The change of the year is peculiarly a season for self-examination. Let us examine ourselves, therefore, our plans of life, our schemes of friendship. Let us examine the various relations which we sustain to God and to the church of God, to man and to those of man particularly who are of our own flesh and blood. Evil is a gratuitous matter unnecessary and unbecoming. Have we offended God, or neglected the church of God? Let us reform and become better and lovelier as we grow older. Have we offended man? Let us review our conduct during the year that is past, and entering upon the unpolluted New Year, let us transcribe into it whatever of virtue we possess, and leave behind us in the past all that is noxious or deformed. So shall age and experience become honourable to us, and we shall be to Jesus our Lord as bracelets upon his wrists, like the diadem upon His brows, as the purple upon the Kings shoulders, honourable vessels, vessels of gold and silver, by whom he will pour forth floods upon the dry ground. Men will return to God under the sacred influence of our holy behaviour; they will learn righteousness; and God will be glorified, by the beauty, variety, and richness of our fruit in Jesus Christ. Let us live the life of the righteous and our last end shall be like his.
–Walter Scott (1796-1861)