American theologian and author (1835-1922)
It is true that the argument for a Creator from the creation is by modern science modified only to be strengthened. The doctrine of a great First Cause gives place to the doctrine of an Eternal and Perpetual Cause; the carpenter conception of creation to the doctrine of the divine immanence. The Roman notion of a human Jupiter, renamed Jehovah, made to dwell in some bright particular star, and holding telephonic communication with the spheres by means of invisible wires which sometimes fail to work, dies, and the old Hebrew conception of a divinity which inhabiteth eternity, and yet dwells in the heart of the contrite and the humble, takes its place.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
There are modern writers on law that may be as valuable as Moses; there are poems of Browning and Tennyson and our own Whittier that are far more pervaded with the Christlike spirit than some on the Hebrew Psalmody. But there is no life like the life of Christ.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
The Bible, then, is a unique literature,— peculiar not in the process of its formation, but in the spirit which pervades it. It is a record of the gradual manifestation of God to man and in human experience; in moral laws, perceived by and revealed through Moses, the great lawgiver, and by successors imbued with his spirit and speaking in his name; in the application of moral laws to social conditions by great preachers of righteousness; in human experiences of goodness and godliness, interpreted by great poets and dramatists; and finally consummated in the life of Him who was God manifest in the flesh, in whom the word, before spoken by divers portions and in divers manners, was shown in a spotless character and a perfect life. For beyond this revelation, in His Anointed One, of a God of perfect love abiding in perfect truth and purity, there is nothing conceivable to be revealed concerning Him. Love is the highest life; self-sacrifice is the supremest test of love; to lay down one's life in unappreciated, unrequited service for the unloving, is the highest conceivable form of self-sacrifice. It is not possible, therefore, for the heart of man to conceive that the future can have in store a higher revelation of God's character, or a higher ideal of human character, than that which is afforded in the life and passion of Jesus Christ.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
That is the best sermon, not which is a great pulpit effort, but which is helpful. If, young men, you have preached a sermon and some one comes up to you and says that was a great pulpit effort, hide your head in shame and go home and never write another like it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Christ is the manifestation of God, not of certain attributes of God or certain phases of his administration. There is no justice to be feared in God that was not manifested in Christ; there is no mercy to attract in Christ that is not eternally in God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
It is not possible even to state the doctrine of an atheistic creation without using the language of theism in the statement.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
Besides looking at the house we asked the usual house-hunting questions. Mr. Sinclair was in the city. He wanted to sell because he was going to Europe in the spring to educate his children. He would sell his place for $10,000 or rent it for $800. For the summer? No! for the year. He did not care to rent it for the summer, nor to give possession before fall. Would he rent the furniture? Yes, if one wanted it. But that would be extra. How much land was there? About two acres. Any fruit? Pears, peaches, and the smaller fruits—strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Whereupon Jennie and I bowed ourselves out and went away.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
It is late in the fall. The summer birds have fled southward. The summer residents have fled to their city homes. The mountains have blossomed out in all the brilliance of their autumnal colors; but the transitory glory has gone and they are brown and bare. One little flurry of snow has given us warning of what is coming. The furnace has been put in order; the double windows have been put on; a storm-house has enclosed our porch; a great pile of wood lies up against the stable, giving my boy promise of plenty of exercise during the long winter. And still the summer lingers in these bright and glorious autumnal days. And of them the carpenters and the painters are making much in their work on the new library-hall.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The combination of old and new makes Genoa a city of curious contrasts. Driving through the city, we passed along broad avenues cut through old portions of the city, the hills cut down—for Genoa is built on hills—the valleys filled up, old houses being demolished, new houses going up. We drove in five minutes from new Genoa to old Genoa, and were in streets so narrow that the residents of the upper stories might almost shake hands across the street, and easily can, and I suspect do, carry on gossip with one another; streets bounded by tenements six, eight, or even ten stories in height, the walls ornamented with ancient frescoes, peeping at us from between the articles of the week's wash hung in graceful festoons from the windows like decorations for a festal day. Now we were in a lane so narrow that there was scarce room for our carriage, which must drive on a walk lest it run over some of the children that swarm out of the crowded tenement; now in an avenue so broad as to give abundant room to the trolley line in the center of the avenue without discommoding the carriages; now we were looking up between the tenements at a narrow strip of blue sky overhead, as we might look up from the bottom of a sunless canon in Colorado; now we were looking off from a plaza on the brow of one of the encircling hills upon the city below and the harbor around which the city clusters; now we had as street companions half - dressed children and hard, weary - faced women, with colored kerchiefs for head-gear, and short skirts and sometimes ragged and dirty ones; now we had fine ladies reclining at ease in luxurious carriages as they who had never known either work or care, and theatrically appareled nurses with babies as much overdressed in their fluffy garments as their infantile brothers in the poorer quarters were underdressed in their rags and tatters. And yet in it all a certain picturesqueness of color, and, to the stranger, oddity of fashion, which went far to redeem the one aspect from mere ostentation and the other from mere squalor.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Impressions of a Careless Traveler
All forms of modern skepticism have a common philosophical foundation. Their philosophy denies that we can know any thing except that which we learn through the senses directly, or through conclusions deduced from the senses. We know that there is a sun because we see it; we know approximately its weight and its distance from the earth, because by long processes of reasoning we reach conclusions on those subjects from phenomena which we do see. What we do not thus see, or hear, or touch, or taste, or smell, or thus conclude from what we have seen, or heard, or touched, or tasted, or smelled, is said to belong to the unknown and unknowable. This is the basis of modern skepticism. It is the basis, too, of much of modern theology. It is the secret of the " scientific method." By this method we conclude the existence of an invisible God from the phenomena of life exactly as we conclude the existence of an invisible ether from the phenomena of light. But the God thus deduced is like the ether, only an hypothesis. It is quite legitimate to offer a new hypothesis; and the scientist will be as ready to accept one hypothesis as another, provided it accounts for the phenomena. This philosophy, pursued to its legitimate and logical conclusion, issues in the denial that man is a religious being; or possesses a spiritual nature; or is any thing more than a highly organized and developed animal.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Revelation is unveiling. It is the disclosure of some truth not known before. There may be inspiration without revelation; there may be revelation without inspiration. One may be inspired and yet get no new view of truth; one may get a new view of truth and not be inspired. For the truth may not be inspiring. It may be, indeed, the reverse, — it may be depressing. Inspiration, then, is the influence of one spirit — and especially of the Divine Spirit — upon other spirits. Revelation is the unveiling of truth before not disclosed. To a considerable extent, the Church formerly believed in revelation other than through inspiration. The Christian evolutionist believes in revelation only through inspiration. A simple illustration will perhaps make this clear.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
So the end draws daily nearer, and no one guesses it except herself. Her life is not ebbing away, it is at its flood. She has trained herself in the habit of immortality, the habit of looking, not at the things which are seen and are transitory, but at the things which are not seen and are eternal. Her anticipatory ambitions for her children and her grandchildren are boundless, and the hopes for herself which made radiant the dawn of her life seem dim beside the higher hopes for her loved ones which fill life's eventide with sunshine. Her husband and herself are lovers still; the honeymoon has never set, never even waned; and to his love is added that of those whom God has given to her. She thinks to live naturally is the best preparation for dying peacefully; rarely, therefore, does she allow herself to forecast the coming day. When she does, not with dread but with a solemn gladness she looks forward to emancipation from the irksome bonds of the fettering body and to embarkation for that unknown continent where many colonists are already gathered to give her greeting. Faith, hope, love — these are life. And her faith was never so clear, for her heart was never so pure; her hopes were never so great, for experience has enlarged them; and her love was never so rich, for God, who is love, has been her life Companion.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
This subordination of time and place to comfort and convenience is a part of her quite unconscious and therefore unformulated theory that life is the end and that all household arrangements are means to that end. She therefore believes that things are for folks, not folks for things, and always and instinctively acts on that belief.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
Carry your daily affairs to God. Ask his guidance in every emergency. Expect discoveries of his will. Let the promise of his help quicken all your faculties. Act for yourself energetically. Judge for yourself thoughtfully. Look unto God trustingly. Then will God both act and judge for you.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
As I write there lies before me a letter from my late pastor. He wants to borrow $300 for a few weeks. His Board of Trustees are thus much behind-hand in the first quarter's payment. He has not the means to pay his rent. The duty of the Board in such a case is very evident. The very least they can do is to share in providing temporarily for the exigency. The very most which a mean Board could do would be to ask the minister to unite with them in paying up the deficiency. In fact, he who is least able to do it has to carry it all. Nobody else will trust the church. He has to trust it for hundreds of dollars. And then when his grocer and his landlord and his tailor go unpaid, men shrug their shoulders and say, pityingly, "Oh! he's a minister, he is not trained to business habits." And the world looks on in wonder and in silent contempt to see the Christian Church carrying on its business in a manner the flagrant dishonesty of which would close the doors of any bank, deprive any insurance company of its charter, and drive any broker in Wall street from the Brokers' Board.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The power that is to redeem him must be a power working within, not without.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
The most beautiful statue that Powers ever chiseled does not compare for grace and beauty with the Divine model. The same mystic element of life is wanting.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
A murder had been committed in New Jersey. A man was arrested, tried, convicted, and executed for the murder. In his dying speech he professed his innocence and charged the murder upon another man. This speech the "Times" reported. For publishing that report the man so accused brought a libel suit against the "Times." It was referred to me to ascertain what were the facts in the case and what probability there was in the charge. The result of my amateur detective work was my own conviction that, on the one hand, the charge could not be proved true, and, on the other hand, it was not wholly improbable. When the case came on for trial, the results of my inquiries were given to the jury, for the double purpose of proving that there was no malice in the publication, and that the plaintiff was so under a shadow from other circumstances that this publication could not have been a great injury to his already damaged reputation. My brother then moved to dismiss the complaint, on the ground that long-continued tradition as well as public policy justified the practice of allowing the condemned to make a speech upon the scaffold, and now that the public were no longer admitted to witness the execution, the same policy justified the press in giving that speech to the public. The question was new. The Judge reserved its determination for the opinion of the three judges at the General Term, and directed the jury to render a verdict subject to that opinion. The jury assessed the damage at six cents, and the plaintiff pursued the case no further.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
Jesus Christ did not come into the world merely to be a spectacle, merely to show us who and what God is, and then depart and leave us where we were before. "I am the door," He says. A door is to push open and go through. He is the door; through Him God enters into humanity. He is the door; through Him humanity enters into God. He has come into the world in order that we, coming to some knowledge and apprehension of the divine nature, coming to understand what divine justice, divine truth, divine life, divine purity, divine love are, may the better enter into that life and be ourselves filled with all the fullness of God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
He who looks for the worst in men will not be without belief in a personal devil; he who looks for the best in men will not be without faith in a personal God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God