American theologian and author (1835-1922)
The theology and the science of the past have agreed in assuming what I think the theology and the science of the future will agree in denying, that God sits apart from nature, and that there are natural forces and natural laws which operate independently of Him. Starting from this assumption, of course theology has resisted bitterly every attempt to lessen the number of interventions in the order of nature, because the inevitable result was to lessen the evidence of a Divine presence in the world. Nevertheless, both the religious and the scientific world have come to believe in a greatly lessened number of interventions, until now science has reached with practical unanimity these three conclusions: first, there is but one force, manifesting itself in different forms; second, that this force is never increased or diminished in amount, only varied in form; and third, that this force, if we believe it to be directed to intelligent ends, is sufficient to account for all the phenomena of nature and life, so that there is no reason to believe in any interventions from without. I believe that the theology of the future will frankly and gladly accept these conclusions, instead of resisting them and endeavoring to discover some evidences of interventions constantly lessening in number if not in magnitude. It, too, will affirm that there is only one force, the "Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed." It will affirm that this Infinite and Eternal Energy is never increased or diminished; that, in other words, God, who varies infinitely in His manifestations, varies in no whit in His real life. It will affirm that there are and can be no interventions in this resident force, this Infinite and Eternal Energy, for if there were there would be a second God, superior to the God who resides in the universe and controlling Him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
The question has been and will be asked whether he who believes in the evolution of revelation must not believe that spiritual development will not give the Church greater prophets than Israel, and greater apostles than Paul; whether, in short, it is not time to construct a new Bible out of modern literature, which will take the place of the older Bible, composed wholly of Hebrew literature. It might, perhaps, be a sufficient reply, for one in a polemical mood, that there is no objection to the construction of such a Bible, which, when constructed, would have to take its place with the Hebrew Bible in a struggle for existence with a resultant survival of the fittest. Certainly no one who believes in the Bible as a supreme book would fear the challenge. It might be further added that most devout souls do supplement the Bible by other and more modern devotional literature. We nourish our spiritual life, not only on the lyrics of the Hebrew Psalter, but also on those of Faber and Whittier; not only on the stories of Ruth and Esther, but also on that of the Pilgrim's Progress; not only on the Gospel of John and the Epistles of Paul, but also on the Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis and the Holy Living and the Holy Dying by Jeremy Taylor. The spirit of the Bible has run far beyond the confines of that ancient literature; and wherever one finds in spoken or in written word that which clarifies faith, strengthens hope, and enriches love, he is finding a Bible message, whoever interprets it to him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
God is revealing Himself to humanity. He is a Word, always speaking. He speaks through His works; all nature interprets Him to us. He speaks through His prophets; all men who have felt the inspiration of His presence interpret Him to us.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Immortality does not seem to me to be capable of scientific demonstration. If by immortality we simply mean that those who seem to have died continue to live after death, ghosts, slates, table-tippings, rappings, and such like might, perhaps, afford a scientific demonstration of this not very important fact. But if immortality means a life in the other world that transcends any life in this, a life far beyond any experience here below, a life free from the trammels of the body, a life glorious beyond all imaginings, it is impossible that it should be demonstrated. For such a life lies in the future, and science has to do exclusively with the present and the past. It may anticipate the future, but it can test only what actually is. All that science can do respecting immortality is to look at life from the evolutionary point of view and see what evolution would naturally lead us to anticipate in the future, — death or life. And it appears to me that belief in evolution, so far from weakening faith in immortality, strengthens it, and I might almost say necessitates it. It does not demonstrate immortality, and yet I do not see how one can be a consistent evolutionist and think that "death ends all."
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
"The Psalms of David have supplied the Christian church with its best psalmody for nearly three thousand years," continued I. "They constitute the reservoir from which Luther, and Watts, and Wesley, and Doddridge, and a host of other singers have drawn their inspiration, and in which myriads untold have found the expression of their highest and holiest experiences, myriads who never heard of Homer. They are surely as well worth studying as his noble epics."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The minister entered solemnly at the appointed hour, walked straight to his desk, without a word, a bow, a smile of recognition; read a long hymn, offered a very respectable imitation of the "long prayer," gave out a second hymn, and called on an elder to pray, who always imitated the imitation, and included in his broad sympathies all that his pastor had just prayed for-the Church, the Sabbath-school, the unconverted, backsliders, those in affliction, the President and all those in authority, the (Presbyterian) bishops and other clergy, not forgetting the heathen and the Jews. Then followed a passage of Scripture for a text from the pastor, with a short sermon thereafter. Nor was it always short. I fancied he felt the necessity of occupying the time. It was not unfrequently long enough for a very respectable discourse, if length gives the discourse its respectability. Then we had another prayer from another layman, and then the invariable announcement, "the meeting is now open," and the invariable result, a long, dead pause. In fact, the meeting would not open. Like an oyster, it remained pertinaciously shut. Occasionally some good elder would rise to break the painful silence, by repeating some thought from the previous Sunday's sermon, or by telling some incident or some idea which he had seen in a previous number of "The Christian Union." But as we had all been to church, and as most of us take "The Christian Union," this did not add much to the interest of the meeting. Generally another prayer and hymn, sometimes two, sufficed to fill the hour. The pastor kept his eye on the clock. When the hand pointed to nine he rose for the benediction. And never did a crowd of imprisoned schoolboys show more glad exultation at their release than was generally indicated by these brethren and sisters when the words of benediction dismissed them from their period of irksome restraint. Every man, and every woman, too, found a tongue. We broke up into little knots. A busy hum of many voices replaced the dead silence. The "social meeting" commenced when the "prayer-meeting" ended. This, I think, is a fair portraiture of our prayer-meetings at Wheathedge as they were during our late pastor's presence with us.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The light that shines from the Old Testament is that of the Star of Bethlehem, which conducts the reader to the manger of his Incarnate Lord. That star I seek to follow.
LYMAN ABBOTT
preface, Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Man puts manacles on his fellow-man; God never.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
The artist does not really create; he discovers.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Great Companion
She does not simulate youth, and yet she is young. Her smile is as captivating as ever, her laugh as merry and as contagious; and though she can no longer romp with her juniors, she enjoys a vivacious game by proxy as much as she ever did in person, and teases with the same innocent and admirable coquetry. Age has quieted her body but not sobered her spirit. As the life of youth is still hers, so are all its interests. In truth, they have widened with the widening years. As her children have grown up and entered into their several professions, she has accompanied them. Whatever touches their life touches hers, whatever interests them interests her. If she cannot enter into their fields, she can at least come to the fence and look over. So, disavowing all professional knowledge, she is yet singularly intelligent in medicine, law, journalism, theology, and teaching. Her children, when they come home, find her always a ready pupil, and, often to their surprise, their intellectual comrade. Although infirmity begins to put its limitations on her activities, never did life seem to her to be so large, so varied, so full of ever-broadening interest. She occasionally brings out of the past sacred and stimulating memories. But she does not live in the past. She lives in her children, that is in the present, and in her grandchildren, that is in the future.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
If we trace the history of the moral and spiritual development of the race, we find first and lowest that state of mind in which sin is looked upon with allowance, indifference, unconcern. Men laugh at sin, or even honor it. Their gods are lawless and wicked. The gods of classic Greece and Rome were drunken, hateful, licentious, thieving, lying gods. What was said by Isaiah of the Israelitish nation might have been said of them: they were full of iniquity from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. The Psalmist recognizes this low conception of divinity, when in one of the Psalms he says, "You thought that God was altogether such an one as you are." There are in all our great cities men and even women who are living in this moral state, in whom sin awakens no remorse, to whom the drunkard is only an object of amusement, to whom licentiousness is matter of jest if not of admiration. There have been epochs in human history characterized by this moral state, even late in the Christian era. The literature of England in the reign of Charles the Second is full of illustrations of this death in life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Let us look at this man a little more closely. He begins in a single cell, and passes through the successive stages of different animals. He is successively reptile, bird, fish, vertebrate mammal, and at last becomes man. I do not speak of the race, but of the individual; he comes into what we call life through these successive stages of previous lives. He is born, dwelling in a body; and we do not need the scientist to tell us his subsequent history. That process we easily trace in three successive stages. First, this body is the necessary means for his development. He is developed by the body. He learns through the eye and the ear, the hand and the foot, the activities of the physical organization. Is he blind, one element of his development is cut off; is he deaf, another element; is he deprived of the sense of touch, a third element. With these all gone some development may be carried on, but, speaking generally, it may be said that the body is necessary to his development. By the very discipline he receives through his body his soul is moulded and shaped. He is educated through the physical organization. Then he comes into the second stage, in which this body becomes the necessary instrument of his activity. It is the power by which he operates on the world without. His lungs, his heart, his stomach, keep the machine in order, while the machine is being used to impart to other lives. Because he has hands which are themselves tools, he makes tools, as no handless animal can. Because he has eyes, he can produce color, which otherwise he could not produce. With his tongue he speaks, and communicates his thoughts to others. With his pen he writes, and communicates his life to other lives. His body is the necessary instrument of his activity, — this is the second stage. Finally, in old age, he comes into the third stage, in which the body becomes a hindrance to his development. He still has the same power to perceive truth that he always had, but he has become deaf and cannot hear. He has the same artistic sense that he always had, but he has become blind and cannot see. He has the same burning thoughts with which he was wont to inspire audiences, but his voice has lost its music and its power; he cannot reach the audience. He is still a musician, and the music is in his soul, but the voice is gone; we want to hear him sing no more. His very brain ceases to formulate thought. His soul has outgrown the body. First it was the instrument for development; second, an instrument for usefulness; now it is neither. He has not grown old, but the organ that he used has grown old. Gladstone is not old. Put him in a new body, — what a magnificent statesman he would be! Henry Ward Beecher was not old. Bring him back and put him in a body forty years old, — how his eloquence would again stir the heart of the nation! Men do not grow old; it is the body which grows old, unable to fulfill its function as the servant of the spirit.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
It is common, even in the pulpit, to hear the phrase, "Man has a soul;" and it is scarcely possible to avoid embodying this same thought sometimes in the phrase "man's soul," which is only an abbreviation. This phrase, however, expresses a falsehood. It is not true that man has a soul. Man is a soul. It would be more accurate to say that man has a body. We may say that the body has a soul, or that the soul has a body; as we may say that the ship has a captain, or the captain has a ship; but we ought never to forget that the true man is the mental and spiritual; the body is only the instrument which the mental and the spiritual uses.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
"I don't believe the Bible is the Word of God. I can't believe it. I don't believe the laws of Moses are any more inspired than the laws of Solon, or the books of Samuel and Kings than the history of Tacitus, or the Psalms of David than the Paradise Lost of Milton, or—you'll think me bold indeed to say so Mr. Laicus," (he was cooler now and spoke more slowly), "the words of Jesus, than the precepts of Confucius or the dialogues of Plato."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Of course Christmas itself passed without recognition. I went, as is my wont, with my wife and my prayer-book, to the Episcopal Church. Our Christmas waited till Sunday. A glorious day it was. The sun never shone more brightly. The crisp keenness was gone from the air. The balmy breath of spring was in it. The Church never was so full before and never has been since. The story of its decorations had been spread far and wide, and all Wheathedge flocked to see what the Presbyterians would make of Christmas. The pulpit, the walls, the gallery, the chandelier were festooned with wreaths of living green. A cross-O tempora! O mores!-of cedar and immortelles, stood on the communion table. Over the pulpit were those sublime words of the sublimest of all books, "He shall save His people from their sins." Opposite it, emblazoned on the gallery, was heaven and earth's fitting response to this sublime revelation, "Glory be to God on high." Miss Moore was better than her word. She managed both choir and minister. Both were in the spirit of the occasion. The parson never preached a better sermon than his Christmas meditation. The choir never sung a more joyous song of praise than their Christmas anthem. And before the influence of that morning's service I think the last objection to observing Christmas faded out.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
"I don't believe in no kind of fiction, nohow," said Mr. Hardcap, emphatically. "What we want is facts, Mr. Laicus-hard facts. That's what I was brought up on when I was a boy, and that's what I mean to bring my boys up on."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the most extraordinary in the Old Testament. It is singularly attested by the imperishable witness of the mountains and the sea. Skepticism may scout at the plagues of Egypt; may smile incredulously at the marvelous deliverance of Israel through the Red Sea; may look with ill-concealed pity upon those who, fed daily by God's bounty, believe that God fed the hungry Israelites in the wilderness; may account the stories of the marvels which he wrought in answer to the prayers of Elijah the legends of a romantic age, and reject with ridicule the assertion of the apostle that the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much; it will find nowhere in the Bible a story more extraordinary and intrinsically incredible than that of the destruction of the cities of the plain. Yet to deny this, it must not only impugn the sacred writers, but must also repudiate the traditions of heathen nations reported by secular historians, and refuse to listen to the silent testimony of nature itself. For, until the vision of Ezekiel is fulfilled, and the sacred waters, flowing from God's holy hill, heal the waters of the Salt Sea and give life again to this valley of death—until mercy shall conquer justice in nature as it already has in human experience, this scene of desolation will remain, a terrible witness to the reality of God's justice, and the fearfulness of his judgments.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
God ever does for us more abundantly than we can ask or think. Israel implores only the destruction of the serpents. God undoes their poisonous work.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
All the arguments which philosophical theology brings to witness to the divinity and the atoning sacrifice of Christ, however useful as buttresses, are but poor foundation-stones for Christian faith in him. The four Gospels are the best Evidences of Christianity. Christ is his own highest witness. We accept him, not for his credentials, but for himself; not because he is proved to us to be the Son of God, but upon the mere sight of him. Worship is refused him only by those to whom he is not really known. Their eyes are holden that they can not see. I am sure that if any man saw the Jesus that I see, he would fall down before him crying "My Lord and my God." There are many who, like the young man, look up and see only clouds in the horizon. By-and-by the hand of Christ touches their eyes; the prayer of Christ intercedes for them, and with open eyes they behold, in what was before only the Son of the carpenter, the very Son of God. Not all the apostles could by their arguments have convinced the ironhearted centurion. But when he saw that Jesus so cried out and gave up the ghost, he said," Truly this man was the Son of God."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Whether we know it or not, we are all in a quest after the Great Companion. All study, all art, all music, all literature, all government, all industry are in essence a search after the Infinite.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Great Companion