Untitled article by Fanny Fern

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 26, 1867

IS ALL WELL?

By Fanny Fern

“Twelve o’clock at night, and all’s well.”

False prophet! Still and statue-like at yonder window stands the wife. The clock has told the small hours; yet her face is pressed against the window pane, striving in vain, with streaming eye, to pierce the darkness. She sees nothing, she hears nothing—but the beating of her own heart. Now she takes her seat; opens a Bible, and from it seeks what comfort she may, while tears blister the pages. Then she clasps her hands and her lips are tremulous with mute supplication. Hist! there is an unsteady step in the hall; she knows it! Many times, and oft, it has trod on her very heart-strings. She glides down gently to meet the wanderer. He falls heavily against her, and, in maudlin tones, pronounces a name he had long since forgotten to “honor.” Oh! all-enduring power of woman’s love!—no reproach, no upbraiding—the light arm passed around that reeling figure once erect in “God’s own image.” With tender words of entreaty, which he is powerless to resist, if he would, she leads him in. It is but the repetition of a thousand such vigils! It is the performance of a vow, with a heroism and patient endurance too common and every day to be chronicled on earth; too holy and heavenly to pass unnoticed by the “registering angel” above.

“All’s well!”

False prophet! In yonder luxurious room sits one whose course it was to be fair as a dream of Eden. Time was when those clear eyes looked lovingly into a mother’s face—when a kind, loving father laid his trembling hand, with a blessing, on that sunny head—when brother’s and sister’s voices blended with her own in heart-music around the happy hearth. Oh! where are they now? Are there none to say to the repenting Magdalen—“Neither do I condemn thee—go and sin no more.” Must the gilded fetter continue to bind the soul that loathes it, because man is less merciful than God?

“All’s well!”

False prophet! There lies the dead orphan. In all the length and breadth of the green earth there was found no sheltering nest where the lonely dove could fold its wings when the parent-birds had flown. The brooding wing was gone that covered it from the cold winds of neglect and unkindness. Love was its life, and so—it drooped!

“All’s well!”

False prophet! Sin walks the earth in purple and fine linen; honest poverty, with tear-bedewed face, hungers and shivers, thirsts, “while publicans stand afar off!” The widow pleads in vain to the ermine-clad judge for “justice;” and, unpunished of Heaven, the human tiger crouches in his lair, and springs upon his helpless prey.

“All’s well!”

Ah! yes! all is well; for He who “seeth the end from the beginning” holds evenly the scales of justice. “Dives shall yet beg of Lazarus.” Every human tear is counted. They will yet sparkle as gems in the crown of the patient, enduring disciple! When the clear, broad light of eternity shines upon life’s crooked path, we shall see the snares and pitfalls from which our hedge of thorns has fenced us in, and in our full-grown faith, we shall exultingly say—“Father, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”—Fanny Fern.