Article July 18, 1908 Issue

PATIENCE

HARRIETT B. MAYNARD.

NOT infrequently we hear it said, "I wonder why my problem has not been solved, when I have worked so long and so faithfully in Christian Science?" and this human plaint has sometimes proved a forerunner of doubt and despair.

In our effort to overcome the claims of false sense which have imposed some great burdens upon us, it is well to remember the words of St. Paul, "In due season we shall reap, if we faint not." When we consider the patience, endurance, gentleness, and longsuffering of our Master, and of the great apostle to the Gentiles, we can but realize as never before how far short we have come of patterning after their example in this regard, and the need of our further cultivating the virtue of Christian patience.

We are not called to be patient with sin, disease, or discord of any kind, for to do so would be to consent that they have place and purpose, a right to be; whereas, having no place or recognition in the divine consciousness, they should have none in ours. Man in God's image and likeness cannot be at peace with anything unlike God, perfect good. We should be patient with ourselves, however, and with the fact that orderly development is inseparable from all progress. In counseling those whose "endeavors are beset by fearful odds" our Leader has given a new significance to human experience when she says, "Love is not hasty to deliver us from temptation, for Love means that we shall be tried and purified" (Science and Health, p. 22). These words remind us of the injunction of the apostle James, when he says, "Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient ; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh."

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