American theologian and author (1835-1922)
An untempted soul may be innocent, but cannot be virtuous, for virtue is the choice of right when wrong presses itself upon us and demands our choosing.
LYMAN ABBOTT
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The Theology of an Evolutionist
The true coronation of character is love. The true test of love is self-sacrifice. He knows not how to love who knows not how to suffer for love's sake. The love that costs nothing is worth—what it costs.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah epitomizes the Gospel. Every act in the great, the awful drama of life is here foreshadowed. The analogy is so perfect that we might almost be tempted to believe that this story is a prophetic allegory, did not nature itself witness its historic truthfulness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
What most impressed me about Gibraltar was not Gibraltar but the snow-capped mountains opposite. Africa and mountains! Africa and snow-capped mountains! Of course I had read of the Pillars of Hercules, and knew that Gibraltar had his twin opposite. Of course I knew that all northern Africa was not sandy desert. And yet I could not believe my eyes. No! These are not clouds resting on the top of the hills; they are snow-caps on the mountains. What is it, I wonder, that always so stirs me in the view of mountains? Other landscapes I forget, or carry in my memory only as a blurred photograph. But the mountains—the Camden hills seen from Penobscot Bay, the Mount Desert range seen from the ocean, the White Mountain range seen from Fryeburg, Pike's Peak from Colorado Springs, Mont Blanc from Chamounix, the Langdale Pikes in Westmoreland—shall I ever forget them? Coming to this range of African mountains from the sea, it greets me like an apparition of an old friend in an unexpected place. While the rest of the passengers are crowding the larboard side to watch Gibraltar, I come back again and again to the view of the African mountains on the opposite side.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Impressions of a Careless Traveler
I have feelings, but my pen cannot and will not write feelings; nay, my heart has no mind that can coin them into words.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
There were lawyers who promoted quarrels to get fees. But they were the pariahs of the profession. The best lawyers were peacemakers, and though, of necessity, professional partisans when engaged in litigation, they were generally honorable partisans.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
Whatever may be thought of "woman's sphere," it is certain that its boundaries have been steadily enlarged; that an increased liberty, not only of secular employments and civil rights, but also of social intercourse, has been accorded to her with increasing civilization; and that, so far from losing, either in the delicacy and refinement of her own character, or in the chivalric homage paid to her by man, she has gained in both respects in the same ratio in which she has been freed from the trammels of an unnatural conventionalism, and elevated to a position of real equality with the dominant sex.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
"God is love," says the apostle. We might almost transpose the apothegm, and say "Love is God." That is, it is love which renders him worthy of our worship. It is not the power which made the worlds and allotted them their courses; it is not the wisdom which orders all of life, and suffers not even the minutest detail to escape his notice; it is not even those aesthetic qualities, which have produced in divinely-created forms of beauty the types of all art and all architecture, that render God worthy " to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing." It is that his love is such that nothing seems to him too sacred to be sacrificed to the welfare of others.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Man possesses not merely the power to gather both from the outer and visible and from the inner and invisible world, a power both of sensuous and supersensuous observation; he possesses also a power of classifying and arranging the results of his observation, of observing resemblances and contrasts, and of drawing conclusions from them. This he does by the reflective faculties, or what is in popular language called the reason. Formerly it was supposed that the animals did not possess this power. A more careful and candid observation has brought scientific men to the conclusion that the higher animals—notably the dog, the horse, and the elephant—also reflect, consider, weigh, judge, compare; in a word, reason, though to a very limited extent and within very narrow bounds. The contrast between the animals and man is not that man possesses reflective faculties and the animals do not, but that man possesses apparently an unlimited capacity of developing both these and other faculties, while the limits are very soon reached in the animal; and man possesses the spiritual faculties—the supersensuous faculty of faith and the spiritual impulses of conscience, reverence, and love—in a high degree, while they are either entirely wanting in the brute, or exist only in the most rudimentary forms. For convenience of analysis the reflective faculties may be divided into two, the Logical faculty and the Comparative faculty, or causality and comparison.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Man is equipped with various senses, each of which has its own peculiar function. It can perform that function, and no other. The ear can hear, but it cannot see; the eye can see, but it cannot taste; the palate can taste, but it cannot smell. The body is composite. It is made up of different organs or faculties. The whole man is an orchestra; each organ is a single instrument. If that is broken, or gets out of tune, no other can take its place. Now some persons suppose that the mind is similarly a composite; that it is made up of a variety of faculties and powers; that there is one power or faculty which reasons, another which compares, a third which remembers or recalls, a fourth which imagines, etc. Those who hold this opinion, however, are not agreed as to how many mental faculties or powers there are. Some suppose there are very few, others that there are very many. A very common classification or division of the mind is into three powers or classes of powers: the reason, the sensibilities or feelings, and the will. Others divide these generic classes again into a great variety of reasoning and feeling powers, each confined to its own exercise or function, as the ear to hearing and the eye to seeing.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
When I first came to Wheathedge the Calvary Presbyterian church was externally, to the passer-by, distinguished chiefly for the severe simplicity of its architecture, and the plainness, not to say the homeliness, of its surroundings. It is a long, narrow, wooden structure, as destitute of ornament as Squire Line's old fashioned barn. Its only approximation to architectural display is a square tower surmounted by four tooth-picks pointing heavenward, and encasing the bell. A singular, a mysterious bell that was and is. It expresses all the emotions of the neighborhood. It passes through all the moods and inflections of a hundred hearts. To-day it rings out with soft and sacred tones its call to worship. To-morrow from its watch-tower it sees the crackling flame in some neighboring barn or tenement, and utters, with loud and hurried and anxious voice, its alarm. Anon, heavy with grief, it seems to enter, as a sympathising friend, into the very heart experiences of bereaved and weeping mourners. And when the rolling year brings round Independence day, all the fluctuations of feeling which mature and soften others are forgotten, and it trembles with the excitement of the occasion, and laughs, and shouts, and capers merrily in its homely belfry, as though it were a boy again.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The Bible is the casket which contains the image of my Master.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
No man will find God unless he seeks after God for God's own sake, loves him for himself, and not for the gifts which he may bestow.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
A miracle no longer seems to me a manifestation of extraordinary power, but an extraordinary manifestation of ordinary power. God is always showing himself.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Did Adam fall, six thousand years ago? It is immaterial. Certainly if we found the story of a garden with one fruit by eating which a man would make himself immortal, and with another fruit which would give him a consciousness of good and evil, with a serpent which talked to him, and with a God who walked in the garden and from whom the man attempted to hide, — if we found that in Greek, or Roman, or Hindu, or Norse literature, we should say, That is beautiful fable; what truth can we find in it? And I do not see any reason why, finding it in Hebrew literature, we should not say, That is beautiful fable; what truth is in that fable?
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
It is a poor sort of fatalism which makes men fold their hands and wait for fortune.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
The light that shines from the Old Testament is that of the Star of Bethlehem, which conducts the reader to the manger of his Incarnate Lord. That star I seek to follow.
LYMAN ABBOTT
preface, Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
"I don't believe the Bible is the Word of God. I can't believe it. I don't believe the laws of Moses are any more inspired than the laws of Solon, or the books of Samuel and Kings than the history of Tacitus, or the Psalms of David than the Paradise Lost of Milton, or—you'll think me bold indeed to say so Mr. Laicus," (he was cooler now and spoke more slowly), "the words of Jesus, than the precepts of Confucius or the dialogues of Plato."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
I never fancied the country. Its numerous attractions were no attractions to me. I cannot harness a horse. I am afraid of a cow. I have no fondness for chickens—unless they are tender and well-cooked. Like the man in parable, I cannot dig. I abhor a hoe. I am fond of flowers but not of dirt, and had rather buy them than cultivate them. Of all ambition to get the earliest crop of green peas and half ripe strawberries I am innocent. I like to walk in my neighbor's garden better than to work in my own. I do not drink milk, and I do drink coffee; and I had rather run my risk with the average of city milk than with the average of country coffee. Fresh air is very desirable; but the air on the bleak hills of the Hudson in March is at times a trifle too fresh. The pure snow as it lies on field, and fence, and tree, is beautiful, I confess. But when one goes out to walk, it is convenient to have the sidewalks shoveled.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
In the southeast corner of Palestine, in a basin scooped out of the solid rock by some extraordinary pre-historic convulsion, lie the waters of what is fitly called the Dead Sea. The barren rocks which environ it crowd close to the water's edge. The almost impassable pathway which leads down their precipitous sides has no parallel even among the dangerous passes of the Alps and the Apennines. From the surface of this singular lake there perpetually arises a misty exhalation, as though it were steam from a vast caldron, kept at boiling point by infernal fires below. No fish play in these deadly waters. When now .and then one ventures hither from the Jordan, he pays for his temerity with his life. No birds make here their nests. No fruits flourish along these inhospitable shores, save the apples of Sodom, fair to the eye, but turning to dust and ashes in the hand of him that plucks them. The few miserable men that still make their home in this accursed valley are dwarfed, and stunted, and sickly, as those that live in the shadowy border land that separates life from death.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths