p. 162 | LOST ARTS

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 11, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 11

LOST ARTS.

It is quite a natural question that has been asked: How have certain arts known to the ancients become lost? The answer lies in the custom of imitating a genuine article by one which costs less. Some man substitutes a cheap ingredient for a costly one and produces an article so nearly like the genuine as to pass for it, and this imitation wins its way and supplants the genuine, because it can be bought for less and there is more profit in making it. Adulteration in other ingredients follows, and after a few turns of the wheel, the original is wholly lost and forgotten. So it has been with the “lost arts” the world over. It has not been from a lack of intelligence or from forgetfulness merely, but from adulteration, avarice, deceit, sin.

There is danger that pure and undefiled religion may fall into the list of “lost arts” if we allow ourselves to rely upon the outward appearance at all. The genuine is and always will be counterfeited, and the richer and better the genuine, the more counterfeits will there be. But there is one way, and only one, in which every man may be sure that he has the genuine; that is, to get his inspiration direct from Jesus our exemplar and teacher. If we depend upon others for our copy, adulteration will necessarily follow, because they are human, and there will be grave danger that to us pure religion of the soul will have become lost.—Selected.