Quotes by Joseph Lightfoot

• Eternal truth, eternal righteousness, eternal love; these only can triumph, for these only can endure.
• This is God's work. Therefore it must be triumphant. There is no place for misgiving or despondency.
• This fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom. This consciousness of sin is the straight pathway to heaven.
• 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.
• There is no persuasiveness more effectual than the transparency of a single heart, of a sincere life.
• Absolve me, teach me, purify me, strengthen me: take me to Thyself, that I may be Thine and Thine only.
• To make your people understand what righteousness is, this must be the basis of all your teaching.
• If you are apostles at all, you are apostles, not of men, nor by man. Your sufficiency is of God.
• The tillage of the soil occupies the vast majority of those who work for their own bread.
• The success and the failure are not my concern, but His.
• The future is hidden by a dark impenetrable veil, and yet we struggle to pierce through it.
• The Church in England is the Church of England.
• 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.
• 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.
• Not only must the message be correctly delivered, but the messenger himself must be such as to recommend it to acceptance.
• 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.
• I will not be discouraged by failure; I will not be elated by success.
• God is the last link of the chain, but He is the first also.
• God helping me, I will help my brothers and sisters in Christ, because they are my brothers and sisters.
• God gave you not a spirit of faithlessness, not a spirit of despair.
• God did not give you the spirit of cowardice.
• 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.
• Words contract a significance which clings to them long after the condition of things to which they owe it has passed away.
• 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.
• 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.
• Yes, God is the end of your work, but He is the beginning also.
• You will bear a commission from God, for you have received a call from God.
• Plant thy foot firmly in the prints which His foot has made before thee.