All Saints.
I. Our text shows us the chief graces which have made the saints what they are: "Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." So then the saint-like graces on which we are invited to gaze are faith and patience. Patience says, "Do not take for granted that you have failed because the result at present seems poor." The end is not yet. Look with suspicion on rapidly won victories. Those master-builders who have been permitted to raise up the grandest edifices, either of personal piety or of extensive reforms, have generally been men who have passed through repeated disappointments, and by failing often have been taught to build circumspectly, to examine the soil, and to lay warily every stone. It is interesting often to see on its secular side the operation of a grand Christian grace. Some who would scorn patience at the hand of a saint may reverence her when she comes from the hand of a statesman. An instructive story has reached us of the most commanding of English Ministers. One day, we are told, the conversation turned on the quality most required in a Prime Minister. One said eloquence, another knowledge, another toil. "No," said the man who bore the burden for seventeen years; "it is patience."
II. Patience and faith are sister-graces. The saints clung to the powers of the world to come. They were not satisfied with what they saw. Faith is still, as it always has been, the salt of the earth, the one thing which prevents mankind from becoming utterly corrupt and keeps open the ladder of communication between God and man. Nor is it always acting on the defensive. The faith of the saints, the firm trust in God which fills the souls of all His true servants, has been the author of all the great achievements which redeem the history of the world from vulgarity and from selfishness. There is nothing impossible for those who believe in Christ, and are content to bide God's time.
H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 71.
Reference: Revelation 14:12; Revelation 14:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxi., No. 1219.