Article February 28, 1942 Issue

Patience, Faith, and Prayer

OLIVER MARBLE GALE

Selected

Patience has always been regarded as a human virtue, whether considered theologically as obedient endurance of the afflictions imposed by God, who was thought to send sin, sickness, and death to discipline and bless His children, or as quiet and courageous waiting for some hoped-for event, even though one had no assurance that it would occur.

Christian Science elevates patience to a position of spiritual understanding and power. In Christian Science, patience is that state of spiritual consciousness in which one already is assured of the possession of that which is hoped for, through a scientific knowledge that the good desired is inevitable because God is good, and is all-power.

Patience is allied to faith. Mere human patience, unillumined by an understanding of God, good, is associated with a blind faith which is sometimes little more than wishful waiting. Scientific faith, on the other hand, is at one with that assured conviction of good and its infallibility which brings into immediate evidence the good hoped for and is therefore the very substance of it.

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