Patience

5. Finally. Patience when duly sustained leads to a great reward. Not in the sense of the Papists, who strike a commercial balance between pains and recompense, and set off so much trouble in this life against so much merited blessing in the life to come. But in perfect consistency with our belief that after all is done we are unprofitable servants, that all heavenly good is merited by our Saviour, and not by us, and that a man may suffer pain here which shall be swallowed up in greater pains hereafter, we maintain and teach, that in the case of true believer, the gracious deportment of the soul under earthly affliction carries it forward to higher happiness than it would otherwise have reached. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." By the work of God's Spirit, the soul that suffers receives greater capacity for eventual joy. Whoso bears God's burdens in a godly manner is made holier, and more fit and able to take in the surpassing blessedness of rest. And then our heavenly Father, who seeth not as man seeth, does not measure our obedience on a physical scale, by the amount and number of sensible acts, as if he reckoned up so many deeds outwardly done, so many palpable effects produced, so many words spoken; but by the quality of the inward affection and will, which may be heavenward and holy, and infinitely pleasing to God, in a poor creature locked in a dungeon, or motionless on a bed of illness. Where the soul pleases God, there the great work of life is accomplished; in an apostolic discourse or miracle, in a gift of charity, in a resistance of temptation, or in agony on a cross.

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.

THE END

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In Latin patientia, from patior.