God intended man to have all good, but in . . . God’s time; and therefore all disobedience, all sin, consists essentially in breaking out of time. Hence the restoration of order by the Son of God had to be the annulment of that premature snatching at knowledge, the beating down of the hand outstretched toward eternity, the repentant return from a false, swift transfer of eternity to a true, slow confinement in time. . . . Patience [is] the basic constituent of Christianity . . . the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end, not to transcend one’s own limitations, not to
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