“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." Thus we read in the General Epistle of James.
The phrase, "But let patience have her perfect work," does not accord with the false concept of patience, which carries with it the thought of a negative endurance of wrongs and misfortunes rather than the thought of work. By those uninstructed in Christian Science, patience may be regarded as a waiting with calmness and equanimity while one suffers pain, disease, and woe; a submitting with passive acquiescence to the inevitable.
Such a concept of patience might apply to the material belief of existence, and yielding passively to forces greater than oneself might be regarded as sound human philosophy; but it is not Christian Science.
