American theologian and author (1835-1922)
The mother who tries to keep her child away from all temptation simply prepares the boy for a terrible fall when he gets old enough to leave the home. It is not by taking away the bonds, it is by giving strength to the man that he may break the bonds, that he is redeemed. Every man is like a Samson bound by his enemies, and he must acquire the strength within himself to break them.
LYMAN ABBOTT
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The Theology of an Evolutionist
We are not, however, to judge of a truth beforehand by the fruit which we think it will produce. It is the truth which makes free, not any kind of error. It is the truth which sanctifies men, not any kind of falsehood. All truth is safe. All error is dangerous. It is only the truth that the minister is to use. He is never to say, "This is the philosophy that my people are used to and this is the philosophy that I think will do better service, and so, though I do not believe it, I will preach it." Never! It is only the truth he is to use, but he is always to use the truth. Truth is always an instrument.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
To some it seems a profanation to think of God as suffering. To me it is a profanation to think of him as incapable of suffering. Love suffers when the loved one suffers. If God is love, God knows the sorrows as well as the joys of love. If Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, the tears shed at the grave of Lazarus and at the prospective destruction of Jerusalem are divine tears. To me the greatness of the infinite power and skill manifested at the same moment in the most distant star and in our globe by the forth-putting of the same wisdom and power is not so marvelous as the greatness of soul manifested in a sympathy which can share at one and the same time the joys of the wedding and the sorrows of the funeral. But why should I believe his power and his skill are infinite and refuse to believe that his sympathies are infinite? His children crowd about him, some with their gratitude, some with their reproaches, some exultant with victory, some humiliated by their defeats, some joyous, some in tears, some saints with songs and some sinners with hopeless penitence, and he is not distraught. He hears all voices, shares all experiences, ministers to all needs.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
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
Solemn faces do not make sacred hours.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Personality of God
The spirit which in the modern Church has sometimes sought to found Christian faith on signs and wonders appears to me to be almost as much one of unbelief as the spirit which outside the Church denies the miraculous altogether.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
We think that we have gotten rid of idolatry because we no longer worship painted or carved images, as though these where the only idols.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
There is not that readiness and zeal in the work of the church, which I would wish to see. There are many fruitless branches on the tree, Mrs. Laicus, many members of my church who do nothing really to promote its interests. They are not to be found in the Sabbath School; they cannot be induced to participate actively in tract distribution; and they are even not to be depended on in the devotional week-day meetings of the church.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
I hear men talk as though prayer were of no avail unless we believe beforehand with assurance that we were going to receive all for which we asked. It is not true. We are not heard for our much asking, nor for much our believing, but for God's great mercy's sake.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
But the philosopher will also perceive that the doctrine of evolution does not necessarily mean that the geniuses of a later age will transcend those of the earlier ages. The spiritual evolutionist does not believe that man is the mere creature of his circumstances. He does not believe that "the differences between one nation and another, whether in intellect, commerce, art, morals, or general temperament, ultimately depend, not upon any mysterious properties of race, nationality, or any other unknown and unintelligible abstractions, but simply and solely upon the physical circumstances to which they are exposed." He does not deny the reality of character, and the effect of character on life. He does not think that "if W. Shakespeare had died of cholera infantum, another mother at Stratford-upon-Avon would needs have engendered a duplicate copy of him, — just as the same stream of water will reappear, no matter how often you pass a sponge over the leak, so long as the outside level remains the same." All that the believer in evolution and revelation affirms or is called upon by his philosophy to affirm is that spiritual development in the Hebrew race was analogous in its process to the spiritual development to be seen in other peoples. There is one characteristic feature in all such development which calls for greater consideration than I think has yet been given to it. Evolution in the race appears rather in a broadening of capacity to receive than in a creation of capacity to impart. At certain epochs great men appear who, as types, seem never to be surpassed in subsequent generations. But the capacity to understand and appreciate is surpassed in subsequent generations. Greater writers of epic than Homer, greater writers of philosophy than Plato and Aristotle, greater dramatists than Shakespeare, the world has never seen. We are still studying Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, with profit; they are still our teachers. But more people understand them, and understand them better, than in their own time. So, greater interpreters of the divine law than Moses, greater preachers of righteousness and mercy than Amos and Hosea, greater singers of God and the divine life than the authors of the Psalter — let me say, than David, whom I count the greatest of them all — greater interpreters of the Christ life than Paul, never have lived, — perhaps never will live. We do not look for evolution to produce greater poets than Homer, Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare, nor greater teachers of righteousness than Moses, David, Isaiah, and Paul. But the phenomenon which we call inspiration in the realm of religious thought is not more mysterious than the phenomenon which we call genius in the realm of secular thought. Perhaps the best explanation of both is that each is a scintillation of the mind of God in and through the minds of men. Certainly the one is as consistent with theistic evolution as the other. Such men are the instruments of growth; if the reader pleases, the seeds of future life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Vengeance does not satisfy. It sometimes gluts, but it does not satisfy. The duelist, angered by insult or wrong, challenges his enemy to a duel, runs his sword through the body of his opponent, leaves the life-blood oozing out of his arteries, wipes his sword, and walks off in the brightness of the morning. Satisfied? Never! Nemesis follows him; the vision is ever before his eyes; he has taken his vengeance, and the vengeance itself nestles in his heart and breeds future penalty.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
A man is no less a person because he can speak in New York and be heard in Chicago, or press a button in Washington and set machinery in motion in Omaha. Extension of power does not lessen the personality of him who exercises it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
There are three ways of seeing the Riviera— from the sea, from the carriage road, from the train. We have had a little of all three, enough to make comparison possible; and the view from the sea is incomparably the best. The railroad runs along the coast, under the cliffs and often in tunnels through them; one looks from the Riviera upon the sea, but gets only just enough glimpses up the ravines of the beauty of the coast to be tantalizing. The carriage road runs far up on the cliffs, sometimes on the top of the hills. One looks down on the scene of the beauty, with the sea far below; but the distant snow-capped mountains are hid by the intervening hills on the one side, and the precipitous cliffs and terraced hillsides are too much beneath to be adequately seen upon the other. Perhaps it was because my friends had been on the Riviera looking off, and I had been on the deck of a steamer looking on, that their account gave me no conception of yesterday's stately procession of beauty. I do not expect ever to see another such picture gallery.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Impressions of a Careless Traveler
If I am to tell you how to grow old gracefully, I must tell you at the beginning of life; for no man can grow old gracefully unless he begins early.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
A village I have called it. It certainly is neither town nor city. There is a little centre where there is a livery stable, and a country store with the Post Office attached, and a blacksmith shop, and two churches, a Methodist and a Presbyterian, with the promise of a Baptist church in a lecture-room as yet unfinished. This is the old centre; there is another down under the hill where there is a dock, and a railroad station, and a great hotel with a big bar and generally a knot of loungers who evidently do not believe in the water-cure. And between the two there is a constant battle as to which shall be the town. For the rest, there is a road wandering in an aimless way along the hill-side, like a child at play who is going nowhere, and all along this road are scattered every variety of dwelling, big and little, sombre and gay, humble and pretentious, which the mind of man ever conceived of,—and some of which I devoutly trust the mind of man will never again conceive. There are solid substantial Dutch farm-houses, built of unhewn stone, that look as though they were outgrowths of the mountain, which nothing short of an earthquake could disturb; and there are fragile little boxes that look as though they would be swept away, to be seen no more forever, by the first winter's blast that comes tearing up the gap as though the bag of Eolus had just been opened at West Point and the imprisoned winds were off with a whoop for a lark. There are houses in sombre grays with trimmings of the same; and there are houses in every variety of color, including one that is of a light pea-green, with pink trimmings and blue blinds. There are old and venerable houses, that look as though they might have come over with Peter Stuyvesant and been living at Wheathedge ever since; and there are spruce little sprigs of houses that look as though they had just come up from New York to spend a holiday, and did not rightly know what to do with themselves in the country. There are staid and respectable mansions that never move from the even tenor of their ways; and there are houses that change their fashions every season, putting on a new coat of paint every spring; and there is one that dresses itself out in summer with so many flags and streamers that one might imagine Fourth of July lived there.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The sermon was on the words—"Do this in remembrance of me." It was a doctrinal sermon. I am not sure that it might not have been a useful one—in the sixteenth century. It was a sermon against Romanism and Lutheranism and High Church episcopacy. The minister told us what were the various doctrines of the communion. He analyzed them and dismissed them one after another. He showed very conclusively, to us Protestants, that the Romanists are wrong, to us Presbyterians that the Episcopalians are wrong, to us who are open Communionists that the close Communionists are wrong. As there does not happen to be either Romanist, Episcopalian, or close Communionist in our congregation, I cannot say how efficacious his arguments would have been if addressed to any one who was in previous doubt as to his conclusions. Then he proceeded to expound what he termed the rational and Scriptural doctrine of communion. It is, he told us, simply a memorial service. It simply commemorates the past. "As," said he, "every year, the nation gathers to strew flowers upon the graves of its patriot soldiers, so this day the Christian Church gathers to strew with flowers of love and praise the grave of the Captain of our salvation. As in the one act all differences are forgotten, and the nation is one in the sacred presence of death, so in the other, creeds and doctrines vanish, and the Church of Christ appears at the foot of Calvary as one in Christ Jesus."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
"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
Brevity is the soul of the prayer-meeting.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
It is not a bad method, by the way, of judging a sermon to try it and see how it works in actual experiment.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish