The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1904-01-21
RUN With PATIENCE
OUR REGULAR SUNDAY SERMON
A Strong Discourse On the Christian
Race That Should Be Run With
Patience.

Ba!com Shaw. pastor or the west End
Presbyterian Church Manhattan, preached
Sunday morning before the students or
Princeton University, He took his text 4
from Hebrews kill: Run with patience.
DR.. Shaw said: :,
There is vast difference between walk
ing with patience and running with pa
tience. Both are hard, incalculably hard,
but they are hard in very different ways,
and call for graccs which are exact op-
posites. Walking with patience re-
ouires the grace oi repression. or resIS-
nation. The spirit leaps ahead but the
body must needs lag behind. We want
to run, but We have to walk, and sow
pace when one feels he might make
haste and ought to make haste Is mlSnt-
lily aggravatlng.
Walking with patience is one OF the
Young mans struggles. He wants to get
on and up, with quick speed; buS cir
cumstanccs are holding him back. He has
a mother to support, he works for an IN
app.eciative firm, he lacks the proper In
hucncc, he has no friends at court, he
can command no capital. Therefore, ne
must stay a clerl; when he deserves the
su2erintendency. He must go to business
when he would prefer profession. Creep
ing when You are eager to be leaping-
can you imagine greater tax upon pa
tience than that?
Walking with patience is poverty's prob
lem. TO suffer want when others no more
deserving than you are in affluence, and be
resigned to it, it is the hardest possible
task. That is the bottom cause OF all
our labor neutrality-suspicious. under Inn
itations.
Walking with patience is misfortune's Is
mission. TO be held back by. reverses, dis
abled by sickness, retarded by elrcqm.
stances, felled by a great sorrow, so that
we must walk instead OF run-these are
among the most difficult experiences OF
life, and are these not experiences that
come to all? Who of us, the most pros
porous and fortunate, those whose track
has the fewest up grades upon it-even
the young college man with his own pc
culiar problems to solve and struggle to
meet-who of us does not find frequent
need to cry out with face turned upward:
I want the love that all things sweetly
bear,
Whate'er my Fathers hand may choose
to send.
I want the love that patiently endures
The wrongs that come from earthly toe
or friend.
Some great soul who had evidently
taken a full course in the school OF SUI
fering and won the full diploma of res
ignation, has most aptiy and beautifully
expressed the souls need under such co.,
ditions in these words:
The night is dark, but God, my God,
Is here and in command;
And sure am /, when morning breaks
/ shall be at the land.
And since / know the darkness Is
TO Him as sunniest day,
I'll cast the anchor-patien"c-out,
And wish-but wait for day.
God help us to learn how to walk with
patience! =,
But what about running with patience:
Does it not call for quite another school
ing of ourselves, just as running on tse
athletic fed demands training peculiar
to itself? Even a fast walker Is not nee
essarily good runner. The requirement
in this case is active rather than negative
Here is needed not the grace OF repression,
as in the other case, but OF cultivation,
of application or concentration rather than
OF resignation. In walking with patience,
the weights and the brakes both must be
appIied in order to hold the spirit back and
keep it ayace with the body. But to run
with patience the weights need to be lalo
aside and the brakes removed that the IN
ner NAV keen abreast with the outward
that our ambitions, our hopes, cur aims
NAV Ay forward toward the goal, nor,
as the line of the old hymn runs, "tire
amid the heavenly road" :,
The very pace OF the runner Is ltseLi
the foe of patience. 1t calls, seemingly
for impetuousity, and the more lmpetu
Gus the runner, we are accustomed to think
the better. Its certain effect is to heat the
blood and fire the nerves. Behold the
athlete with every muscle taught. every
line of his face hard set, his eye intense
and eager, the appiauding crowd urging
him on! How can he be poiseful and
self-controlled? Indeed, patience. would
seem impossible, and impatienee the very
price of the prize. And yet every ath
fetic man before me knows this Is the talk
of novice. Ii there is anything the run
ner needs it Is self-control, to be able
ito keep his head" as we say, to com
in check at the first and let it out toward
the finish, to keep from being unnerved
by the shouts of the crowd to be equal to
any unforeseen turn the race may take OF
any condition before unreckoned with that
might appear. And does it not always
turn out that running match IS at bot
tom chiefly a question of self-command-
muscle, wind, nerve, mind, yes, and heart
and the winner ever found to be the one
who has run the race with the greatest
patience?
Y Ioung men, tins Is running age, anu
country where, whether you will or not,
YOU must adopt the quickest pace. "Step
lively" the car conductors inelegant com
mand. is characterstieally American,
though it may usually happen in this case
to be spoken by foreigner. All Ameri.
cans are proverbiaiiy in hurry. Even our
kindergarten tots have caught the step,
and from childhood on it gets gradually
faster and faster, until, when young man
reaches maturity, he is on dead run.
Life these days is veritable rush for ex,
istence.
To run, then is an easy thing--it IS the
most natural thing in the world to US. we
have been bred to it; it is instinct, but to
run with patience, to keep the soul calm,
when the body becomes heated and over
taxed, so that the spiritual does not lag
behind the material life. and We grow fe-
verish, sordid, impetuous--ah! this is quite
another thing. Such difficult task is it
that, amid the clamor and tumult Of our
modern life, it Is the rarest thing to find
men with tranquil temperaments, stead
fast, patient, reposeful. Under the strain
and pressure of the times We get irasciblc.
restless. nervous, narrow and shallow OF
soul. Solitude has no longer any congo
niaiity for US, and as DR.. Samuel johnson
declared years ago, when a man cannot
bear Ills own company, does not like TO be:
,1oa. tharo "a, hipr ,vronuo It