He now began to realize what a difficult problem was before the youth. Society would be slow to give him credit for changed motives and character, and as proof would take only patient continuance in well-doing. The good doctor now more than suspected that in his own home Haldane would find much that was depressing and enervating. Worse than all, he would have to contend with an excitable and ungoverned nature, already sadly warped and biased wrongly. "What will be the final result?" sighed the old gentleman to himself. But he soon fell back hopefully on his belief that the Lord had begun a good work and would finish it.
Haldane listened attentively and gratefully to all that his old friend had to say, and felt sure that he could and would follow the advice given. Never before had right living seemed so attractive, and the path of duty so luminous. But the thought that chiefly filled him with joy was that henceforth he would not be compelled to plod forward as a weary pilgrim. He felt that he had wings; some of the divine strength had been given him. He believed himself changed, renewed, transformed; he was confident that his old self had perished and passed away, and that, as a new creature, ennobling tendencies would control him completely. He felt that prayer would henceforth be as natural as breathing, and praise and worship, the strong and abiding instincts of his heart.