American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Even in the highest gifts of his infinite love he hides himself. By the shores of the Sea of Galilee stands the Son of God, surrounded by a throng whose eagerness for his words has led them far from home and shelter. He compassionates them, bids them sit down in companies upon the fresh grass—for it is early spring—then blesses and breaks the two small loaves and five little fishes. But he gives to the disciples to distribute. They are the almoners of his divine bounty. So still he distributes to perishing humanity the bread of life by the hands of his disciples. Father, mother, pastor, friend, from whose hands we have received the bread of life, these are but the young men who give the food their Master has provided. What thanks can ever compensate the kindly counsel of him who first pointed our burdened souls to that Cross at whose feet all burdens of sin and sorrow drop off and roll away? Yet he is but the almoner of God's bounty, the Joseph who gives from the granaries of the great King, the disciple who distributes the bread of life which Christ hath broken, one of the reapers whom God employs to drop in our path that divine food which is unto life eternal.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Out of the mountain fastnesses, and from the shore of the now not distant gulf, there comes creeping up that most fatal and most dreaded foe of man, the insidious serpent. These glide every whither. They creep beneath the tents. They enter in through the apertures of the temporary booths. They glide noiselessly in upon the camps at night. No guard can protect against them; no watch warn of their coming; no weapon ordinarily suffices to slay them. Groundless complaints give place to well-grounded consternation. In every face sits dread enthroned. There is running to and fro; and the cries of the dying, and the bitterer cries of the living, wailing for the dead, resound through the night air. Herbs, and medicines, and all known healing agents are called for and applied—and all in vain. To the terror-stricken people it seems as though this valley was to be their burial-ground, and Aaron was to be accompanied to the land of spirits by the people unto whom he had ministered in life. Driven by fear, Israel, who could not be drawn by gratitude, cry unto God for pardon and for succor. They beseech the intercession of Moses: "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee; pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
We must look for God in Christ not only by reading about Christ, but by endeavoring to be like him. It is only by participation in his life that we can come to an acquaintance with him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
For the man who does not want God of course will not find him; and the man who is busy searching for something else will not find God; and certainly the man who has coined the atrophy of faculty into a philosophy that the Eternal and the Invisible cannot be seen or known, cannot see or know.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
There are certain motive powers which are essential to the support of animal existence. These are the appetites necessary to the support of the individual, and the sexual passion necessary to the support of the race. There still lingers in the Church and in religious teachers a remnant of the old Gnostic philosophy which made all sin to consist in the body, and therefore treated all fleshly appetites and desires as sinful. Men still regard appetite and the sexual desire as sinful, because they lead to so much and so palpable evil, and it must be conceded that there are phrases in the New Testament, especially in Paul's Epistles, which, if taken out of their due order and connection, give some color to this view. But the teaching of the New Testament, including that of Paul, if taken in its entirety, gives no warrant to this false philosophy of human life. On the contrary, Paul explicitly warns the Colossians not to be subject to the rule of this ascetic philosophy of life, "Touch not, taste not, handle not; " and to the Philippians he declares that he knows how to abound as well as how to suffer want. What the Bible condemns is the supremacy of these animal appetites and desires over the intellectual and spiritual nature. They are the lowest of all the impulses, and should be subordinate. When they demand control they are in revolt; when they obtain control the soul is in anarchy. Then the mob has mastery of the palace, and destruction is inevitable.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
As to Gibraltar itself, the whole world is familiar with its portrait, and the portraits are very good. The guide-book had awakened apprehensions about the disagreeable features of landing. "Harbor boats as per tariff affixed, according to distance from shore. If some way out, a bargain is necessary, driven with an air of absolute indifference about going to shore at all." But we were not indifferent, and I do not know how to assume an air of false pretense—hence my apprehensions. In fact, a tug steamed up; we all went on board, and each paid his two shillings for landing and reembarking again. When we reached the dock, I caught the infection of the general folly, and rushed with other passengers for a vehicle. The law of demand and supply was straightway invoked by the cabmen, who demanded $4 for a service for which by their tariff they were entitled to $2. My cabman agreed on $3.25, to which I later added another twenty-five cents because he was so accommodating. I do nob begrudge the money, but I hate to bargain. Another time I would calmly walk up into the town, and, after all the competing passengers had gone, would take a vacant cab at tariff rate, or go without one—that is, if I were alone, or with travelers who were good walkers.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Impressions of a Careless Traveler
The surroundings of the church were no better than the external aspect. The fence was broken down. The cows made common pasture in the field-there is an acre of ground with the church, I believe-till the grass was eaten so close to the ground that even they disdained it. A few trees eked out a miserable existence. Most of them, girdled by cattle, were dead. A few still maintained their "struggle for life," but looked as though they pined for the freedom of the woods again. Within, the church justified the promise of its external condition. The board of trustees are poor. Every man had been permitted to upholster his own pew. Some, without owners, were also without upholstering. In the rest, the only merit was variety. The church looked as though it had clothed itself in a Joseph's coat of many colors; or rather, its robe presented the appearance of poor Joe Sweaten's pantaloons, which are so darned and pieced and mended that no man can guess what the original material was, or whether any of it is left. There was but one redeeming feature-the bouquet upon the pulpit. Every Sunday, Sophie Jowett brought that bouquet. As her father had a large conservatory, the bouquet was rarely missing even in winter. As she has admirable taste it was always beautiful even when the flowers were not rare. She had done her work very quietly, had asked no permission, had consulted with no one. One Sabbath the bouquet appeared upon the pulpit. After that it was never missing, except one Sunday when Miss Sophie was sick, and for three weeks in the Fall, when she was away from home.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
For to laugh is as religious as to weep; and smiles may bring us into the companionship of the Father no less than tears.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
God grants forgiveness, but the method by which he forgives — that is, delivers his children from the death of sin by imparting to them the life of holiness. As the truth of God is revealed in all the teachings of prophets, as the benevolence of God is revealed in all the philanthropies of the humane, so the deeper love of God is revealed in all the sacrificial love of earth's vicarious sufferers. And as Christ is the consummation of the revelation of the truth of God by his teaching, and of the benevolence of God by his service, so is he the consummation of the deeper love of God by his suffering and sacrifice.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Courage is the Christian's coronation. There is no crown without it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
It is further to be remembered that even if the mental and moral powers be regarded as real and separable powers of the mind, they certainly do not act independently of each other. We sometimes hear it said of a man, in criticism of him, that he acted from mixed motives. Every man always acts from mixed motives. His clashing desires act upon each other, and his action is the result not of any one impulse, but of several impulses of unequal force combining together. Man may be compared to a croquet ball upon the lawn; the principal motive to the mallet which gives him a first direction; but the unevenness of the ground and the other balls give new and different directions to his activity, and the final direction which he takes is the sum of all their influences. Only the more confirmed and inveterate miser acts under the impulse of acquisitiveness alone. In nearly all men it is variously modified by self-esteem, approbativeness, conscientiousness, combativeness and destructiveness, benevolence; and the conduct of life is in no two men exactly the same, because in no two men is the sum of their various impulses the same. In unriddling man the student must take account of all these various and often antagonistic forces within him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
There is nothing in the great dome under which we stand, nothing in the light and graceful arches which surround us, nothing in any curious device or cunning mechanism which you shall find within this building, nothing in any lifelike statue, nothing in any exquisitely colored painting, nothing even in the music which has brought us here together, which can compare for beauty or for grandeur, with such a crowd, expectant, eager, happy, as is here — people everywhere. The whole body of the floor filled with reserved seats and black with people. Stairways impassable, turned into tiers of sofas, filled with people. Ladders, tables, boards turned on one side changed suddenly, by temporary cabinet-makers, into settees, covered with people. Galleries railed round with lines of people. People even hanging outside the railing on the stairways, and sitting on the very ornaments of the gallery. People everywhere. Hurrying to and fro in by-passageways; promenading on the balconies; creeping round high up in the dome, on the little platform where the lamplighter goes to light the chandelier; crowding from the hot Palace into the hotter ice cream saloons adjoining, and crowding out again; and finally, having given up all hope of hearing the music, going out in such crowds that, when we leave in the middle of the second part we have to go down a block to get into an omnibus, as it is coming up, in order to obtain a seat.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
Jesus Christ began his ministry by attending a wedding-feast. His first miracle was wrought to prolong its festivities. He repeatedly compared the kingdom of God to a great festival. He accepted all social invitations; declined none. He declared himself that he came eating and drinking, and this was so characteristic of him that his enemies called him a glutton and wine-bibber. He compared j himself to a musician piping in the street for the children to dance. Neither he nor his disciples observed the customary fasts of the church to which they belonged. He was a favorite with the children, and they clustered about him and were willing that he should take them in his arms. His last meeting with his disciples was at a social meal, and with such a social meal he asked them ever to associate his memory.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
As a lawyer I have had some experience dealing with corporations. And I record my deliberate conviction here that of all corporations church corporations are financially the worst; the most loose and dilatory and unconsciously dishonest. I record it as my deliberate conviction, having had some opportunities for knowing, that in the Calvinistic church, of the others I don't pretend to know anything, on the average not one half the ministry get their meagre salaries promptly. This injustice is the greatest and most scandalous feature in the treatment to which the churches subject their ministers. That ministers are subjected to hardships is a matter of no consequence. So are other people. It is the injustice, the absolute and indefensible injustice, the promising to pay their meagre salaries and then not paying even those-the obtaining of their services under false pretences-that I complain of. If I were a minister I never would accept a call without knowing thoroughly the income and the expenditure of the church.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
A wise, right, and true estimate of one's own powers is necessary to their highest and best use. The general who overestimates his forces leads them to defeat; he who underestimates them does not lead them at all.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
It is in an especial degree the tendency of the present age to deal only with tangible truths. Reason is the highpriest of the Nineteenth Century. It knows only the phenomena which the senses report to it. Its philosophy scouts the aphorism of Pascal, " The heart has reasons of its own that the reason knows not of." It tries every teaching by scientific tests; weighs moral truths in the apothecary's scales; sends divine and unseen realities to the chemists to be analyzed and tested.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
My favorite sport from my earliest recollections was trout fishing. There was an occasional trout in my father's brook. Two miles across the hills was a larger and much better brook, with a cascade, at the foot of which was a pool where one might always see a trout, though not always catch him. But the joy of life was Alder Brook, twelve or fifteen miles away. To drive over the hills to this brook, build a rude camp, sleep on boughs, cook our meals, and come back with a hundred brook trout apiece was an experience to look forward to with eagerness and back upon with rejoicing memory.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
Her monument was her home. It grew up quietly, as quietly as a flower grows; and no one knew, she did not know herself, how much she had done to tend and water and train it. Her husband had absolute trust in her. He earned the money, she expended it. And as she put as much thought into her expenditure as he put into his earning, each dollar was doubled in the expending. She had inherited that mysterious faculty which we call taste; and she cultivated it with fidelity. Every home she visited she studied, though always unconsciously, as though it were a museum or an art gallery; and from every visit she brought away some thought which came out of the alembic of her loving imagination, fitted to its appropriate place in her own home. She was too genuine to be an imitator; for imitation is always of kin to falsehood, and she abhorred falsehood. She was patient with everything but a lie. So she never copied in her own home or on her own person what she had seen elsewhere; yet everything she saw elsewhere entered into and helped complete the perfect picture of life which she was always painting with deft fingers in everything, from the honeysuckle which she trained over the door to the bureau in the guest's room, which her designing made a new work of art for every new friend, if it were only by a new nosegay and a change of vases. Putting her own personality into her home, thus making every room and almost every article of furniture speak of her, she had the gift to draw out from every guest his personality and make him at home and so make him his truest and best self.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
We make a great mistake and we do not understand the foundation of our Christian faith, if we regard Christ's life as spent in Palestine and lasting only three short years. The very basis of our Christian discipleship is this: That he rose from the dead, is living, and that here to-day he is doing for us what he did for those of the olden time. He is still here, still pouring into his followers the treasures of his illimitable life. The question is not, What can you do? but, What can you and God together do? Not, What can you do apart from him to win your way to his favor? but, What can you do as the recipient of his favor? Christ in us is the hope of our glory.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
The child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott