One Thing at a Time

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 39.

One Thing at a Time.

NO ONE element of personal power is greater and more potent than singleness of power, or than the power of singleness. No man can be so much of a man, in any one direction, as when he is a whole man in that direction. He who can concentrate his whole being, all his energies and all his capabilities, for the compassing of the one thing on which his mind is fixed for the time being, is obviously more potent, in behalf of that object of his endeavor, than would be possible were his energies divided, and were only a portion of himself given up to that for which he is striving. And this power of concentration it is that makes the man of pre-eminent practical efficiency in any and every sphere of human endeavor—material, mental, and spiritual—from the lowest plane to the highest.

It is when the eye is “single”—capable of fixing itself on one object of vision to the exclusion of all others—that the whole body is full of light. Doubleness of vision—seeing two things at a time instead of one—is as fatal to the eyesight as it is to mental action; and a “double-minded” man is unstable in all his ways. The man who can do one thing better than anybody else, is sure to be the man who looks upon that one thing as every way worthy of his doing, and who can say with all his heart, This one thing I do—though everything else be left unattended to. This it is that constitutes “devotion”—the state of being given up wholly to the specific object of interest,—whether that devotion be to pleasure, to self-interest, to business, to art, to science, to human affection, or to the highest service of God. Devotion is singleness, is concentration, is absorption, in the direction of the one supreme and exclusive object of interest in the sphere of that devotion. He who lacks in the power of devotedness, lacks in the power of practical efficiency in the sphere in which he is called to live and to labor.

It was said of Lord Brougham, that his devotedness to the one object of his striving was always such that he seemed to live exclusively for what he was living for; that if, indeed, he had been only a bootblack he would never have been satisfied short of being the best bootblack in the United Kingdom. And it is that sort of devotedness, that sort of singleness of power, that is always a distinguishing element of greatness of character. If you know the peculiarities of any man of marked pre-eminence,—as a statesman, as a soldier, as a financier, as a railroad manager, as a manufacturer, as a business man in any sphere,—you know that that man has the power in an exceptional degree, of giving himself to one thing at a time—to the apparent exclusion of every other subject of thought for the time being. However many things there are which demand his attention, his undivided thought is for the moment given to the one thing that for the moment requires his attention. Even his ability to turn rapidly from one subject to another, is his ability rapidly to change the objects of his concentrated thought; not his ability to attend to more than one thing at one and the same time.

It is said that Julius Cæsar was capable of dictating letters to six different amanuenses simultaneously; but that is only another way of saying that he was able to turn so rapidly from one thing to another, without allowing the one to interfere with the other; that he could keep six men at work, noting the results of his sixfold singleness. One thing we know, that unless Cæsar kept the other five letters out of his thought for the instant, the one letter which he was then dictating would lack the impress of his undivided personality, and so would have been a failure as a letter from Cæsar. It is this power of letting other things alone for the moment, that enters into the power of giving one’s self wholly to the thing which demands attention for the moment. And this is singleness of mind.—Sunday School Times.