3.  ‘Is patient with the bad’ is one of the tributes of praise that is paid in the fine paraphrase to that heart that is full of the same love that is in God.  A patient love to the unjust and the evil is one of the attributes and manifestations of the divine nature, as that nature is seen both in God and in all genuinely godly men.  And, indeed, in no other thing is the divine nature so surely seen in any man as just in his love to and his patience with bad men.  He schools and exercises himself every day to be patient and good to other men as God has been to him.  He remembers when tempted to resentment how God did not resent his evil, but, while he was yet an enemy to God and to godliness, reconciled him to Himself by the death of His Son.  And ever since the godly man saw that, he has tried to reconcile his worst enemies to himself by the death of his impatience and passion toward them, and has more pitied than blamed them, even when their evil was done against himself.  Let God judge, and if it must be, condemn that bad man.  But I am too bad myself to cast a stone at the worst and most injurious of men.  If we so much pity ourselves for our sinful lot, if we have so much compassion on ourselves because of our inherited and unavoidable estate of sin and misery, why do we not share our pity and our compassion with those miserable men who are in an even worse estate than our own?  At any rate, I must not judge them lest I be judged.  I must take care when I say, Forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive them that trespass against me.  Not to seven times must I grudgingly forgive, but ungrudgingly to seventy times seven.  For with what judgment I judge, I shall be judged; and with what measure I mete, it shall be measured to me again.

   ’Love harbours no suspicious thought,
   Is patient to the bad: 
   Grieved when she hears of sins and crimes,
   And in the truth is glad.’

4.  And then, most difficult and most dangerous, but most necessary of all patience, we must learn how to be patient with ourselves.  Every day we hear of miserable men rushing upon death because they can no longer endure themselves and the things they have brought on themselves.  And there are moral suicides who cast off the faith and the hope and the endurance of a Christian man because they are so evil and have lived such an evil life.  We speak of patience with bad men, but there is no man so bad, there is no man among all our enemies who has at all hurt us like that man who is within ourselves.  And to bear patiently what we have brought upon ourselves,—­to endure the inward shame, the self-reproof, the self-contempt bitterer to drink than blood, the lifelong injuries, impoverishment, and disgrace,—­to bear all these patiently and uncomplainingly,—­to acquiesce humbly in the discovery that all this was always in our hearts, and still is in our hearts—­what humility, what patience, what compassion and pity for ourselves