ury, and all kinds and all degrees of pain and
suffering, are all so many divinely appointed opportunities afforded us
for the reconquest and recovery of our souls. Sometimes faith is
summoned into the battle-field, sometimes hope, sometimes self-denial,
sometimes prayer, sometimes one grace and sometimes another; but as with
the sound of a trumpet the Captain of our salvation here summons Patience
to the forefront of the fight.

1. To begin with, how much impatience we are all from time to time
guilty of in our family life. Among the very foundations of our family
life how much impatience the husband often exhibits toward the wife, and
the wife toward her husband. Patience is the very last grace they look
forward to having any need of when they are still dreaming about their
married life; but, in too many cases, they have not well entered on that
life, when they find that they need no grace of God so much as just
patience, if the yoke of their new life is not to gall them beyond
endurance. However many good qualities of mind and heart and character
any husband or wife may have, no human being is perfect, and most of us
are very far from being perfect. When therefore, we are closely and
indissolubly joined to another life and another will, it is no wonder
that sometimes the ill-fitting yoke eats into a lifelong sore. We have
all many defects in our manners, in our habits, and in our constitutional
ways of thinking and speaking and acting,--defects that tempt those who
live nearest us to fall into annoyances with us that sometimes deepen
into dislike, and even positive disgust, till it has been seen, in some
extreme cases, that home-life has become a very prison-house, in which
the impatient prisoner chafes and jibs and strikes out as he does nowhere
else. Now, when any unhappy man or woman wakens up to discover how
different life is now to be from what it once promised to become, let
them know that all their past blindness, and precipitancy, and all the
painful results of all that, may yet be made to work together for good.
In your patience with one another, says our Lord, you will make a
conquest of your adverse lot, and of your souls to the bargain. Say to
yourselves, therefore, that perfection, faultlessness, and absolute
satisfaction are not to be found in this world. And say also that since
you have not brought perfection to your side of the house any more than
your partner has to his side, you are not so