Editorial July 20, 1946 Issue

Are We Learning Patience?

John Randall Dunn

Any Bible concordance will show that the Hebrew or Chaldee equivalent of our English word "patience" does not appear in the Old Testament, and that "patient" and "patiently" are used only three times in the older Scriptures. In the New Testament the words "patience," "patient." and "patiently" appear forty-five times. Does not this indicate that patience is a virtue singularly belonging to and stressed by the teachings of Christianity?

The Apostle James, whose so-called General Epistle has ever been regarded as a most comprehensive digest of Christian precepts wrote (James 5:7, 8,11): "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. 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." Then he added, a little farther on in his letter, "Behold, we count them happy which endure."

Now Christian patience does not connote a stolid, hopeless submission to some form of error or bondage. In the Greek, the word translated "patience" carries the thought of cheerful, hopeful endurance, and Webster has this to say: "The word also suggests quiet waiting for what is expected or persistence in what has been begun." Patience, therefore, must be a sister of hope, for is not expectation of good inherent in both these Christian qualities? Could one be patient under affliction without hope of deliverance therefrom, or while believing the trouble to be God-sent? One of the foundation stones of Christian Science is that a good God never created evil, and that all inharmony is illegitimate, unreal, and therefore not to be feared or submitted to.

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