Life's Autumn by J. F. W. Ware

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 24, 1863

Life's Autumn.

By J. F. W. Ware

LIKE the leaf, life has its fading. We speak and think of it with sadness, just as we think of the autumn season. But there should be no sadness at the fading of a life that has done well its work. If we rejoice at the advent of a new life, if we welcome the coming of a pilgrim to the uncertainties of this world's way, why should there be so much gloom when all these uncertainties are passed, and life at its waning wears the glory of a completed task? Beautiful as is childhood in its freshness and innocence, its beauty is that of untried life. It is the beauty of promise, of spring, of the bud. A holier and rarer beauty is the beauty which the waning life of faith and duty wears. It is the beauty of a thing completed; and as men come together to congratulate each other when some great work has been achieved, and see in its concluding nothing but gladness, so ought we to feel when the setting sun flings back its beams upon a life that has answered well life's purpose. When the bud drops blighted, and the mildew blasts the early grain, and there goes all hope of the harvest, one may well be sad; but when the ripened year sinks amid its garniture of autumn flowers and leaves, why should we regret or murmur? And so a life that is ready and waiting for the "well done" of God, whose latest virtues and charities are its noblest, should be given back to God, with uncomplaining reverence, we rejoicing that earth is capable of so much goodness, and is permitted such virtue.

—J. F. W. Ware.