Home and Church School Manual

Fruit of the tree of knowledge not to be plucked

“Age after age the curiosity of man has led him to seek for the tree of knowledge, and often he thinks he is plucking fruit most essential when, like Solomon, he finds it altogether vanity and nothingness in comparison with that science of true holiness which will open to him the gates of the city of God. Human ambition has been seeking for the kind of knowledge that will bring self-exaltation and glory, and supremacy.... The result has been centuries of darkness and error. Men have introduced human theories, thinking as did our first parents when tempted by Satan to eat of the tree of knowledge, that they would thus become as gods. But these sentiments are not in harmony with the Word.... The one, the Word of God, is a tree of life; the other is the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and all who pluck and eat of this possess a disordered imagination.”—P.C., “The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge.” PH140 9.1