nearer and nearer it thundered along its way toward the depot. The thoughtless girl proposed crossing the track in front of it “just for fun.” With quick ejaculations of alarm her friends plead with her to desist from so dangerous an adventure, but paying no heed to their entreaties, in a mere spirit of frolic she sprang upon the track, her dress caught in the ponderous engine, and in another moment the fair and beloved form lay mangled and crushed and lifeless mass under the relentless iron wheels. These gay words were her last; she never spoke again.

We have seen the young man leave his country and home, all the hallowed associations of parents and sisters, whose affections twined about him, to seek employment in the crowded city. A good situation was secured him, his prospects were fair. But evil comrades came around, and, lured by their flatteries, he went with them to the haunts of vice. Its mad pleasures were described in smooth words. “I’ll keep myself,” he boastfully said; “I’ll go once just for the fun of the thing.” He passed on to the chambers that take hold on death and hell, and that night the angels mourned over one who, despite a pious mother’s entreaties and warnings, began a downward career of ruin from which he has never recovered.

And so men and women are every day stepping into the path of destruction, “just for fun.” Multitudes of people, young, gay, and proud, are doing evil, or putting themselves in harm’s way, and not because they are so desperately wicked or vicious, but because they are careless of consequences, and heedless of their ways, not stopping to seriously consider the end of putting one’s self in the track of temptation.

In the ears of such we cry with affection and alarm, “Take care!” The fun which begins in lightness and vanity ends in death and destruction. Beware of the dangerous path! Shun the approaches to it! There is a safe way; walk ye therein. It is a dreadful thing to perish through the indulgence of a little brief fun, when the gate of happiness and life unending stands open wide. O, will you to-day commence to think upon these things and be wise, for

“Time will end our story, But no time, if we live well, Will end our glory.”

—D. T. Taylor.