Patience has its perfect work, when it does not give way but holds out, however long may be the trial. Even weakness may sustain a momentary attack, and pungent anguish may be borne, if it be soon over. But to have day after day of pain, and night after night of fearful watching; to lie down heavy, yet hoping for no alleviation in the morning; to be wounded again and again, and find increasing years bring new losses and deeper sorrows;—this has been the lot of some who were God's children, and concerning whom it might well be said, that though the outer man perished, the inner man was renewed day by day. No man can number the cases of hopeless disease, tending incurably to certain and painful death, which occur in every age, and that among true believers. Christ's confessors have, in more periods of the church than one, spent large parts of their best years in prison. Millions have borne all the complicated ills of poverty all their days. And those who have survived to old age, have found it often one long disease. All these have had "need of patience," and would not have experienced its perfect work, if they had fainted in the day of adversity. I can never forget a Christian woman, eminent for spiritual joys, who was confined to her bed, with a wasting and at times excruciating disease, for about twenty years. Let not frivolous or superficial professors flatter themselves that those fair-weather graces which they boast of now, will stand them in stead when long storms begin to howl. Unusual supports from the very hand of the Spirit are necessary, against such conjunctures; and which of us can be certain that such shall not befall himself?
Patience has a perfect work, when it grows to be an abiding habit of the soul. This cannot be, except by repeated acts of faith, submission and hope, reiterated till they are like a second nature. Such endurance rests on settled principle, and is an eminent work of the Holy Spirit. There are few more noble characters we can give of any, than when we say of a believer, He is habitually patient. The character is rare, but we are invited to attain it.
Whether the words of the apostle be considered as a command or an entreaty, they equally imply that there was some effort to be put forth. Let patience have her perfect work. "Place yourselves in the posture of being thoroughly and imperturbably constant even to the close of your mortal struggle." This enjoins the forbearance of whatever is contrary to the meek and patient spirit, and the acquisition, preservation and increase of every good gift which is favourable to it; for instance, humility, sense of sin, godly sorrow and shame, thirst for holiness, faith, hope, courage, love and joy. Indeed patience has its perfect work, only where all sister graces are carried forward with symmetrical increase; and whenever one of these is nourished into new strength, it contributes so much to the solid habit of Christian patience.
III. Let us consider some of the motives to let patience have her perfect work.
1. This is a virtue which is needed every day. Some excellencies of the soul are called out only by great emergencies, but the world in which we live is so beset with vexations that there is not a day, there is scarcely an hour, in which we are not called to be patient. The little events of domestic life, connected with ordinary labour and service, give the cumbered and troubled Martha as keen anguish as is felt by the general of an army or the ruler of a state, from defeats and revolutions. The inward grace required must not be measured by the apparent magnitude of the burden, but the strength of the sustainer. Spirits above perhaps look down on princes contending about the crown of an empire, with as much contempt as we bestow on infants fighting for a straw. But trials are not all equal. Sometimes, as we have seen, vehement surges of affliction break in; and we know not on what day this may occur; hence we must be ready every day. All the days of our life we are going over one and the same course of Christian duty, viz., submitting our own selfish will to the will of God.
2. Increase of patience is increase of happiness. Though present happiness is not the great object of life, it is one of the effects of religion, to which we cannot be indifferent. And what is very remarkable, there is not a single religious act, which does not increase our happiness. Properly understood, the whole moral law, whether at Sinai or the mount of the Beatitudes, utters this one commandment, BE HAPPY! What is thus true of holiness in general is eminently true of this mode of it in particular. Pain almost ceases to be pain, to a mind that fully yields itself to God. That this is true in a much higher sense than ordinary Christians suppose, is apparent in the case of the martyrs; (Heb. xi. 32-49,) and we have known instances in common life where the most horrible maladies, almost unmanning mere spectators, have been borne with equanimity and even cheerfulness, by disciples of Christ. Patience disarms affliction. If the patience were perfect, the suffering would be annihilated, as to its effect on happiness. The reason why true Christians sometimes endure great distresses before entire relief comes, is not that patience is an insufficient antidote, but that they have not patience enough. And here observe a striking difference between the stoical hardness of a worldly mind, and the sacred endowment which we are endeavouring to recommend. A stout hearted unbeliever will now and then appear absolutely unshrinking under trials, such as bodily pains, calumny, loss of children, hatred and enmity of fellow-creatures; but his shield is insensibility. He has made the surface callous. And in so doing he has stopped up the avenues as well of pleasure as of pain. He has diminished his sorrows without increasing his joys. Now observe how opposite the case of Christ's disciple. He suffers too, and triumphs in suffering, but not by insensibility. He feels the wound. The thrill of a poignant infliction runs through his quick and sentient nerve to the centre of feeling, as nimbly as in the most inconsolable and maddened unbeliever. He is not stupefied; he is not seared; his temperament of genuine humanity is all alive to grief; but it is also alive to joy. And that joy God pours in, so that he glories in tribulation also. Religion, which has made his susceptibilities more tender, opens new access for refined pleasures. For loss, he finds indemnity; and for pain and woe, a spiritual faith and hope, love and joy, which overcome and absorb them. Patience in such an advanced experience is no longer unfeeling acquiescence, but a swallowing up of man's will in the will of God. What abundant reason have we, in this valley of tears and tombs, to strive that patience may have her perfect work!
3. Obedience to the requisition of the text conduces to true greatness of character. Religion, properly understood, is nothing else than a restitution begun, of humanity to its perfect condition.
To be without religion is to be curtailed of the dimensions of man's character. Every state of mind and heart which religion commands is just so far a return to spiritual health. No human soul can be truly great while ignorant of God, alienated from God, opposed to God, slavishly in dread of God, and out of communion with God. Each grace of the Holy Spirit tends to lift man up towards the ideal of humanity. The trials of life bring all men into a certain conflict with adverse circumstances, producing pain. In this conflict many are conquered. But the Christian combatant finds every trial an occasion for bringing out latent reserves of a strength derived from Christ his Head. When he suffers therefore sharply and long, he is only like a soldier going from one battle to another, and waxing hardier and more courageous after each success. Hear how Paul, long tried in this athletic effort, expresses this Christian magnanimity, (1 Cor. ix. 25,) "I therefore run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air." And "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life." There is reason to believe, that no great Christian character can be developed without some severe discipline, that is, without patience, in its large and scriptural sense.
4. Confirmed patience tends to usefulness in the Church. The very reverse is often thought by the sufferer himself, especially if his trial throws him into solitude, poverty, contempt of brethren, weakness of body, pains of old age, or separation from friends. In the chamber of melancholy seclusion how many a soul has mourned that all opportunity of doing any thing for Christ was cut off. But this is a short-sighted and defective conclusion. When God's infinitely wise and holy will is done, then the great end of our creation, and our redemption, and our sanctification is accomplished, so far as we are concerned; whether it be by doing or by suffering. If it were possible for a perfectly sinless angel to be perpetually bathed in sorrow by the will of God, the pure spirit would accept the coming trial with a yielding bliss. And when the perfectly sinless Jesus, who was "very man," sank in griefs which surpass comprehension, he was accomplishing the purposes of the Godhead, and said, "Not my will, but thine be done." Now by sending trials and educing the grace of patience in repeated acts, God fits the soul for labours incalculably beyond every thing it could have effected without this education. And these very pains, and the conduct of a believer under them, becoming visible to bystanders and fellow-servants, as well as to the ungodly themselves, go up as a costly odour, to magnify the grace of the gospel. So that no sermons ever preached so loudly as the transient view of a suffering saint has sometimes done, when in the fiery heart of the hot furnace, he has been seen unhurt, with one like unto the Son of God. (Dan. iii. 25.) In both ways, therefore, by preparing for action, and by exhibiting the glory of grace, patience tends to benefit the Church.