Alexander James Waddel
Patience
There is a third consideration, not to be omitted in our study of Christian patience. The word, as said above, implies suffering and endurance, but it includes another idea. It has reference to time. It is not barely willingness to suffer, but willingness to suffer more. Nature would not wait a moment; it would be delivered now. Grace leaves all to God, and says, "My times are in his hand!" Though the succour tarry, patience can wait. Hab. ii. 3. What grace is this, thus added to faith and love? Is it not HOPE, the sister grace, that abideth? 1 Cor. xiii. 13. Leaning on her anchor, hope looks out from her post of observation, casting the eye over a waste of billows, and sweeping that dim horizon where as yet no sail twinkles along the distant line that unites the sea and sky, but sure that though weeping may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning. Psa. xxx. 5. He that hath been with her in six troubles, in the seventh will not forsake her. Job v. 19. Here is a blessed pillow for the languid aching head, a cool refreshment for the throbbing temple. Here is a secret cordial which has enabled many a child of sorrow to bear the heavy load; when tribulation worketh patience. Rom. v. 3. This hope is more than empty conjecture or vague expectation. It is firm; it is fixed. Its hold is above. It seizes on words of promise and of covenant. It is sustaining itself by the arm of the mighty Saviour. Its spiritual cable grapples that which is within the veil (Heb. vi. 19), and hence it maketh not ashamed. Rom. v. 5.
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." (verse 8.) "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.
It would not be difficult to fill up the whole tract with an account of those different circumstances of a human creature in which he must exercise this Christian virtue. But those to whom such details would be applicable are the very persons who need no prompter; they know what their distresses are. It is much more important to observe, that there is no kind or degree of suffering which our Heavenly Father ordains, under which we may not exercise patience, and, therefore, as every human being is born to suffer, there is not a single reader to whom this lesson is not important, however much he may think the contrary, in the pride and self-sufficiency of youth, or health, or fortune, or good spirits. And though certain persons in our fastidious generation grow intensely weary, when time is bestowed in sustaining and comforting the broken-hearted – let such know, that their time is coming, and that even if now they have their "good things," and think their "mountain stands strong," they shall yet live to behold the day in which they must have a stock and habit, yea a grace of patience, or sink into extreme despondency, if not despair.
In one view the suffering life of many Christians, and those the best, is hard to understand, for it seems at war not only with God's fatherly goodness, but with his gracious covenant. (Read Jer. xii. 12, and Psa. lxxiii.) But we must never lose our hold of two cardinal pillars, the very Jachin and Boaz of our temple: (1) that happiness in this world is not the chief good; the affirming of which is the radical error of all the common public economy, and much of the philanthropy of the day; and (2) that the education, or discipline, or training, or perfecting of a soul is so great and divine a work, that it is worth a lifetime of distress; so that no redeemed saint will look back on the longest sufferings of the present life as more than the scarcely perceptible moment before an eternity of holy delight. Angels look down and see poor sin-wounded creatures fighting against their chief medicine. As has been said, God does not afflict nor grieve the children of men "willingly," arbitrarily, out of any love to see them suffer, or any indifference to their sorrows; but with a wise and definite end, which will be revealed hereafter. The entire process of Christian endurance, pain-bearing, or patience, from beginning to end, in all its connection of parts, is more deeply interesting to one who could read it, than any drama ever enacted on the stage. So it will one day appear, when not only the particular sufferer, but all the company of God's elect in heaven, shall look back and see many a mystery of providence resolved. They will rise to higher admiration of the divine plan, when they shall be instructed why Joseph had his youth oppressed by cruelty, exile and imprisonment; why David was a persecuted fugitive, and a bereaved father; why the apostles were as sheep appointed to the slaughter; why the early Christians were mowed down by the sword; and why to this day they that will live godly suffer persecution. They will recall ten thousand cases, (for eternity has neither limits nor weariness,) in which some of the best of men have lain under pangs, or in languishing from sore diseases; or journeyed through a valley of gloom and depression; or been marks for arrows from the bow of wicked fellow-creatures, and more malignant demons; and why others, with hearts sickened by hope deferred, waited years and almost lifetimes without seeing the accomplishment of their strongest desires. When these several circles are complete, and every covering removed, and God's light thrown on dark places of the spiritual temple, it will appear, that this very divine product, to wit, holy patience, has been as dear to the great Architect of the Church, as is the costliest sculpture to the most devoted enthusiast in art. And therefore we are exhorted not merely to have patience, but to let patience have her perfect work.