American theologian and author (1835-1922)
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
Man is not only the supreme result of evolution thus far, — he is the final result of evolution; there is nothing beyond him. If one asks, How do we know that there may not be something inconceivable to us beyond? the answer is, We cannot know; but in our attempt to unriddle the enigma of the universe we must think with our faculties and be governed by our limitations, and we can conceive nothing higher than man. We can conceive of man infinitely improved; we can conceive of him cultivated, developed, enlarged, enriched, purified; but of anything essentially higher than man — no. Nothing can be conceived higher than to think, to will, to love. If we look back along the pages of history, these two truths we have learned from the universe: first, that all its processes have been for the purpose of manifesting One who thinks, who wills, who loves; second, that the purpose in the manifestation of this One is the creation of a race of free moral agents, who can themselves think and will and love. The inorganic world existed before the vegetable, and the vegetable world existed before the animal, and the lower animal existed before man, but man exists for nothing beyond. The very topmost round of the ladder has been reached: to know right from wrong, to do the right and eschew the wrong, to understand invisible distinctions, to perceive the invisible world, to struggle toward something higher and yet higher, and yet always to know, to resolve, to love, — this is supreme.
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
Life proceeds from life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Religion is the life of God in the soul of man. Belief in the reality of religion involves belief that God is, and that He stands in some personal relation to man. But it is not an opinion respecting God, nor an opinion respecting His influence in the world of men. It is a personal consciousness of God. It is a human experience, but an experience of relationship with One who transcends humanity. The creed is not religion; the creed is a statement of what certain men think about religion. Worship is not religion; worship is a method of expressing religion. The church is not religion; the church is an organization of men and women, formed for the purpose of promoting religion. Religion precedes creeds, worship, church; that is, the life precedes men's thoughts about the life, men's expression of the life, men's organizations formed to promote the life. Religion may be personal or social; that is, it may be the consciousness of God in the individual soul, or it may be the concurrent consciousness of God in a great number of individuals, producing a social or communal life. In either case it is a life, not an opinion about life. It is not a definition of God, it is fellowship with Him; not a definition of sin, but sorrow because of sin; not a definition of forgiveness, but relief from remorse; not a definition of redemption, but a new and divine life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Faith has not lost its power. The soul still enjoys this privilege of receiving inspiration from above. It is not the special prerogative of a few saints. It is the common right of all. It is not an occasional, exceptional gift. It is constant, continuous, the law of our being. It is not a miracle, interfering with the operations of the human soul. It is the condition of our soul's true life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
God ever does for us more abundantly than we can ask or think. Israel implores only the destruction of the serpents. God undoes their poisonous work.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Among the names which redeem human nature from the dark pall of sin and shame which envelops the race, and give a true interpretation to the divine declaration that God made man in his own image, none is more illustrious than that of Moses. His name is brightest of all the stars that illumine the dark night which, from the days of the Garden of Eden to those of the Garden of Gethsemane, settled over the earth. Notwithstanding the lapse of three thousand years, it is still undimmed by time, which effaces so much that seems to its own age to be glorious, and buries in oblivion so much that is really ignominious. The founder of a great nation, his name will be held in lasting remembrance so long as the promise of God holds good, and the Hebrew race preserves, though scattered to the four quarters of the earth, its sacred records and its national identity. The founder, under God, of those principles of political economy which underlie every free state, his name will be more and more honored as those principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which were the foundation of the Hebrew commonwealth, are more generally recognized and adopted by the voice of mankind. More resplendent even than his inspired genius are that moral courage, that indomitable and unselfish purpose, and that manly yet humble piety, which are far too seldom united to a tenacious ambition and a powerful intellect. Deservedly honored as the greatest of all statesmen, he is yet more to be honored for those sentiments of commingled patriotism and piety, which lead him to reject a life of apparent glory, though real disgrace, for one of seeming ignominy, but real and undying glory.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Reader, if you are out of Christ you are living in the city of Destruction. There is but a hand's-breadth between you and death. But there is deliverance. The mountain of refuge is not far off. A voice, sweeter than that of angels, and far mightier to save, cries out to you, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. It is the voice of the Son of God. The irreparable past he effaces with his blood. The wasted life he makes to bloom again. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners"—not to teach, not to govern, but to save. For he comes not as a pilot to give safe voyage to vessels yet whole and strong; but to those already lying on the rocks and beaten in the angry surf, threatened every moment with engulfment, he conies, to succor, to rescue, to save. There is death in delay. There is safety only in the Savior's arms. "Haste thee; escape thither."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the most extraordinary in the Old Testament. It is singularly attested by the imperishable witness of the mountains and the sea. Skepticism may scout at the plagues of Egypt; may smile incredulously at the marvelous deliverance of Israel through the Red Sea; may look with ill-concealed pity upon those who, fed daily by God's bounty, believe that God fed the hungry Israelites in the wilderness; may account the stories of the marvels which he wrought in answer to the prayers of Elijah the legends of a romantic age, and reject with ridicule the assertion of the apostle that the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much; it will find nowhere in the Bible a story more extraordinary and intrinsically incredible than that of the destruction of the cities of the plain. Yet to deny this, it must not only impugn the sacred writers, but must also repudiate the traditions of heathen nations reported by secular historians, and refuse to listen to the silent testimony of nature itself. For, until the vision of Ezekiel is fulfilled, and the sacred waters, flowing from God's holy hill, heal the waters of the Salt Sea and give life again to this valley of death—until mercy shall conquer justice in nature as it already has in human experience, this scene of desolation will remain, a terrible witness to the reality of God's justice, and the fearfulness of his judgments.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Among the impulses whose object is a preservation of existence must also be put the love of offspring. So much has been said and written about parental love, about mothers' love especially, that it may seem to the reader doubtful whether this impulse belongs here among the lower animal impulses. But a moment's reflection will convince him that the love of offspring is in its lowest forms a purely animal instinct; seen in the cat's care for her kitten, the hen's for her chickens, the cow's for her calf in every farm-yard; seen also, alas! as a mere blind semi-sensual instinct, in many a home, where the father or mother cannot bear to inflict pain, or thwart a desire, or permit a disappointment, or allow a burden, and so the child grows up, coddled and tended, to be weak and wayward and willful, and often worse. This parental instinct, guided and inspired by the higher nature, is the child's guardian from present evil, and guide into future manhood; but unguided and uninspired, it protects only from pain, which is God's method of discipline, and seeking only happiness, guides often into destruction and misery. It is, too, quite evident that it is necessary for the protection of existence; for the infant, whether of man or animal, is rarely able at first to protect himself; the higher his rank in the scale of being the greater the necessity for protection; and if there were no parental instinct, if there was nothing but a general and distributed sentiment of pity, he would certainly surfer greatly, and would generally die for want of the power in himself of self-protection. The parental instinct endows him with all the faculties and powers of his parent, especially with those of his mother—for in both brutes and men this instinct is almost invariably the strongest in the female—until his own powers have attained sufficient growth to make him able to protect himself.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
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
The Bible is the casket which contains the image of my Master.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
Commerce is a form of warfare.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
No man can be patient who has not strong passions, for patience is passion tamed.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
God is revealing Himself to humanity. He is a Word, always speaking. He speaks through His works; all nature interprets Him to us. He speaks through His prophets; all men who have felt the inspiration of His presence interpret Him to us.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
All the arguments which philosophical theology brings to witness to the divinity and the atoning sacrifice of Christ, however useful as buttresses, are but poor foundation-stones for Christian faith in him. The four Gospels are the best Evidences of Christianity. Christ is his own highest witness. We accept him, not for his credentials, but for himself; not because he is proved to us to be the Son of God, but upon the mere sight of him. Worship is refused him only by those to whom he is not really known. Their eyes are holden that they can not see. I am sure that if any man saw the Jesus that I see, he would fall down before him crying "My Lord and my God." There are many who, like the young man, look up and see only clouds in the horizon. By-and-by the hand of Christ touches their eyes; the prayer of Christ intercedes for them, and with open eyes they behold, in what was before only the Son of the carpenter, the very Son of God. Not all the apostles could by their arguments have convinced the ironhearted centurion. But when he saw that Jesus so cried out and gave up the ghost, he said," Truly this man was the Son of God."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
We rode along in silence. Willie Gear was his father's pride and pet. He was a noble boy. He inherited his mother's tenderness and patience, and with them his father's acute and questioning intellect. He was a curious combination of a natural skeptic and a natural believer. He had welcomed the first step toward converting our Bible-class into a mission Sabbath-school, and had done more than any one else to fill it up with boys from the Mill village. He was a great favorite with them all and their natural leader in village sports and games. There was no such skater or swimmer for his age as Willie Gear, and he was the champion ball-player of the village. But I remember him best as a Sabbath-school scholar. I can see even now his earnest upturned face and his large blue eyes, looking strait into his mother's answering gaze, and drinking in every word she uttered to that mission-class which he had gathered and which she every Sabbath taught. He was not very fortunate in his teacher in our own church Sabbath-school. For he took nothing on trust and his teacher doubted nothing. I can easily imagine how his soul filled with indignation at the thought of Abraham's offering up his only son as a burnt sacrifice, and how with eager questioning he plied his father, unsatisfied himself with the assurances of one who had never experienced a like perplexity, and therefore did not know how to cure it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
You believe in the literal inspiration of the New Testament Scripture. I believe it is a book half legend half history. You believe in the miracles. I believe they are mythical addition of a later date. You believe that Jesus Christ was conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. I believe his birth was as natural as his death was cruel and untimely. You believe that—he was divine. I believe he was a man of like passions as we ourselves are,—a Son of God only as every noble spirit is a spark struck off from the heavenly Original. You believe that he bears our sins upon a tree. I believe that every soul must bear its own burdens. What is there in common between us? What good could it do to you or to me to take Sunday afternoon for a weekly tournament, with the young men from the shop for arbitrators?
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