contiguous verses in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read of His
'enduring contradiction of sinners against Himself,' and 'enduring the
Cross, despising the shame,' in both of which cases we have the verb
employed of which the noun is here used. Then in the Apocalypse we have
such expressions as 'the patience of Christ,' of which John says that he
and his brethren whom he is addressing are 'participators,' and, again,
'thou hast kept the word of my patience.'

So, though unusual, the thought of our text as presented in the amended
version is by no means singular. These things, then, being premised, we
may now look at this petition as a whole.

I. The first thought that it suggests to me is, the home of the heart.

'The Lord direct you _into_ the love of God and the patience of Christ.'
The prayers in this letter with which we have been occupied for some
Sundays present to us Christian perfection under various aspects. But
this we may, perhaps, say is the most comprehensive and condensed of
them all. The Apostle gathers up the whole sum of his desires for his
friends, and presents to us the whole aim of our efforts for ourselves,
in these two things, a steadfast love to God, and a calm endurance of
evil and persistence in duty, unaffected by suffering or by pain. If we
have these two we shall not be far from being what God wishes to see us.

Now the Apostle's thought here, of 'leading us into' these two seems to
suggest the metaphor of a great home with two chambers in it, of which
the inner was entered from the outer. The first room is 'the love of
God,' and the second is 'the patience of Christ.' It comes to the same
thing whether we speak of the heart as dwelling in love, or of love as
dwelling in the heart. The metaphor varies, the substance of the thought
is the same, and that thought is that the heart should be the sphere and
subject of a steadfast, habitual, all-pleasing love, which issues in
unbroken calmness of endurance and persistence of service, in the face
of evil.

Let us look, then, for a moment at these two points. I need not dwell
upon the bare idea of love to God as being the characteristic of the
Christian attitude towards Him, or remind you of how strange and
unexampled a thing it is that all religion should be reduced to this one
fruitful germ, love to the Father in heaven. But it is more to the
purpose for me to point to the constancy, the unbrokenness, the depth,
which the Apostle here desires s