On Contentment and Patience
The following excerpts, from Philip Doddridge’s ‘Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,’ describes the Christian graces of contentment and patience.
“The divine philosophy of the blessed Jesus will also teach you ‘a contented temper.’ It will moderate your desires of those worldly enjoyments after which many feel such an insatiable thirst, ever growing with indulgence and success. You will guard against an immoderate care about those things which would lead you into a forgetfulness of your heavenly inheritance.”
“If providence disappoint your undertakings, you will submit; if others be more prosperous, you will not envy them, but rather will be thankful for what God is pleased to bestow upon them, as well as for what he gives you. No unlawful methods will be used to alter your present condition; and whatever it is, you will endeavor to make the best of it, remembering it is what infinite wisdom and goodness have appointed you, and that it is beyond all comparison better than you have deserved; yea, that the very deficiencies and inconveniences of it may conduce to the improvement of your future and complete happiness.”
“With contentment, if you are a disciple of Christ, ‘you will join patience too,’ and ‘in patience will possess your soul.’ Luke 21:19. You cannot indeed be quite insensible either of afflictions or injuries; but your mind will be calm and composed under them, and steady in the prosecution of proper duty, though afflictions press, and though your hopes, your dearest hopes and prospects be delayed.”
“Patience will prevent hasty and rash conclusions, and fortify you against seeking irregular methods of relief; disposing you, in the mean time, till God shall be pleased to appear for you, to go on steadily in the way of your duty; ‘committing yourself to him in well-doing.’ 1 Peter 4:19.”
“You will also be careful that ‘patience may have its perfect work,’ James 1:4, and prevail in proportion to those circumstances which demand its peculiar exercise. For instance, when the successions of evil are long and various, so that ‘deep calls to deep,’ and ‘all God’s waves and billows seem to be going over you,’ one after another, Psalm 42:7; when God touches you in the most tender part; when the reasons of his conduct to you are quite unaccountable; when your natural spirits are weak and decayed; when unlawful methods of redress seem near and easy; still, your reverence for the will of your heavenly Father will carry it against all, and keep you waiting quietly for deliverance in his own time and way.”
Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) was an English congregationalist minister in Northampton. He was an author and hymnwriter whose most famous book, ‘The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,’ was esteemed by following generations and praised by Charles Spurgeon as ‘that holy book.’
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