weak, the

• mercy toward w. is divine trait

26:11.5The mor­tal crea­ture must find God. The Cre­ator Son never stops un­til he finds man—the low­est will crea­ture. Be­yond doubt, the Cre­ator Sons and their mor­tal chil­dren are prepar­ing for some fu­ture and un­known uni­verse ser­vice. Both tra­verse the gamut of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verse and so are ed­u­cated and trained for their eter­nal mis­sion. Through­out the uni­verses there is oc­cur­ring this unique blend­ing of the hu­man and the di­vine, the com­min­gling of crea­ture and Cre­ator. Un­think­ing mor­tals have re­ferred to the man­i­fes­ta­tion of di­vine mercy and ten­der­ness, es­pe­cially to­wards the weak and in be­half of the needy, as in­dica­tive of an an­thro­po­mor­phic God. What a mis­take! Rather should such man­i­fes­ta­tions of mercy and for­bear­ance by hu­man be­ings be taken as ev­i­dence that mor­tal man is in­dwelt by the spirit of the liv­ing God; that the crea­ture is, af­ter all, di­vin­ity mo­ti­vated.

• indulge in resolutions; the strong act

48:7.1311. The weak in­dulge in res­o­lu­tions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the con­se­quences God’s.

• have always contended for equal rights

70:9.16The weak and the in­fe­rior have al­ways con­tended for equal rights; they have al­ways in­sisted that the state com­pel the strong and su­pe­rior to sup­ply their wants and oth­er­wise make good those de­fi­cien­cies which all too of­ten are the nat­u­ral re­sult of their own in­dif­fer­ence and in­do­lence.

• should not be allowed to take advantage of “golden rulers”

71:4.16The ap­pear­ance of gen­uine broth­er­hood sig­ni­fies that a so­cial or­der has ar­rived in which all men de­light in bear­ing one an­other’s bur­dens; they ac­tu­ally de­sire to prac­tice the golden rule. But such an ideal so­ci­ety can­not be re­al­ized when ei­ther the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take un­fair and un­holy ad­van­tage of those who are chiefly ac­tu­ated by de­vo­tion to the ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness. In such a sit­u­a­tion only one course is prac­ti­cal: The “golden rulers” may es­tab­lish a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety in which they live ac­cord­ing to their ide­als while main­tain­ing an ad­e­quate de­fense against their be­nighted fel­lows who might seek ei­ther to ex­ploit their pa­cific predilec­tions or to de­stroy their ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

• only brotherhood prevents strong from oppressing w.

71:4.17Ide­al­ism can never sur­vive on an evolv­ing planet if the ide­al­ists in each gen­er­a­tion per­mit them­selves to be ex­ter­mi­nated by the baser or­ders of hu­man­ity. And here is the great test of ide­al­ism: Can an ad­vanced so­ci­ety main­tain that mil­i­tary pre­pared­ness which ren­ders it se­cure from all at­tack by its war-lov­ing neigh­bors with­out yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion to em­ploy this mil­i­tary strength in of­fen­sive op­er­a­tions against other peo­ples for pur­poses of self­ish gain or na­tional ag­gran­dize­ment? Na­tional sur­vival de­mands pre­pared­ness, and re­li­gious ide­al­ism alone can pre­vent the pros­ti­tu­tion of pre­pared­ness into ag­gres­sion. Only love, broth­er­hood, can pre­vent the strong from op­press­ing the weak.

• God gives power to the faint

97:7.8Lis­ten again to the gospel of this new rev­e­la­tion of the God of Salem: “He shall feed his flock like a shep­herd; he shall gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bo­som. He gives power to the faint, and to those who have no might he in­creases strength. Those who wait upon the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings as ea­gles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

• “do you resemble weaklings?”

143:1.5“But who told you that my gospel was in­tended only for slaves and weak­lings? Do you, my cho­sen apos­tles, re­sem­ble weak­lings? Did John look like a weak­ling? Do you ob­serve that I am en­slaved by fear? True, the poor and op­pressed of this gen­er­a­tion have the gospel preached to them. The re­li­gions of this world have ne­glected the poor, but my Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons. Be­sides, the poor of this day are the first to heed the call to re­pen­tance and ac­cep­tance of son­ship. The gospel of the king­dom is to be preached to all men—Jew and gen­tile, Greek and Ro­man, rich and poor, free and bond—and equally to young and old, male and fe­male.

• minister to

192:2.2Je­sus then turned to­ward Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you love me?” Pe­ter an­swered, “Lord, you know I love you with all my soul.” Then said Je­sus: “If you love me, Pe­ter, feed my lambs. Do not ne­glect to min­is­ter to the weak, the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel with­out fear or fa­vor; re­mem­ber al­ways that God is no re­specter of per­sons. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you; for­give your fel­low mor­tals even as I have for­given you. Let ex­pe­ri­ence teach you the value of med­i­ta­tion and the power of in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.”