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.