American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Jesus Christ did not manifest all the qualities of God. There is greater manifestation of power in the earthquake and the tornado than was manifested in the stilling of the tempest; greater mechanical skill manifested in the flower than in anything that Christ wrought; greater affluence of beneficence in every annual harvest than in the feeding of five thousand. But the love, the patience, the fidelity, the truth, the long-suffering, the heart of the Infinite and Eternal Energy, comes to its fruition and its manifestation in this one incomparable life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Some stories in Scripture, such as the story of Jonah, I think are fiction, never intended by the writer to be taken as history; some, such as the story of the floating axe head and the coin found in a fish's mouth, I regard as folklore, incorporated by an undiscriminating editor in the historical record. Nor do I think it necessary to decide just what measure of accuracy characterizes each separate incident. For my faith in Christ rests, not on the miracles, but on Christ himself. Even as he wrought them he declared them to be but inferior evidences of his divinity.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
Of self-sacrifice the Cross is the sublimest of all illustrations. It has cost God something to love.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
What has made the Church of Christ what it is to-day? Our struggles? Did we face the persecutions of Nero? Did we flee from the persecuting hordes in the Waldensian valleys? Did we fight the battles with the Duke of Alva on the plains of Netherlands? Did we struggle with hierarchical despotism at Worcester and at Naseby? Did we face the cold and the suffering of New England? Others have struggled for us, and we have taken the fruit of their struggles; and if our posterity are to have a nation worthy of their possession, it will be because in us there is also some hand-to-hand wrestling, some self-denial, some struggle with the forces of corruption and evil in our own time. This is the great general law which Paul has expressed in the declaration, "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now." Vicarious sacrifice is not an episode. It is the universal law of life. Life comes only from life. This is the first proposition. Life-giving costs the life-giver something. That is the second proposition. Pain is travail-pain, birth-pain; and it is a part of the divine order -- that is, of the order of nature -- that the birth of a higher life should always be through the pain of another.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
A Miracle — that is, an extraordinary event arresting attention and awakening wonder, accomplishing some beneficent work, and by its manifestation of a superhuman power serving as a sign of a divine message or messenger — may either be in accordance with human experience or may transcend human experience. The first is as truly a miracle as the second; what constitutes it a miracle is not that it is an event out of the ordinary course of nature, but that it serves effectually as a sign of superhuman power in the accomplishment of a moral end. The two greatest miracles of the Old Testament are not events transcending human experience; they were wrought by what we customarily call natural forces, and in accordance with what we call natural laws. What made them miracles was such an evident connection with a moral end that they served as signs of the directing presence of a moral Person, possessing superhuman power. The first of these miracles was the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, the second the passage of the Red Sea by the children of Israel.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
We think if we can only take the temptation away from men, men will be virtuous. We are mistaken. Men are made virtuous by confronting temptation.
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
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
The word must be spoken in season and out of season.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
What is a Christian? Not a man who is perfectly conformed to the image of Christ, who does all that Christ would have him do, and never does anything that Christ would not have him do (certainly that man would be a Christian if he could be found--but if only that kind of man were a Christian, there are none). A Christian is one who is following after Christ; who is conforming himself to Christ; who is still doing the things he would not do and leaving undone the things he would do; who still has to battle within himself against appetite and pride and corruption, and yet who is making a brave battle.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
For the orthodox, who thought it wrong to go to the theater, there were Barnum's Museum and Christy's Minstrels and Perham's Panorama. Barnum's Museum was situated at the corner of Ann Street and Broadway, opposite the old Astor House, which they are beginning to demolish as I am writing these lines. A band of half a dozen players upon brass instruments occupied a balcony and competed more or less successfully with the noise of the street. Within were all manner of curiosities, real and fictitious, and a little theater where went on some sort of a performance twice a day. It was labeled "Lecture Room," and the legend was current in college that a very orthodox and also a very simpleminded member of my brother's class, after inspecting the curiosities, went into this lecture room, expecting a prayer-meeting, and fled in horror from the spot when the curtain rose and disclosed some dancers or male and female acrobats, I forget which. There was for a little while a passion for panoramas, a kind of moving picture show quite unlike the modern "movies." John Banvard carried this form of exhibition to its climax in his panorama of the Mississippi, which he had painted himself traveling the Mississippi in a skiff for that purpose. The panorama is said to have been three miles long. We sat in our seats as the picture was unrolled before us for an hour and a half or more, and easily imagined ourselves on the deck of a Mississippi steamer watching the shore as we sailed down the river. Christy's Minstrels was a favorite recreation of my father's. I am inclined to think their jokes and conundrums were rather a bore to him; but they had good voices, and their music, though not of the highest kind, was, of its kind, the best. There was no Philharmonic or Symphony Society in those days, though I think the Oratorio Society existed, and there must have been an orchestra to accompany it. But Barnum, who was a great benefactor to his country as well as a great showman, brought Jenny Lind to America, and so set the fashion of importing famous singers to America, which later led on to the Metropolitan Opera.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
How few of us appreciate the fact that a very great deal of physical suffering in after life comes from bad mental training in childhood! I do not mean suffering of an imaginary kind; I mean disease which may entirely ruin a life which might have been of use to the world, and which surely would have been happier but for the lost health. Many a chronic invalid might have preserved his health had he been taught to use his brain properly when a child.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The House and Home: A Practical Book
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
I did not think it necessary to frighten my cousin by telling her why I came away. When a bullet whizzed by me and flattened itself against the brick wall over my head, I thought it was time for me to retreat, which I did with celerity. This is the nearest I have ever been to a battle, and I have never desired to be any nearer. My military ambition is not ardent.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
Theology is the science of religion. It is the result of an attempt made by men to state in an orderly and systematic manner the facts respecting the life of God in the soul of man. It involves intellectual definition of the various forms of consciousness which constitute the religious life. Its relation to religion is the relation of other sciences to the vital phenomena which they endeavor to explain. With the growth of the human intellect there comes a wiser study of life, a better understanding of it, a new definition of its terms, and a new classification of its phenomena. The life does not change, but man's understanding of it changes. There is a new astronomy, though the stars are old; a new botany, though vegetable life is unchanged; a new chemistry, though the constituent elements of the universe are the same. So there is a new theology, though not a new religion. God, sin, repentance, forgiveness, love, remain essentially unchanged, but the definitions of God, sin, repentance, forgiveness, and love are changed from generation to generation. There is as little danger of undermining religion by new definitions of theology as there is of blotting out the stars from the heavens by a new astronomy. But as religion is the life of God in the soul of man, definitions which give to man a clearer and a more intelligible understanding of that life will promote it, and definitions which are, or seem to be, irrational, will tend to impede or impair it. To this extent theology affects the religious life as other sciences do not affect the life with which they have to deal.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Next week I went down to New York and called on the young lady to whom Maurice is engaged. Her home is in New York, or rather it was there; for to my thinking a wife's home is always with her husband; and I never like to hear a wife talking of "going home" as though home could be anywhere else than where her husband and her children are. Maurice and Helen were to be married two weeks from the following Friday, for Maurice proposed to postpone their wedding trip till his next summer's vacation; and Helen, like the dear, sensible girl she is, very readily agreed to that plan. In fact I believe she proposed it. She had some shopping to do before the wedding, and I had some to do on my own account, and we went together. I invented a plan of refurnishing my parlor. I am afraid I told some fibs, or at least came dreadfully near it. I told Helen I wanted her to help me select the carpet; and though she had no time to spare, she was very good-natured, and did spare the time. We ladies had agreed-not without some dissent-to get a Brussels for the parlor, as the cheapest in the end, and I made Helen select her own pattern, without any suspicion of what she was doing, and incidentally got her taste on other carpets, too, so that really she selected them herself without knowing it. Deacon Goodsole recommended me to go for furniture to Mr. Kabbinett, a German friend of his, and Mrs. Goodsole and I found there a very nice parlor set, in green rep, made of imitation rosewood, which he said would wear about as well as the genuine article, and which we both agreed looked nearly as well. We would rather have bought the real rosewood, but that we could not afford. Mr. Kabbinett made us a liberal discount because we were buying for a parsonage. We got an extension table and chairs for the dining-room, (but we had to omit a side-board for the present), and a very pretty oak set for the chamber. We did not buy anything but a carpet for the library, for Mr. Laicus said no one could furnish a student's library for him. He must furnish it for himself.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
A pretty little cottage-white, with green blinds; the neatest of neat fences; a little platform in front of the sidewalk with three steps leading up to it,—a convenient method of access to our high country carriages; two posts before the gate neatly turned, a trellis over the front door with a climbing rose which has mounted half way to the top and stopped to rest for the season; another trellis fan-shaped behind which a path disappears that leads round to the kitchen door; the tastiest of little bird houses, now tenantless and desolate,—this is the picture that meets my eye and assures me that Mr. Gear is a man both of taste and thrift, as indeed he is.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
God conducts all his campaigns upon analogous principles. The emancipation of mankind is always wrought out by a forlorn hope. God is not on the side of the strong battalions. In moral conflicts, at least, numbers never count. Only the few have faith in God and courage in his cause; and faith and courage alone gain the battle.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
There were no such bachelor apartments in New York City in 1850 as now encourage bachelordom and discourage marriage. There were few clubs. We three brothers generally lived in hired rooms and took our meals at restaurants. Once we tried breakfasting in our own rooms, but that was expensively luxurious. Once we tried to economize by boarding in Brooklyn. Going home one late afternoon, I found a sheriff in charge, the landlady having failed and her property having been taken in execution. We had some difficulty in persuading the sheriff to let us take our property, which consisted of clothing and some books. Perhaps the fact that my brother Vaughan had at that time been admitted to the bar and had some knowledge of the law helped to overcome the reluctance of the sheriff. We camped out that night in my brother's office. I slept, I remember, on the floor, with a Webster's Dictionary for a pillow. That was our last attempt at boarding. After my brother Vaughan graduated and went to Harvard Law School and before he came back and was admitted to the bar, my brother Austin and I occupied together a room so small that when our turn-up bedstead was opened out on the floor the entrance to the room was completely blocked. One night about Christmas, my brother Vaughan arriving unexpectedly late at night, we had to make up the bed in order to let him in.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
It is not easy to formulate in a sentence that change which has come over my thought, and, as I believe, the thought of the present generation, respecting God's relation to man. Shall I say we are coming to think of God as dwelling in man rather than as operating on man from without? This might be taken to imply a denial or at least a doubt of God's personality, and of man's personality as distinct and separate from God's, and this implication I vigorously and energetically disavow. If I speak of God in man, it is as one speaks of one soul working within another, so that the two personalities intermingle, the two lives are intertwined. Perhaps it will be better to attempt no formal statement of the general principle; rather to illustrate it by special applications.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God