SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 12, 11 May 1912, Page 2

SUNDAY COLUMN.

GROWTH IN PATIENCE

(By Rev. ,1. A. Clapperton, M.A.) Gentle sufferance is accepted now as one of the highest beauties of moral character. In Christ’s maind it Is a kingly qualification ; “Blessed are the meek,for they shall inherit the earth.” But this willingness to suffer is a matter of moral and spiritual education. Children object to pain, and Christians need to learn to suffer. On the road to perfect kingly patience we pass the four following stages: (!) wo learn to honour trouble as Christ did; (2) wo

learn to listen more attentively to the voice of Faith; (3) we learn to love men more and so to suffer for them; (1) We learn to love God more and so accept His will with a smile. Active men naturally object to sickness, as being an interference with their life-work. They have not learned the powerful lesson given by St. Paul to the persecuted’ehristians at Philippi : “Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” Given to suffer. A gift is a deed of kindness. Suffering is a gift; and more than that —a divine gift. It is given you by God to suffer. It is a clear vocation of every Christian to suffer. This is the truth that St. Paul felt ins earliest converts needed most of all to learn. When ho retraced his stops to the fastnesses of Asia Minor he felt it incumbent to exhort the newly-baptised Christmas, “That we must through .much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” For the true consistent Christian there is no escape from suffering. But our Lord went farther, and taught that in many cases suffering is the highest vocation. To most men death is the supreme form of suffering. To die well, therefore, is the supreme method of glorifying God. It is not to he viewed as a fateful interference with our mission but rather as its crown. “Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life.” But we die once only. Our call to suffer is for every day. “If any man”—note how universal is the rule—“if any man will come after me, let him deny himself,'and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Shall wo say of the daily occurrences which thwart us: “It is God’s gift, is this hitter cross; I will take it up bravely and carry it for the sake of Christ.” Despise not little crosses; for when taken up and lovingly accepted at the Lord’s hand, they have made men meet for a great crown, even the crown of righteousness and life, which the Lord hath promised to them that Jove Him. The “must” of faith makes it easy to bear the varied afflictions of .life. They puzzle us, hut honest faith says, “Love must ho at the back of them all.” The famous Bishop Berkeley describes the thought which occurred to him of the inscrutable schemes of Providence, as be saw in St. Paul’s Cathedral a fly-moving on one of the pillars. “It requires,” he says, “some comprehension in the eye of an intelligent spectator to take in at one view the various parts of the building, in order to observe this symmetry and design. But to the fly, whose prospect was confined to a little part of one of the stones of a simple pillar, the joint beauty of the whole, or the distinct use of its parts, was inconspicuous. To that limited view the email irregularities on the surface of the hewn stone seem to be so many deformed rocks and precipices.” That fly on the pillar, of which the philosopher spoke, is the likeness of each human being as ho creeps along the vast pillars which support the universe. The sorrow which appears to ns nothing hut a yawning chasm or hideous precipice may turn out to lip but the joining or cement which hinds together the fragments of our existence into a solid whole. The dark and crooked path "in which we have to-, grope our way in doubt and fear, may he but the curve which, in the full daylight of a brighter world, will appear to be the necessary finish of some choice ornament, the inevitable span of some majestic arch. Garibaldi willingly submitted to hardships and perils in freeing Italy from its yoke. His love for his people made suffering easy and patience a delight. Someone has written a beautiful parable of the same truth. “Men arc cruel,” said'the fox-glove. “Children’ play with us, and blow us out till our sides burst. Young,men mow us down with their sticks. Nobody loves us. Tell me, violet, why they love yon.” “I don’t know,” said the violet, raising her lowly head. “Except it is because I can’t help loving men. I do all I can for them. When a thoughtless being crushes me 1 don’t complain. With my dying breath I try to smell as sweetly as I can.” When human hearts arc thus bent upon giving gladness to others it becomes their delight to suffer for their sakes. The best of all helps for increasing one’s patience is to love the King of Kings. A remarkable incident is related, I believe, ol Lokman, an Easto n philosopher, who was also a slave. His master gave him a nauseous herb to eat one day, and he cheerfully ate it. The master asked how he could possibly swallow it, and he said "in reply, that be had received so many kind gifts from bis master that he could not refuse the last one because it had a bitter taste. If a slave acted so trustfully to an earthly master, much more ought we to accept the mysterious discipline of Him who has given us all tilings richly to enjoy. He givetb liberally and upbraideth not. If we pray for a richer love, to God and do all in our power to enhance that Jove, we shall find it immeasurably easier to accept all manner of strange gifts and experiences from His bands. Wo shall be able to submit to deprivation with the serenity that John Milton displayed when blindness fell upon him. He said, ‘I do not think my God is displeased with me. I acquiesce without a murmur in His sacred dispensations. It is through His grace that 1 find my friends, even more than before, kind and affectionate towards me. Though you count it miserable that I am fallen in vuglar estimation into the class of the blind and hehffess, my hope is that 1 am thus brought nearer to the mercy and protection of the universal Father.’ This in strictly true, for ‘Whom the Lord invetb, He chasteneth,’ and ‘Like as a father pitioth His children so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.”