Ending not with a full stop but a semicolon
Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church
Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped solidify the anti-slavery movement in the north of the United States. Published in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the fictional, anti-slavery book before the issue took the United States to civil war.
Her book shattered sales records. Nathaniel Hawthorne, two years earlier, wrote a popular book, The Scarlet Letter. It earned him $1500 over 14 years. Moby Dick earned Herman Melville a mere $556.37 in the 40 years between its publication and his death. Uncle Tom earned Harriet $10,300 in the first three months. The first print run of 5000 sold out in 10 days; 300,000 sold in nine months; and 1 million within 12 months.
She had fame (pop-star status in England, when she visited)—notoriety in the South—and a name that would sell anything she wrote, despite never repeating the success of Uncle Tom.
In old age, though, Philip McFarland (in Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe) pictures her a little old woman whose mind is somewhat “hazy.” In her 80s, one of her children described Harriet as “not now above a child of two or three years.”
McFarland finishes his biography: “She has been confined to her bed with brain congestion and paralysis since Monday, sinks into a deep stupor on Tuesday night, and dies on Wednesday, in her 86th year.”
That’s it. Full stop.
Life. Your life. It had a beginning. It has an end. There’s success. There’s failure. There’s health. There’s sickness. There’s joy. There’s sadness. In the end, famous or not, it all comes to a full stop.
And yet we have eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We want more. Fortunately, the One who placed eternity in our hearts offers it (see John 3:16).
Harriet Beecher Stowe knew that. She was a woman of faith, so her life ended not with a full stop but a semicolon—a pause. The good news is the John 3:16 promise is available to all.
Tags: Bruce Manners