Patience by John Wesley

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 17, 1874

Patience.

By John Wesley

But what is patience? We do not now speak of a heathen virtue, neither of a natural indolence; but of a gracious temper, wrought in the heart of a believer by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is a disposition to suffer whatever pleases God, in the manner and for the time that pleases him. We thereby hold the middle way, neither despising our sufferings, making little of them, passing over them lightly, as if they were owing to chance, or second causes; nor, on the other hand, affected too much, unnerved, dissolved; sinking under them. We may observe, the proper object of patience is suffering, either in body or mind.

Patience does not imply the not feeling; this is apathy or insensibility. It is at the utmost distance from stoical stupidity! yea, and at an equal distance from fretfulness or dejection. The patient believer is preserved from falling into either of these extremes, by considering who is the author of all his suffering, even God his Father. What is the motive of his giving us to suffer? Not so properly his justice as his love. And what is the end of it? Our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.—Wesley.