Patience is on St. Paul's short list of Christian virtues. ^{See Rom. 5:3, 4;} Few would question its place there; but to some it may seem a negative quality, little better than stoic endurance. Perhaps this view is suggested by an older word for it, longsuffering.  ^{See Gal. 5:22;} Actually, patience is positive, vital, often instant in action.

Surely, for instance, the father in Jesus' parable of the prodigal must have had to exercise a vital, active patience. His beloved younger son had left him; rumors may have reached him of the boy's dissipation, then of his poverty and hunger; yet the father maintained his love and expectation. So when the boy at last returned home, the father recognized him in the distance in spite of his changed appearance and ran to meet him with a welcome that wiped out the separation as though it had never been. Nothing passive or negative here.

In 1955, near the close of his earthly experience, Albert Einstein wrote a letter of comfort to a family recently bereaved. In it he said: "For us believing physicists, the separation between past, present and future has only the meaning of an illusion, albeit a tenacious one." ^{Letter to the family of Michelangelo Besso, quoted in The New York Times, March 29, 1972;} Christian Science, going further than the physical sciences, recognizes as a present possibility the progressive dispelling of this tenacious illusion. In no area is patience more useful than in helping free us from this illusion and the varied limitations it would impose on us.

As a measure of duration, time has no answer to the problems of mortality. The editors of a recent anthology on the temporal element in mankind's environment indicate some recognition of this. They comment: "There is a difference between NOW-time in a realized sense and NOW-time in endlessness without end or realization."  ^{The Future of Time: Man's Temporal Environment, ed. by Henri Yaker, Humphry Osmond, and Frances Cheek (New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. 511;} But time, even "NOW-time in a realized sense," is not the answer. Only in eternity, only in a spiritually scientific perception of timeless Life, can the truly realized and wholly satisfying NOW-experience be found. Here there is no separation from good, ever.

The illusion of living in time would act as a downward backward drag on any activity it is allowed to attach itself to. It would have us believe that our home is a space-time continuum and our whole experience imprisoned within this continuum! It would permit us to laboriously earn comforts and privileges within our prison but no release.

To break out from its bars something wholly apart from space-time is needed—spiritualization of thought. We need progressively to abandon the belief in limiting material measurements, of weight, mass, extension. And specifically to reject the claim, summed up by an eminent writer on time in the words: "Time must and should occupy the center of man's intellectual and emotive interest."  ^{The Voices of Time, ed. by J. T. Fraser (New York: Braziller, 1966), p. xviii;} This claim may aptly depict the concept mortality has of itself, but it is not valid for spiritual man, created and maintained by timeless Spirit, the Principle of all good. In our rejection of space-time, patience can work mightily for us.

St. Paul recommends we "run with patience the race that is set before us."  ^{Heb. 12:1;} Run with patience! Patience may sometimes have to stretch across months and years. But just as often it does its work by spanning what Rudyard Kipling called "the unforgiving minute." Or even the unforgiving second. Patience at its best is instant, of the moment.

Another view of patience is found in the verse of a hymn:

To this their secret strength they owed,
The martyr's path who trod;
The fountains of their patience flowed
From out their thought of God.Christian Science Hymnal, No. 260;

Here is a patience not weak or stagnant but linked with reserves of spiritual strength, of fountains bursting up from their source in a perception of God.

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy points up still other facets of patience: "Patience is symbolized by the tireless worm, creeping over lofty summits, persevering in its intent." ^{Science and Health, p. 515;} Perseverance and a slower but steady progress can be significant elements in patience. But note the route taken—"over lofty summits."

In this route we perceive the essence of patience as a potent Christian quality. From its lofty elevation patience sees right over the illusive mists of time to the eternal reality. Of this reality Mrs. Eddy writes: "Man is deathless, spiritual. He is above sin or frailty. He does not cross the barriers of time into the vast forever of Life, but he coexists with God and the universe."  ^{p. 266;} Patience is a quality that spiritualizes thought. It lifts us above the illusions of frail mortality with its sorrow and sickness and folly to look out across the limitless vistas of spiritual being, harmonious and indestructible.

The illusive nature of time, of past, present, and future, was most completely perceived by Christ Jesus. He spoke of his divine selfhood as antedating Abraham; he promised his followers to be with them to the end of the world.

Understanding his eternal identity, Jesus could wait patiently before starting for Bethany to raise his friend Lazarus from the tomb or before going up to Jerusalem to confront his persecutors. With this same patience he could look out from the lofty peaks of spiritual vision right through and over discordant physical evidence and so heal inveterate disease or deformity instantly, without the mediation of time. He could either wait for the right moment or act immediately because he never waited on the illusion of time. Always he waited patiently on God's will and pleasure.

No wonder Mrs. Eddy counsels those who would do the work of Christian healing to emulate Jesus' patience. For such healing work spiritualization of thought is a necessity, and patience contributes powerfully to this spiritualization. It helps human consciousness with its doubts and fears and limitations to yield to the undoubting, unfearing, unlimited divine intelligence which alone heals.

Mrs. Eddy writes of Christian Science: "It is God's right hand grasping the universe,—all time, space, immortality, thought, extension, cause, and effect; constituting and governing all identity, individuality, law, and power."  ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 364;} To the extent we live by the uplifted spiritual vision of God and man, revealed in Christian Science, we see individualized in our experience the divine power of "God's right hand grasping the universe." Then, however tenacious the illusion of time, it is exposed as illusion. We can patiently subdue it and progressively deprive it of any authority in our affairs.

Patience is high among the qualities that enable us to live most consistently by the mountaintop view. But it serves us best if we link it, as did Paul, with those other spiritual qualities, love, joy, and peace. Then indeed we shall "let patience have her perfect work."  ^{James 1:4.} It will help us be free from the imprisoning limitations of space-time and more and more to find ourselves living in the health and harmony of our true home, the limitless consciousness of Spirit.

[Third article in a series.]