"Sae noo I hae to begin fresh, an' lat the thing 'at's past an' gane slip efter ither dreams. Eh, but it's a bonny dream yet! It lies close 'ahin' me, no to be forgotten, no to be luikit at--like ane o' thae dreams o' watter an' munelicht 'at has nae wark i' them: a body wadna lie a' nicht an' a' day tu in a dream o' the sowl's gloamin'!
Na, Lord; mak o' me a strong man, an' syne gie me as muckle o' the bonny as may please thee. Wha am I to lippen til, gien no to thee, my ain father an' mither an' gran'father an' a' body in ane, for thoo giedst me them a'!
"Noo I'm to begin again--a fresh life frae this minute! I'm to set oot frae this verra p'int, like ane o' the youngest sons i' the fairy tales, to seek my portion, an' see what's comin' to meet me as I gang to meet hit. The warl' afore me's my story-buik. I canna see ower the leaf till I come to the en' o' 't. Whan I was a bairn, jist able, wi' sair endeevour, to win at the hert o' print, I never wad luik on afore! The ae time I did it, I thoucht I had dune a shamefu' thing, like luikin' in at a keyhole--as I did jist ance tu, whan I thank God my mither gae me sic a blessed lickin' 'at I kent it maun be something dreidfu' I had dune. 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. The delight of creation is verily in secrets, but in secrets as truths on the way. All secrets are embryo revelations. On the far horizon heaven and earth met as old friends, who, though never parted, were ever renewing their friendship. The world, like the angels, was rejoicing--if not over a sinner that had repented, yet over a man that had passed from a lower to a higher condition of life--out of its earth into its air: he was going to live above, and look down on the inferior world!
Ere the shades of evening fell that day around Donal Grant, he was in the new childhood of a new world.
I do not mean such thoughts had never been present to him before; but to think a thing is only to look at it in a glass; to know it as God would have us know it, and as we must know it to live, is to see it as we see love in a friend's eyes--to have it as the love the friend sees in ours. To make things real to us, is the end and the battle-cause of life. We often think we believe what we are only presenting to our imaginations. The least thing can overthrow that kind of faith. The imagination is an endless help towards faith, but it is no more faith than a dream of food will make us strong for the next day's work. To know God as the beginning and end, the root and cause, the giver, the enabler, the love and joy and perfect good, the present one existence in all things and degrees and conditions, is life; and faith, in its simplest, truest, mightiest form is--to do his will.
Donal was making his way towards the eastern coast, in the certain hope of finding work of one kind or another. He could have been well content to pass his life as a shepherd like his father but for two things: he knew what it would be well for others to know; and he had a hunger after the society of books. A man must be able to do without whatever is denied him, but when his heart is hungry for an honest thing, he may use honest endeavour to obtain it. Donal desired to be useful and live for his generation, also to be with books. To be where was a good library would suit him better than buying books, for without a place in which to keep them, they are among the impedimenta of life. And Donal knew that in regard to books he was in danger of loving after the fashion of this world: books he had a strong inclination to accumulate and hoard; therefore the use of a library was better than the means of buying them.
Books as possessions are also of the things that pass and perish--as surely as any other form of earthly having; they are of the playthings God lets men have that they may learn to distinguish between apparent and real possession: if having will not teach them, loss may.
But who would have thought, meeting the youth as he walked the road with shoeless feet, that he sought the harbour of a great library in some old house, so as day after day to feast on the thoughts of men who had gone before him! For his was no antiquarian soul; it was a soul hungry after life, not after the mummy cloths enwrapping the dead.
