"From out the earth-fed furnace of desire, (Ere Thou cam'st questioning,) This formless and unfinished gift I brought, And on life's anvil flung it down, while hot: A glowing thing, of selfishness and fire, With blow on blow, I made the anvil ring; (Ere Thou cam'st questioning).
"The hammer, Self-Control, beat hard on it;
(Ere Thou cam'st questioning,)
And with each blow, rose fiery sparks of pain;
I bear their scars, on body, soul, and brain.
Long, long I toiled ; and yet, dear Lord, unfit,
And all unworthy, is the heart I bring.
To meet Thy questioning." 2
V.
Patience.
1. The fact that this word occurs so late in the list of the steps of ethical attainment according to St. Peter, after faith and
^ Bishop Ernest Wilberforce, 12.
2 E. W. Wilcox, Poems of Experience, 37.
176 THE UNFOLDING OF CHARACTER
virtue and knowledge and self-control, suggests that in its deepest signification it is a quality appertaining only to an advanced stage of spiritual acquirement.
^ I do not know what you think about patience, but to me it is the rarest thing under the sun. I have never met a patient man. I have never met one whose patience did not break down somewhere. I have never read of a patient man. Moses was called the meekest of men, and no doubt he did bear up wonder- fully under his many provocations; but his patience gave way more than once, for he broke the tables in his haste, and in his haste he smote the rock, when he ought simply to have spoken to it. Job has been called the most patient of men, but even Job, under the torment of his painful disease, under the wrong- headed argumentation of his friends, and under the nagging of his wife, lost self-control and cursed his day. There has never been a patient man on earth, save the Man who did all things well.i
^ Most of us are terribly impatient with children, and yet that is worst of all impatience. Dean Stanley, in his Life of Arnold, relates how Dr. Arnold told him that in his early days as a schoolmaster he lost patience with a dull boy. The lad looked up in his face, and said : " Why do you speak angrily, sir ; indeed, I am doing the best I can." Dr. Arnold said : " I never was so ashamed in my life ; that look and that speech cured me, and I don't think I was ever impatient with a dull boy again.^
2. There are three stages in the exercise of patience. First, it is simply submission to the will of God under disappointment or suffering. Next, it expresses itself in persistent endurance, being almost equivalent to perseverance, and then its active quality is shown in faith in God and the forward view.
(1) Submission. — What a field for patience, understood as sub- mission to the will of God, or Christian resignation, there is in the trials of life ! The Stoic is not patient, for he is past feeling ; and where the pain is not perceived there is no need for patience. But the Christian is a man of feeling, and he usually feels more acutely than other people ; and it is often with the tear of desola- tion in his eye, or the sweat of anguish on his brow, that he clasps his hands, and cries, Father, Thy will be done !
^ J. Iverach, The Other Side of Greatness, 111. ' B. "Wilberforce, Sanctification hy the Truth, 164.
2 PETER I. 5-7 177
^ The Greek word here translated patience, means, etymolog- ically, rather the school in which patience is learnt than actual patience. The word classically means remaining behind, either taking or being forced to take the hindermost place, being com- pelled to stand still when you desire to go forward ; and no discipline can be imagined more severe for the average restless human character. Experience, however, is constantly proving that this " patience " is a condition, an ingredient, of real progress. For example, during that black week when we were all horror- stricken at our early reverses in South Africa, an experienced soldier assured me that these reverses would prove to be the salvation of the situation. If, he said, a few flashy successes had attended our arms at the first, we should have failed to recognize the seriousness of the undertaking. No reinforcements would have been prepared, transports and remounts would not have been forthcoming, and when our forces had penetrated into the country far from their base, our well-armed, mobile, and perfectly prepared enemy would have surrounded us, and great disaster would have followed. I think he was right.^
(2) Perseverance. — The relation between temperance and patience is evident here. Temperance is the grace of holding hack, patience is the grace of holding on. The one holds back when lust urges on, the other holds on when vexations and annoyances threaten to move us from our equanimity or steadfastness.
^ Lord Kitchener's railway to Khartoum is a conspicuous example of the result of this attitude of mind. Discouraged by every engineer he consulted, baffled by floods and sandstorms, opposed at every step by hostile bands of Dervishes, he persevered. The strength and secret of his success was that he added to his self-control patience.