Experiments by Joseph Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 9, 1873

Experiments.

By Joseph Clarke

NOTHING is more natural or common than for people to make experiments. This is all right, if confined to proper bounds. When science calls for proof of her principles, she often has recourse to experiments.

But in many cases this principle is carried to a strange excess. The youth is warned of evil company, or evil habits; but he is not satisfied until he tries them for himself; so he becomes a votary of the saloon or the gaming table, and tobacco and wine, or alcohol in some form, and dissipation follows, and ruin comes, as a matter of course. So Eve was not satisfied with what God had said, but would, for herself, try the forbidden fruit; and for this little experiment, we, as a race, suffer, have suffered, and continue to endure untold misery and sorrow.

Who would think of trying arsenic, and all the poisons of the apothecary, to see if they were really poison? Who would survive such a course of experiments? Neither should we try the paths of Satan and the world: our health would not stand the poisons of the druggist, nor will our spiritual interests bear the strain of experimenting with sin. God alone can guard us by his grace. Let us pray without ceasing for strength to resist evil.

Joseph Clarke.