Your ShelfYour Projects

Patience

9%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 21, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 42.

Read the full edition

Patience

By U. Preston Long

U. PRESTON LONG
THE grace of patience, endurance, or steadfastness, is essential to God's remnant people. We must have the patience of the saints in order to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Rev. 14:12.
“Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” James 5:11. The name of Job has become synonymous with patience. But patience, like the book of Job, must be well known and understood in order to be rightly appreciated.
Patience is ever modest and quiet, never showy. So it will never be a popular grace. It costs too much, and makes too little show for that. The world likes virtues that glitter more, and that go off with a louder report. But the grace that “suffereth long, and is kind,” “is not easily provoked,” which “beareth all things,” and “endureth all things,” is ever the greatest of all graces, the grace that never fails, the crowning grace of Christian character, the sweetest and fairest fruit of the Spirit. Truly has the poet Lowell said,—
“Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.”
The tendency of our religious life to-day is strongly toward the active and utilitarian extreme. We are prone to estimate all things by the force they show, by the active energy they manifest. We say the blacksmith shapes the iron with his hammer, while the anvil, which outwears a score of hammers, is not even mentioned.
We need industry, hospitality, and other active virtues, but just as truly do we need the passive ones, such as meekness, gentleness, and patience.
These trying times call for patience. It is he who endures “unto the end” the afflictions, persecutions, betrayals, deceptions, that shall be saved. Matt. 24:9-13. We have need of patience that “after we have done the will of God, we might receive the promise.” Heb. 10:36. If we let patience have her perfect work, we shall be “perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” James 1:4. With greed, injustice, and inequality prevailing, as now when “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh,” we need to be patient and established. James 5:7, 8.
In cultivating this grace we are exhorted to imitate the prophets, especially Job. James 5:10, 11.
Ft. Morgan, Colo.