American theologian and author (1835-1922)
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
Maurice Mapleson certainly is not what I should call a great preacher. He is not learned. He is not brilliant. He seldom tells us much about ancient Greece or Rome. He preached a sermon on Woman's function in the church, a few Sundays ago. I could not help contrasting it with Dr. Argure's sermon on the same subject. Maurice could not have made a learned editorial or magazine article out of his sermon. He did not even discuss the true interpretation of Paul's exhortations and prohibitions. He talked very simply and plainly of what the women could do here at Wheathedge. He thanked them with unmistakeable sincerity for what they had already done, and made it an incentive to them to do more-more for Christ, not for himself. Jennie says that is the secret of Maurice's success. He is appreciative. He never scolds. He commends his people for what they have done and so incites them to do more. She thinks that praise is a better spur than blame. She always manages her servants on that principle. Perhaps that is the reason why they are not the greatest plague of life to her.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
Cleanliness is itself a virtue. Next to godliness? If she were quite frank with herself, she would probably change the order and say godliness is next to cleanliness. Certainly she would prefer as a visitor a clean sinner to a dirty saint.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
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
God is in all nature; thank God for the scientists, for they are thinking the thoughts of God after him, whether they know it or not. God is in all humanity, and every man is a child of God whom we are to endeavor to bring back to his Father. God is in history, forgiving and redeeming, as Christ was in Palestine, forgiving and redeeming. God is in human experience, inspiring, uplifting, life-giving. Our message to our congregations is not a mere ethical law, not a mere philosophy about God, not a mere reiteration of a traditional creed, not a mere interpretation of the Bible. But through ethics, and philosophy, and the creed, and the Bible, we are to bring this threefold message: the message of science — " We are ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed;" the message of history — "There is a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness;" the message of literature —" Speak to him, for he hears; closer is he than breathing, nearer than hands and feet." "We are all his offspring; he is not far from any one of us; in him we live and move and have our being."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
"Your Bible tells me," said he, "that God wrote his laws with his finger on two tables of stone; that he tried to preserve them from destruction by bidding them be kept in a sacred ark; and that despite his care they were broken in pieces before Moses got down from the mountain top. I believe he writes them impartially in nature and in our hearts, that science interprets them, and that no Moses astonished out of his presence of mind can harm them or break the tablets on which they are engraven."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
But neither painting, literature, music, nor architecture is so impressive as life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Impressions of a Careless Traveler
It seems to me, then, that the relation of nature and the supernatural to Christian thought has undergone a great change in the last half century; and that it is a change which promotes Christian life, because it brings God nearer to us in our Christian thought, and makes religion seem more natural and more real. In the thought of to-day God is not apart from nature and life, but in nature and life; creation is continuous; all events are providential; revelation is progressive; forgiveness is through law, not in violation of it; sacrifice is the divine method of life-giving; incarnation is not consummated until God dwells in all humanity and Jesus Christ is seen to be the first-born among many brethren. Then, when God's work is done, and he is everywhere, — as he is now everywhere but in the hearts of those who will not have him, — when he is in human hearts and lives, as he has been in all nature and in all history, then will come the end, and God will be all and in all.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
She not only loves her children, she respects them. They have wills, tastes, thoughts, judgments of their own, and this is as she wishes it to be. She distinguishes clearly between counsel and command: command must be obeyed; counsel may be disregarded without rebuke and without loss of favor.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
The girlish talk of love and lovers is henceforth stale and commonplace. The cheap jokes of the comic papers on love and its poor counterfeit, flirtation, are a blasphemy. Love-romances and love-poems have lost their charm, so inadequate are they to tell love's true story. She is herself the romance; she is herself the poem.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
Neither man nor woman of the world could long resist the subtle influence of that home; the warmth of its truth and love thawed out the frozen proprieties from impersonated etiquette; and whatever circle of friends sat on the broad piazza in summer, or gathered around the open fire in winter, knew for a time the rare joy of liberty — the liberty of perfect truth and perfect love. Her home was hospitable because her heart was large; and any one was her friend to whom she could minister. But her heart was like the old Jewish Temple— strangers only came into the court of the Gentiles, friends into an inner court; her husband and her children found a court still nearer her heart of hearts; yet even they knew that there was a Holy of Holies which she kept for her God, and they loved and revered her the more for it. So strangely were commingled in her the inclusiveness and the exclusiveness of love, its hospitality and its reserve.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder