"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"
About this Quote
Joseph Barber Lightfoot, a Victorian bishop and renowned New Testament scholar, urges a discipline of service that shapes both giver and recipient. The phrasing moves with deliberate force: try, consult, relieve, strive. Each verb nudges us from vague goodwill toward concrete, attentive action. To consult another’s weaknesses is not to patronize but to listen closely, to study what wounds and limits them so that help fits the person rather than the helper’s vanity. To relieve their maladies extends beyond illness to the social and spiritual afflictions common in Lightfoot’s England, where rapid industrial change left many adrift. Raising others up, then, means empowerment, not dependency.
The closing promise reframes self-improvement. Elevation is not achieved by self-absorption but discovered as the byproduct of compassion. Service enlarges the self by stretching the moral imagination, softening the heart, and disciplining the will. It grants perspective on one’s own strengths and flaws, and it binds the helper into the fabric of a community where dignity is mutual. What we now call the helper’s high has a deeper register here: not a passing glow but a steady formation of character.
Lightfoot’s Christian bearings infuse the line. It echoes the Gospel charge to care for the least of these, yet refuses sentimental charity. The call to strive admits the labor involved. Real help is slow, specific, and sometimes costly. It may require learning, patience, and a willingness to be changed by the encounter. Self-raising sought directly tends to harden into ambition; sought through service, it arrives as a quiet consequence.
Amid a culture that often treats success as a solitary ascent, the sentence offers a counterpath. Attend to frailty, ease burdens, stand others upright. In that work you do not descend; you find your own footing on higher ground.
The closing promise reframes self-improvement. Elevation is not achieved by self-absorption but discovered as the byproduct of compassion. Service enlarges the self by stretching the moral imagination, softening the heart, and disciplining the will. It grants perspective on one’s own strengths and flaws, and it binds the helper into the fabric of a community where dignity is mutual. What we now call the helper’s high has a deeper register here: not a passing glow but a steady formation of character.
Lightfoot’s Christian bearings infuse the line. It echoes the Gospel charge to care for the least of these, yet refuses sentimental charity. The call to strive admits the labor involved. Real help is slow, specific, and sometimes costly. It may require learning, patience, and a willingness to be changed by the encounter. Self-raising sought directly tends to harden into ambition; sought through service, it arrives as a quiet consequence.
Amid a culture that often treats success as a solitary ascent, the sentence offers a counterpath. Attend to frailty, ease burdens, stand others upright. In that work you do not descend; you find your own footing on higher ground.
Quote Details
| Topic | Kindness |
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