Article January 13, 1934 Issue

Demonstrating Active Patience

ELEANOR G. R. YOUNG

A Word which has been persistently misused is "patience." There is, generally speaking, a certain suggestion of weakness associated with it, just as there so often is with the words "meekness" and "gentleness." A dictionary, however, defines "patience," in part, as "the power to wait calmly." It is obvious, therefore, that patience, involving "the power to wait calmly," cannot express itself in weakness.

Peter, who because of his impulsive, eager nature, had to learn the lesson of confident patience step by step and repeat his efforts, in summing up the necessary Christian virtues associates patience with godliness. It is not difficult to imagine the many earnest efforts that Peter must have made to acquire and demonstrate this desirable quality. Peter on many occasions permitted himself to be swayed by human impulse before he arrived at the spiritual understanding that enabled him to carry the teachings of his beloved Master into the highways and byways of the civilization of his day. In this great work the impulsive Peter was put aside, and the loving, patient disciple and teacher went fearlessly forward implicitly to carry out the Master's command to "preach the gospel to every creature." With quiet, unflinching confidence this disciple, who had thrice denied his Master in the palace of the high priest, learned to wait for men to awaken to the fact that the truth the Master revealed was offering them full salvation from all the sorrow and sickness and sin that had made their lives pitifully wretched. Because he himself had learned the lesson of patience, Peter, in his epistles, was able to voice with authority the divine message to untold generations.

One of the early Christian writers, Melito, in a letter to Antonius Cæsar, written about 150 A. D., says: "It is not easy, speedily to bring into the right way the man who has a long time previously been held fast by error. It may, however, be effected, for when a man turns away ever so little from error, the mention of the truth is acceptable to him."

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