It would not be difficult to fill up the whole tract with an account of those different circumstances of a human creature in which he must exercise this Christian virtue. But those to whom such details would be applicable are the very persons who need no prompter; they know what their distresses are. It is much more important to observe, that there is no kind or degree of suffering which our Heavenly Father ordains, under which we may not exercise patience, and, therefore, as every human being is born to suffer, there is not a single reader to whom this lesson is not important, however much he may think the contrary, in the pride and self-sufficiency of youth, or health, or fortune, or good spirits. And though certain persons in our fastidious generation grow intensely weary, when time is bestowed in sustaining and comforting the broken-hearted--let such know, that _their_ time is coming, and that even if now they have their "good things," and think their "mountain stands strong," they shall yet live to behold the day in which they must have a stock and habit, yea a _grace_ of patience, or sink into extreme despondency, if not despair. In one view the suffering life of many Christians, and those the best, is hard to understand, for it seems at war not only with God's fatherly goodness, but with his gracious covenant. (Read Jer. xii. 12, and Psa. lxxiii.) But we must never lose our hold of two cardinal pillars, the very Jachin and Boaz of our temple: (1) that happiness in this world is not the chief good; the affirming of which is the radical error of all the common public economy, and much of the philanthropy of the day; and (2) that the education, or discipline, or training, or perfecting of a soul is so great and divine a work, that it is worth a lifetime of distress; so that no redeemed saint will look back on the longest sufferings of the present life as more than the scarcely perceptible moment before an eternity of holy delight. Angels look down and see poor sin-wounded creatures fighting against their chief medicine. As has been said, God does not afflict nor grieve the children of men "willingly," arbitrarily, out of any love to see them suffer, or any indifference to their sorrows; but with a wise and definite end, which will be revealed hereafter. The entire process of Christian endurance, pain-bearing, or patience, from beginning to end, in all its connection of parts, is more deeply interesting to one who could read it, than any drama ever enacted on the stage. So it will one day appear, when not only the particular sufferer, but all the company of God's elect in heaven, shall look back and see many a mystery of providence resolved. They will rise to higher admiration of the divine plan, when they shall be instructed why Joseph had his youth oppressed by cruelty, exile and imprisonment; why David was a persecuted fugitive, and a bereaved father; why the apostles were