Sickness, its trials and blessings.

  • Maurice, Priscilla, 1810-
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sickness, its trials and blessings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    are apt to look on patience as a natural gift, a thing belonging to some characters, whilst others are wholly without it. We speak of one and another having a patient disposition. Some certainly have more natural patience than others; but it is nothing that Avill stand them in time of need, or of sore conflict. Then it will be found that the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: the cover- ing is narrower than that he can wrap himself in it^ It will stand no such test. In a short illness, the calls for patience are comparatively few; it is when the weary days pass on, one after another, bringing their own petty trials, all unseen by the bystanders, that its full need is felt. Then they who have been accounted or who have counted themselves patient, feel what a false name they have had, what a false thing they have been living on; all the gloss is gone, they see themselves naked, and miserable, and poor, and blind*. Time was, when you may have wondered why the Church prayed for all sufferers, that they may have patience under their suffferings. You may have thought that comfort was the better and the more necessary thing to ask for them. Now, you feel what wonderful knowledge of your need has been shown in that prayer. It is not com- fort that you crave for now, though very thank- * Isa. xxviii. 20. 6 Rev. iii. 17.
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