Sound in Patience

“Sound in patience.” — Titus ii. 2.

That is not the usual standpoint from which we estimate the soundness of our fellows., The test is frequently credal, and a man’s soundness is ascertained from the quantity and quality of his beliefs. Or the test is ecclesiastical, and soundness is sought in a man’s connection with some one or other of our many visible organisations. When men speak of soundness in religious relationships the judges are rarely found investigating the realm of moral issues. But the apostle takes us to quite another point of view. Here soundness is estimated not by length of creed, but by length of patience; not by the number of articles in our mental professions, but by the powers of endurance in our ordinary tempers; not by the abundance of our confessions, but by the tenacity and intensity of our continuance.

Well, now, how should we stand this form of scrutiny? If we were judged according to our creeds, the majority of us might pass the examination with honours. But how should we fare if the judgment were to busy itself with the soundness of our tempers? For experience makes it abundantly evident that credal soundness may co-exist with diseased and waspish dispositions. Orthodoxy in belief may live in the same house with a very repellent heterodoxy in manners. A man may contend for a fine orthodoxy with a temper which reveals him to be a boor. And the same indictment may be made against many men who boast of. their heterodoxy; they support their heterodoxy with a bitterness and a virulence which make it very clear that broad theories about the vineyard can be allied with an exceedingly nasty and unattractive vintage. And therefore do I say that multitudes who might pass the credal test would fail at the test of the temper. And the same pathetic collapse might be the lot of many who are proud of their ecclesiastical soundness. The pages of history have made the ecclesiastics’ temper notorious, and contemporary history is by no means changing the record. The ecclesiastical battlefield is almost invariably the exhibition-ground of short and hasty tempers. We contend for the soundness of our -isms with an almost riotous display of the unsoundness of our patience. And, therefore, I think it is a striking warning which the apostle gives us when he diverts our attention to this possible heterodoxy of temper, and teaches us that one of the main essentials of a healthy and progressive life is found in the possession of a strong and invincible patience.

Now the Apostle Paul has himself been described by a great Biblical student as ‘’ Paul the undiscourageable.” And, indeed he is worthy of the name, and there is no better way of studying the significance of his teaching than by watching his own life. He is his own best commentary on his own counsels. His purposes were frequently broken by tumultuous shocks. His plans were destroyed by hatred and violence. His course was twisted here, diverted there, and wrenched a hundred times from its appointed goings by the mischievous plots of wicked men. The little churches he had founded were in chronic disturbance and unrest. They were often infested with puerilities, and sometimes they were honeycombed by heresies which consumed their very life. And yet how sound and noble his patience! With what fruitful tenderness he waits for his lagging pupils! His very reproofs are given, not with the blind, clumsy blows of a street mob, but with the quiet, discriminating hand of a surgeon. This man, more than most men, had proved the hygienic value of endurance, and he, more than most men, was competent to counsel his fellow-believers to discipline themselves to the ‘’ soundness of patience.”

Let us, therefore, look a little more closely at the virtue. This virtue of patience is to be exercised in seasons of waiting. This is certainly the hardest and most exacting exercise. I suppose that the rarest form of courage is displayed when we are compelled to sit still, and things are happening in which we can take no part. Action would reduce the tension and bring relief, but action is impossible.

We have an example of this in the awful mining calamity which has recently desolated so many homes in the United States. It required one kind of courage and one kind of patience to descend the uncertain mine and work away at the accumulated debris in the dubious hope of finding the buried men alive. But the women above, the wives of the buried men, standing there through day and night, able to do nothing but wait — these needed a finer type of patience and courage. I do not wonder that when the managers asked the poor afflicted souls to get a shed ready for the possible reception of recovered men, and to prepare bedding and food, the terrible tension was relieved and comfort was found in ministry. It is the same in the life of a soldier. The acutest strain is not in the fighting, but in perilous waiting when fighting is impossible. And so it is in common life, in common trouble and distress. Our severest test is when we are in the midst of a serious campaign and our ammunition is spent. It is when a loved one is sick, and the ailment is absolutely beyond our ministry. It is when a dear one has gone astray, and we can think of nothing more to do to recover him. It is in seasons like these that the finest courage and the ripest patience display their superlative glory. ‘’ Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flocks shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.’^ This is surely a supreme instance of the virtue of being ‘’ sound in patience.’^

But the virtue of patience is also to be exercised in seasons of activity. The army needs patience in waiting; it also needs patience in fighting. Impatience can spoil the waiting, and impatience can spoil the fighting. Impatient action defeats its own ends. An impatient shot registers a very erratic mark. An impatient batsman throws away the game. Yes, we require patience in the field as well as in the pavilion. And so it is a general principle in life; patience is not something to be called up merely in hours of enforced indolence; it is not a stand-by in emergencies; it is the virtue which endows every moment with promise, and which makes the most commonplace action healthily effective.

Now let me mention two or three conditions in life in which this ‘’ sound patience ‘^ would operate with splendid effectiveness.

First of all, then, we need a “sound patience” when we are in the presence of oppressive mysteries. There is no one who does any thinking at all who has not entered the dark, cold, chilling circle of apparently insoluble mystery. It may be the burdensome presence of immediate and palpable realities, such as the presence of suffering and pain. Or it may be those problems lying upon the borderland, or well within that mysterious realm where we seem to have neither eyes nor ears, hands nor feet; the mystery of God, the mystery of Providence, the mystery of Jesus Christ — His incarnation, His resurrection, His glorification. His relation to sin, and hope, and human endeavour, and the veiled to-morrow; and all the great pressing problems of human birth, and human life, and human destiny. What shall we do with them? Or, what shall we not do with them? Let us make it an essential in all our assumptions that a pre-requisite to all discovery is a “sound patience.’^ Do not let us deal with them as though they were Christmas puzzles, to be taken up at odd moments and cursorily examined, and then thrown aside again in irritation and impetuous haste. I am frequently amazed how hastily men and women drop these things; they ^’cannot be bothered with them,” and so they retreat into a perilous indifference or into a fruitless agnosticism. George Eliot dropped her vital faith in the course of eleven days. Robert Elsmere dropped his vital faith with almost equal celerity. I heard from one young fellow who was burning all his boats and refusing henceforth to sail these vast, mysterious, glorious seas, and all because he had read a little pamphlet of not more than fifty pages from cover to cover! jSTow I want to suggest to the young people to be patient in the presence of mystery, and to assume that patience itself is one of the great instruments of exploration and discernment and interpretation. I want to suggest that patience itself is power, spiritual power, both perceptive and receptive, and that the very possession of patience gives us the requisite medium for beholding the glory of the Lord. Do not stake your spiritual destiny on the throw of the dice! Do not let one months hasty reading turn your backs upon the undiscovered glories of the spiritual world. Whatever else you lack, do not lack patience! Be ‘’ sound in patience.’’ “Let patience have her perfect work.’’ ‘’ In patience ye shall win your souls.” And, secondly, we need a “sound patience “in the presence of burdensome disappointment. Some glowing purpose has been suddenly frustrated. Some bit of fond work has been rudely broken. We suffer profound disappointment. And disappointment is apt to kindle irritation, and when that fire begins to burn much valuable furniture is in danger of being consumed. When irritation is blazing fine resolution is apt to be destroyed, and very speedily an enterprising life is changed into a dull and smouldering indifference. In many a life this is the last melancholy chapter of what might have been a noble and inspiring biography. The knight’s chivalrous career is spoiled through lack of a solid patience. I remember reading the life of Principal Rainy, whom his biographer classes with Gladstone and [Newman as the three outstanding British figures in the latter half of the nineteenth century. I suppose that one of the greatest crises in Eainy’s life was when the House of Lords delivered judgment in the appeal case between the ‘’ Wee Frees” and the United Free Church of Scotland, Rainy had given the strei

rength of his life to the Free Church, and his matured powers had been consecrated in promoting vital and corporate union between his own Church and the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. A disaffected minority disagreed, and claimed the entire material heritage of the Pree Church — its churches, its manses, its colleges, its funds. The case was taken to the Lords, and the Lords gave judgment against the United Free Church, and therefore against Dr. Rainy. It seemed as though his majestic vision were to be only a temple built in dreams! He was in the Lords when judgment was given. He was standing by Mr. Haldane, whose guest he was in London. Mr. Haldane says that on the way home Rainy never spoke a word. When they reached home he sat down and then quietly said: I wish I were ten years younger! No anger, no harsh resentment, no bitterness, no unholy fire! ‘’ I wish I were ten years younger! ‘’ There was no need that he were younger. He quietly and strongly set to work again to bring order out of confusion, and a nobler union out of the very discord and disruption. Surely Robert Rainy was “sound in patience “! And if I address these words to any whose fine bit of work is lying like a shivered vase upon the fioor, let me tenderly counsel him to begin again; aye, to try again, and without bitterness and in” sound patience ‘’ prove that he was worthy of the better thing he sought.

And, in a further application, let me sa that we need a “sound patience” in the presence of a loitering progress. Things are walking, and we want them to run. Or, they are running and we want them to fly! We hear one another say: “Things don’t go fast enough for me!” Or “Things are too slow for me! ‘’ And we become irritated, and then irritable, and we lose our patience, and in losing our patience we lose the very spirit and instrument of progress. How true this is in our relationship to little children, and especially to little children who are not highly gifted, and who have the misfortune to be dull-witted and slow! How fatal is the mistake to become impatient with them! To become impatient is to deprive them of the very atmosphere they require for journeying at all; impatience never converts duUwittedness into quick-wittedness, and the teacher or the parent who becomes impatient is robbing the child of its heritage, increasing its load of disadvantage, and making its little pilgrim journey prematurely dark and hard. Let us in this matter cultivate a” sound patience ‘^; whatever else we lack, let us see to it that we are not lacking here. It is worth while; yes, wonderfully worth while! Dull children may open slowly, but the loitering opening often brings a great surprise. It sometimes happens that the last becomes first, and the belated arrival justifies all the patience that awaited his appearing.

And so the principle might accompany us in application to all the many-coloured relationships in life where demand is made upon the powers of endurance. ‘’ Sound patience” is always a good investment. In the presence of a civilisation which moves upward with slow and leaden feet, or in the presence of an impulsive enthusiasm which squanders its treasure in thoughtless speed, sound patience always pays. And in the presence of bereavement, when daylight fades, and twilight reigns, when the sore heart is tempted to believe that the day’s labour is done, and begins to put its tools away, believe me, sound patience pays.

“Rest comes at length, though life be long and dreary, The day must daTi, and darksome night be past, All journeys end in welcomes to the weary,

And heaven, the heart’s true home, shall come at last.”

But what is our hope of patience? Where is our resource? How can we hold out? Here is the beginning of the secret. ‘’ E^e endured!’’ “If we suffer with Him,” It is in fellowship with Him, and in Him only, that we become triumphant. The resources of the patient Lord are offered to those who seek to live the patient life. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit.’’ ^’ The meek will He guide in judgTaent, and the meek will He teach the way.” The Lord of patience will bestow His own healing virtue upon the waiting soul.

“Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our feverish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind:
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise!”