The One Essential

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 17, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 46.

The One Essential.

We were glad to read the following words in the leading editorial of the Union Signal in its issue of November 3:—

“There is very little of the W. C. T. U. except its spiritual life. If that goes out, it is a corpse, and nothing remains to be done but to send for the undertaker, and notify the relatives. Like Briareus, it has a hundred hands; but what are they good for if the soul is gone? It has done a deal to unify the women of the nation for their enfranchisement and uplifting; but that is not its specific work. It has shown what women can do in managing a large organization, holding great conventions, building pyramids of facts and figures to set forth feminine activity and achievement; but this is not what it came into being to do. What, then, is its raison d’être?—It is the suppression of that sum of all iniquities, the liquor traffic, and that by Christian means, pure and simple. It must keep itself up to that mark, if it would turn a straight furrow, or run a winning race.”

The one essential of all Christian work is the Spirit of Christ. This always stands for principle, truth, righteousness, integrity. But that Spirit will not tarry when politics are dominant, when compromise is in control. Let the W. C. T. U. abide in the spiritual life, stay fast by the Fountain, the Word, and forever cut loose from politics, and God will yet use it mightily.