Patience, heavenly patience, under what God inflicts, is more pleasing to him than thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil; which is of itself the all-comprehensive motive to pious submission and endurance. But what is pleasing to God, as the fruit of his Holy Spirit, God will graciously reward. "I know thy works," saith he to Ephesus, "and thy labour and thy patience." "I know thy works," saith he to Thyatira, "and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience." "Because," saith he to Philadelphia, "thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee." "Behold," saith he to Smyrna, "the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life!" May I not add with renewed emphasis the exhortation of our apostle, though it struck strangely on the ear at first, "My brethren, count it all joy, when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this that the trying of your faith worketh patience." O my brother--my sister--more patience will make us more like Christ. What are our sufferings to his! Meditate, step by step, on the degrees of his humiliation, accompanying Him whom your souls love, from point to point of his unexampled sorrows; and thus will you find sin grow more intolerable, and suffering more light. THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Patience, by James W. Alexander