p. 79 | ONE-IDEA MEN

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 19, 1880

ONE-IDEA MEN.

PEOPLE who work earnestly in any reform are sometimes called one-idea people. The phrase is complimentary; a man with one idea and that a good one is much better than a man with no ideas at all, or with a number of very poor ones. Paul was a “one-idea man” who determined to know nothing but Christ, who said: “This one thing I do, . . . I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” The world is indebted to men of one idea for its inventions, its discoveries, and its great moral and religious reformations. A boy may scatter powder along a curb-stone and then set fire to it. A flash follows, that is all. The same quantity of powder put into a pistol sends a ball straight to its mark. Many a man lives such a purposeless life, that it amounts to no more than the flash. The same amount of energy concentrated on some one worthy object would be a power for good that would be felt. We like to see men have one true idea or good purpose, and live for it.

Look for example at the one idea of temperance, and try to measure it. Is it a narrow or shallow idea? How many interests of our daily life does it touch? Narrow! It is broad enough to touch every home in our land. There are diseases that are epidemic but they are confined to certain localities. But look north, south, east, or west, and we see the rum-fiend at work, blighting homes and breaking hearts. Shallow! It is high enough and deep enough to touch heaven above and the world of darkness below. It is almost too trite to be repeated, that most of the death-bed and State prison confessions of criminals give liquor drinking as the cause of ruin of both body and soul.

This temperance idea reaches out and touches our financial interests. It deals with the question whether thousands of men shall continue to be what they are now, consumers and destroyers simply, or become producers. And whether large numbers of farmers, who are producers, shall have their produce turned into a curse by being made into intoxicants, or be helpers in society.

It reaches down into the pocket of every man, woman and child. Intemperance takes from the pockets of the many and puts into the pockets of the few. It takes the hard-earned results of useful toil, and puts them into the pockets of worse than useless greed. It lays a tax on every house and shop and inch of land, to pay for the mischief done by the few in pauper and criminal making. The question of temperance or intemperance is one that touches society in all its interests and relations. If our temperance men are one-idea men, their idea has a breadth and hight and depth that may well make them feel that their object in living is a worthy one.—The Christian.