Sae here's for what's comin'! I ken whaur it maun come frae, an' I s' make it welcome.

My mither says the main mischeef i' the warl' is, 'at fowk winna lat the Lord hae his ain w'y, an' sae he has jist to tak it, whilk maks it a sair thing for them." Therewith he rose to encounter that which was on its way to meet him.
He is a fool who stands and lets life move past him like a panorama.
He also is a fool who would lay hands on its motion, and change its pictures.

He can but distort and injure, if he does not ruin them, and come upon awful shadows behind them.
And lo! as he glanced around him, already something of the old mysterious loveliness, now for so long vanished from the face of the visible world, had returned to it--not yet as it was before, but with dawning promise of a new creation, a fresh beauty, in welcoming which he was not turning from the old, but receiving the new that God sent him.

He might yet be many a time sad, but to lament would be to act as if he were wronged--would be at best weak and foolish! He would look the new life in the face, and be what it should please God to make him.
The scents the wind brought him from field and garden and moor, seemed sweeter than ever wind-borne scents before: they were seeking to comfort him! He sighed--but turned from the sigh to God, and found fresh gladness and welcome.

The wind hovered about him as if it would fain have something to do in the matter; the river rippled and shone as if it knew something worth knowing as yet unrevealed.