Joseph Barber Lightfoot Quotations

Yes, forget your weakness, whatever that weakness may be. It is egotism, it is selfishness after. all, for it is a dwelling on self. Forget your weakness; and remember your strength.

Try to help others. Consult their weaknesses, relieve their maladies; strive to raise them up, and by so doing you will most effectually raise yourself up also.

Eternal truth, eternal righteousness, eternal love; these only can triumph, for these only can endure.

Plant thy foot firmly in the prints which His foot has made before thee.

There is no persuasiveness more effectual than the transparency of a single heart, of a sincere life.

The future is hidden by a dark impenetrable veil, and yet we struggle to pierce through it.

The success and the failure are not my concern, but His.

This is God's work. Therefore it must be triumphant. There is no place for misgiving or despondency.

Not only must the message be correctly delivered, but the messenger himself must be such as to recommend it to acceptance.

I will not be discouraged by failure; I will not be elated by success.

Absolve me, teach me, purify me, strengthen me: take me to Thyself, that I may be Thine and Thine only.

God is the last link of the chain, but He is the first also.

So then, when I speak to you, I speak to myself. If I seem to warn or to rebuke you, it is not so much you, as myself, to whom the warning or the rebuke is addressed.

There will be no misgiving, no shrinking back, no calculation of overpowering odds, no terror of possible consequences, if you frankly accept the gift which God offers you tomorrow.

This fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom. This consciousness of sin is the straight pathway to heaven.

To make your people understand what righteousness is, this must be the basis of all your teaching.

God did not give you the spirit of cowardice.

God helping me, I will help my brothers and sisters in Christ, because they are my brothers and sisters.

If you are apostles at all, you are apostles, not of men, nor by man. Your sufficiency is of God.

It is strange to reflect how much energy is thrown away in attempting to know the unknowable.

So then put away, relentlessly away, all thought of the results. You cannot control them.

The Church in England is the Church of England.

The tillage of the soil occupies the vast majority of those who work for their own bread.

You will bear a commission from God, for you have received a call from God.

But on the other hand, while disclaiming any change in my opinions, I desire equally to disclaim the representations of those opinions which have been put forward in some quarters.

God gave you not a spirit of faithlessness, not a spirit of despair.

But there is another danger besetting your path. I mean the error of regarding your own capacities instead of your work, of putting self-consciousness in place of God.

We do not realise that we are children of eternity. If we did, then success would be no success, and failure would be no failure to us.

Words contract a significance which clings to them long after the condition of things to which they owe it has passed away.

Yes, God is the end of your work, but He is the beginning also.