American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Perhaps the lack of the parish is quite as painfully felt in other departments as in the pulpit. The Church is without a head. It flounders about like a headless chicken; excuse the homely simile, which has nothing but truth to commend it. When Mrs. Beale died last week, we had to send to Wheatensville to get a minister to attend the funeral. When Sallie D. was married she sent there, too, for a minister. He was out of town, and the ceremony came near being delayed a week for want of him. The prayer-meeting lags. Little coldnesses between church members break out into open quarrels. There is no one to weld the dissevered members. Poor old Mother Lang, who has not left her bed for five years, laments bitterly her loss, and asks me every time I call to see her, "When will you get a pastor?" The Young People's Association begins to droop. Even the Sunday-school shows signs of friction, though Deacon Goodsole succeeds in keeping it in tolerably good running order by his imperturbable good humor. One advantage we have gained by this interregnum-only one. Even Mr. Hardcap is convinced that pastoral labors are not so unimportant as he had imagined.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Stop a minute. I may as well say here that this book is written in confidence. It is personal. It deals with the interior history of a very respectable church and some most respectable families. It contains a great deal that is not proper to be communicated to the public. The reader will please bear this in mind. Whatever I say, particularly what I am going to say now, is confidential. Don't mention it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
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
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
New joys usurp the old ones in her life. She did enjoy music; now to her the sweetest songs are the lullabies she sings to her own babe. She did enjoy literature; now the best literature is the stories she reads to her children. No society is to her so delightful as the society which they afford her. Better than any dance she ever shared is it to watch their frolic; the ball-room has no charms that can compete with the nursery. No eloquence thrills her heart as does the language of her children, who speak what is even to their father an unknown tongue.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
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
Brevity is the soul of the prayer-meeting.
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
It is in vain for us to devise schemes by which competition can be put out of civilized life. Competition is the condition of life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
The logical outcome of the Pro-Slavery party was the Southern Confederacy; the logical outcome of the Anti-Slavery party was the Republican party; the logical outcome of the conflict between the two was the Civil War.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
The question has been and will be asked whether he who believes in the evolution of revelation must not believe that spiritual development will not give the Church greater prophets than Israel, and greater apostles than Paul; whether, in short, it is not time to construct a new Bible out of modern literature, which will take the place of the older Bible, composed wholly of Hebrew literature. It might, perhaps, be a sufficient reply, for one in a polemical mood, that there is no objection to the construction of such a Bible, which, when constructed, would have to take its place with the Hebrew Bible in a struggle for existence with a resultant survival of the fittest. Certainly no one who believes in the Bible as a supreme book would fear the challenge. It might be further added that most devout souls do supplement the Bible by other and more modern devotional literature. We nourish our spiritual life, not only on the lyrics of the Hebrew Psalter, but also on those of Faber and Whittier; not only on the stories of Ruth and Esther, but also on that of the Pilgrim's Progress; not only on the Gospel of John and the Epistles of Paul, but also on the Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis and the Holy Living and the Holy Dying by Jeremy Taylor. The spirit of the Bible has run far beyond the confines of that ancient literature; and wherever one finds in spoken or in written word that which clarifies faith, strengthens hope, and enriches love, he is finding a Bible message, whoever interprets it to him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
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
Who would not chose to have been one of God's three hundred? But when he brings us to the Spring of Trembling, how rarely we covet the post of honor. How we shrink from the battle of the present, even while we honor the heroism that courted it in the past. Every era has its battle. God's trumpet calls to-day, as Gideon's did, for recruits. Enter the ranks.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
The sexual passion is essential to the perfection of the race. It repeats and emphasizes the divine command given by God to our first parents: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Without it the family would be impossible.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
The first minister was too old; he would not suit the young folks. The second, just out of the seminary, was too young; the old folks said he had not experience. The third had experience. He had been in a parish three years. He was still young, with the elastic hopes and strong enthusiasm of youth. But he was a bachelor. The people pretty universally declared that the minister should have a wife and a house. The women all said there must be somebody to organize the sewing circles, and to lead the female prayer-meetings. The fourth was married, but he had three or four children. We could not support him. The fifth was a most learned man, who told us the original Greek or Hebrew of his texts, and, morning or evening, never came nearer to America than Rome under Augustus Csar. He was dull. The sixth afforded us a most brilliant pyrotechnic display. He spluttered, and fizzed, and banged, as though Fourth of July himself had taken orders and gone to preaching. The young people were carried away. But the old folks all said he was sensational.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
"The words of Jesus," I continued more slowly than before "have changed the life and character of more than half the world, that half which alone possesses modern civilization, that half with which you and I, Mr. Gear, are most concerned. There was wonderful power in the doctrines of Buddha. But Buddhism has relapsed everywhere into the grossest of idolatries. There is a wonderful wealth of moral truth in the ethics of Confucius. But the ethics of Confucius have not saved the Chinese nation from stagnation and death. There is wonderful life-awaking power in the writings of Plato. But they are hid from the common people in a dead language, and when a Prof. Jowett gives them glorious resurrection in our vernacular, they are still hid from the common people by their subtlety. Every philosopher ought to study Plato. Every scholar may profitably study Buddha and Confucius. But every intelligent American ought to study the life and words of Jesus of Nazareth."
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
All nations and all eras appear also to be gathered here. There are Swiss cottages with overhanging chambers, and Italian villas with flat roofs, and Gothic structures with incipient spires that look as though they had stopped in their childhood and never got their growth, and Grecian temples with rows of wooden imitations of marble pillars of Doric architecture, and one house in which all nations and eras combine—a Grecian porch, a Gothic roof, an Italian L, and a half finished tower of the Elizabethan era, capped with a Moorish dome, the whole approached through the stiffest of all stiff avenues of evergreens, trimmed in the latest French fashion. That is Mr. Wheaton's residence, the millionaire of Wheathedge. I wish I could say he was as Catholic as his dwelling house.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The forgiveness of sins is, in my thinking of it, no longer an exceptional, episodical manifestation of a supernatural grace; it is the revelation and effect of the habit of mind of the Eternal Father toward all his children. The laws of forgiveness are a part of the laws of the Almighty and the All-gracious. It is said that the violation of natural law is never forgiven. It is said that if you put your finger in the candle, it will burn, pray as you will, and if you fall from your horse, you will break a bone, however pious you may be; whether the bone breaks or not depends, not upon your piety, but upon your age. Is it indeed true that there is no forgiveness in natural law? What a strange-looking audience this would be if there were none. The boy cuts his finger and nature begins to heal it; he breaks his arm — nature begins to knit the bone; he burns his finger — nature provides a new skin. Nature, that is, God, implants in man himself the help-giving powers that remove disease; and, in addition, stores the world full of remedies also, so that specifics may be found for almost every disease to which flesh is heir. The laws of healing are wrought into the physical realm; they are a part of the divine economy; and shall we think that He who helps the man to a new skin and to a new bone cares nothing for his moral nature, and will not help him when he has fallen into sin?
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God