or Him, when He stands as the leader of all whom
the Father has given unto Him, when all according to His prayer will
be the sharers of His Glory. Then He will be glorified in His saints
for they will bear His image and reflect His glory. What a destiny!
Like Him and with Him. And this future of perfect conformity to the
Lord Jesus Christ and possession of the wonderful inheritance,
which, in its riches we cannot grasp now with out finite minds, is
rapidly approaching. How soon it may burst upon us!

Oh, friends, beloved in the Lord! Do we all enjoy this now in faith?
Is it so that the Lord Jesus Christ becomes daily more real and
precious to us? Do we live in the power of all this?

The Patience of Christ.

"BUT the Lord direct your hearts into the Love of God and into the
_Patience of Christ_" (2 Thess. iii:5). With these words Paul
exhorted the Thessalonian believers. They had many trials and
difficulties. They suffered persecutions and were troubled. False
alarms had affected their patience of hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The inspired exhortation puts before their hearts the Patience of
Christ. Comfort and joy, encouragement and peace, would surely come
to their hearts and strengthen them, if they remembered and entered
into the Patience of Christ.

And who can describe or speak fully and worthily of the Patience of
our blessed Lord! It includes so much. All His moral Glory and
Divine perfections are concealed and revealed in this Word. The word
patience has a wide meaning. It means more than we generally express
by it. Submission, endurance in meekness, waiting in faith,
quietness, contentment, composure, forebearance, suffering in
calmness, calmness in suffering; all and more is contained in the
one word, Patience. And such patience in all its fulness and
perfection the Son of God exhibited in His earthly life. Whenever we
look in the Gospels, we behold this calm, quiet, restful patience.
His whole life here on earth is but a continued record of patience.
In patience His childhood was spent, and when in His twelfth year
the Glory of His Deity flashed forth we read "He went down with
them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them." In patience,
He whose mighty power had called the universe in existence, toiled
on, content in Nazareth, submissive to the Father, till after many
years the day would come, when the work He had come to do should be
begun and finished. To describe that Patience during