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PATIENCE.

JAMES W. ALEXANDER, D. D.

"Let patience have her perfect work."--James i. 4.

PHILADELPHIA: PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, No. 265 CHESTNUT STREET.

Entered according to the Act of Congress in the year 1852, by

ALEXANDER W. MITCHELL, M. D.

In the office of the Clerk of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The following meditations on Patience, though once delivered in substance to a Christian assembly, were written as a pastoral gift to an esteemed friend, who had been more than two years confined to her dwelling by a dangerous, lingering, and sometimes exceedingly painful malady. May the good Lord carry his truth with a blessing to other chambers of trial!

PATIENCE.

Some words which are often in our mouths are, nevertheless, but little understood; and some virtues which we are continually praising, are hardly ever put in practice. This is as true of patience as of any thing else. Every man needs it, every man knows he would be the better for it, yet every man falls short of it. This, I suppose, was one reason why the apostle James teaches so emphatically concerning it,

"Let patience have her perfect work." James i. 4.

In its simplest form, patience is a calm and unshaken state of mind, strongly bearing up against a present burden of distress. This may exist without religion. A Stoic or a western savage may endure pain without a murmur. Malefactors have stoutly faced the torments of their penal death. In respect to this, the natural temperament of human beings differs. Some can naturally bear more than others. They have more rigid fibre, or less shrinking nerves, more robust health, or smaller sensibility. The degree of pain is to be measured, not by the force of the blow, but the power of resistance. That which would crush a reed shall leave no mark upon an oak. When pain comes, however, it is well if we have even natural means of enduring it. But practice, discipline, and exercise add vastly even to this natural fortitude. Fresh soldiers and new recruits quail and fly, but the veteran has looked death in the face. He who has endured once, can endure again. Still more efficacious is the operation of inward principle, adding moral motives to the barely natural power. Education has this for part of its work, to teach the young to bear some burdens, not to fall back at every alarm, nor cry out at every pang. Stern determination will help one to sustain what might at first have seemed intolerable. This is remarkably the case in great and sudden pangs of anguish, for which a resolved mind has prepared itself.

If it were God's way to send on his children only such trials as are pungent, quick, and brief, however severe, the test of patience would be incomplete; but sometimes his rod lies long, and the soul is made to cry out, "Thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore!" Psa. xxxviii. 2. "How long wilt thou forget me, Lord?" Psa. xiii. 1. The very working of the remedy depends on this withholding of immediate cure. Yet the believing child learns to think and feel that God's time is best, and is assured that "He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." Lam. iii. 33. And hope opens the window, and even though no dry land as yet appears, welcomes the olive branch borne by the dove of promise. Gen. viii. 10, 11. Deep may call unto deep. Psa. xlii. 7. "Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life." "My soul, wait thou only upon God!" Psa. lxii. 5. Thus she cheers the night-watches, and in the multitude of her thoughts within her, God's comforts delight her soul. Psa. xciv. 19. The experience of the psalmist is made for such times of languishing. Many a solitary one has renewed the strain of David's pensive chord, and sung with plaintive note, "I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction. Lord, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee." Psa. lxxxviii. 8, 9. The night wears heavily away; the stars in their courses shine dimly; no streak of eastern dawning betokens day. Yet the hopeful sufferer can say, "I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope; my soul waiteth for the Lord, more than they that watch for the morning; I say, more than they that watch for the morning." Psa. cxxx. 5, 6. And patience, not worn out with waiting, turns on its pillow, and breathes itself to God, saying, "My soul is even as a weaned child." Psa. cxxxi. 2.

Patience has its perfect work, when it does not give way but holds out, however long may be the trial. Even weakness may sustain a momentary attack, and pungent anguish may be borne, if it be soon over. But to have day after day of pain, and night after night of fearful watching; to lie down heavy, yet hoping for no alleviation in the morning; to be wounded again and again, and find increasing years bring new losses and deeper sorrows;--this has been the lot of some who were God's children, and concerning whom it might well be said, that though the outer man perished, the inner man was renewed day by day. No man can number the cases of hopeless disease, tending incurably to certain and painful death, which occur in every age, and that among true believers. Christ's confessors have, in more periods of the church than one, spent large parts of their best years in prison. Millions have borne all the complicated ills of poverty all their days. And those who have survived to old age, have found it often one long disease. All these have had "need of patience," and would not have experienced its perfect work, if they had fainted in the day of adversity. I can never forget a Christian woman, eminent for spiritual joys, who was confined to her bed, with a wasting and at times excruciating disease, for about twenty years. Let not frivolous or superficial professors flatter themselves that those fair-weather graces which they boast of now, will stand them in stead when long storms begin to howl. Unusual supports from the very hand of the Spirit are necessary, against such conjunctures; and which of us can be certain that such shall not befall himself?

Whether the words of the apostle be considered as a command or an entreaty, they equally imply that there was some effort to be put forth. Let patience have her perfect work. "Place yourselves in the posture of being thoroughly and imperturbably constant even to the close of your mortal struggle." This enjoins the forbearance of whatever is contrary to the meek and patient spirit, and the acquisition, preservation and increase of every good gift which is favourable to it; for instance, humility, sense of sin, godly sorrow and shame, thirst for holiness, faith, hope, courage, love and joy. Indeed patience has its perfect work, only where all sister graces are carried forward with symmetrical increase; and whenever one of these is nourished into new strength, it contributes so much to the solid habit of Christian patience.

To be without religion is to be curtailed of the dimensions of man's character. Every state of mind and heart which religion commands is just so far a return to spiritual health. No human soul can be truly great while ignorant of God, alienated from God, opposed to God, slavishly in dread of God, and out of communion with God. Each grace of the Holy Spirit tends to lift man up towards the ideal of humanity. The trials of life bring all men into a certain conflict with adverse circumstances, producing pain. In this conflict many are conquered. But the Christian combatant finds every trial an occasion for bringing out latent reserves of a strength derived from Christ his Head. When he suffers therefore sharply and long, he is only like a soldier going from one battle to another, and waxing hardier and more courageous after each success. Hear how Paul, long tried in this athletic effort, expresses this Christian magnanimity, "I therefore run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air." And "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life." There is reason to believe, that no great Christian character can be developed without some severe discipline, that is, without patience, in its large and scriptural sense.

Patience, heavenly patience, under what God inflicts, is more pleasing to him than thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil; which is of itself the all-comprehensive motive to pious submission and endurance. But what is pleasing to God, as the fruit of his Holy Spirit, God will graciously reward. "I know thy works," saith he to Ephesus, "and thy labour and thy patience." "I know thy works," saith he to Thyatira, "and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience." "Because," saith he to Philadelphia, "thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee." "Behold," saith he to Smyrna, "the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life!" May I not add with renewed emphasis the exhortation of our apostle, though it struck strangely on the ear at first, "My brethren, count it all joy, when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this that the trying of your faith worketh patience." O my brother--my sister--more patience will make us more like Christ. What are our sufferings to his! Meditate, step by step, on the degrees of his humiliation, accompanying Him whom your souls love, from point to point of his unexampled sorrows; and thus will you find sin grow more intolerable, and suffering more light.

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