American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Which is worthier, the music or the libretto? It is hard to say. But this is certain, that perfect music often redeems a prosaic libretto.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
"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
I did not think it necessary to frighten my cousin by telling her why I came away. When a bullet whizzed by me and flattened itself against the brick wall over my head, I thought it was time for me to retreat, which I did with celerity. This is the nearest I have ever been to a battle, and I have never desired to be any nearer. My military ambition is not ardent.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
If the brain is impaired the mind is invariably affected; if, on the other hand, the brain is uninjured, the mental and moral powers will remain unaffected, though the rest of the body may be to all intents and purposes well-nigh dead. It is true that the brain is so closely connected with the nervous system, which pervades the whole body, that any thing which impairs the nerves of the body impairs the brain, and therefore affects the mind; but the general principle, that every other part of the body may be weakened and the mind be left comparatively unimpaired, provided the brain is uninjured, has had many striking illustrations in the history of great mental work achieved by chronic invalids. A very striking illustration of this is afforded by the extraordinary story of John Carter. At the age of twenty-one he fell from the branch of a tree, forty feet in height, and was taken up unconscious. Examination showed a severe injury to the spinal column, effectually disconnecting the brain from the rest of the nervous system, and depriving the body of all power of motion from the neck downward. He soon recovered consciousness, but never moved a limb again. But his brain, and with it the powers of his mind and spirit, were unimpaired. From being ungodly and ignorant, he became both devout and intelligent, a great reader, and soon learned to write, to draw, and even to paint, holding the pencil or the camel's hair brush between his teeth, enlarging or reducing the copies before him with great artistic skill and perfect success. He lived in this condition for fourteen years, his whole body from the neck downward being paralyzed and helpless, while his mind and spirit were not only uninjured but grew brighter and clearer to the end. It was evident that the accident which had left only the head uninjured had left all the organs of thought and feeling uninjured.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
My faith in miracles rests also on my faith in Christ -- he himself a greater miracle by far than any attributed to him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
Never lie to a child about doctors or medicine or anything else; but if you feel, as some people seem to feel, that life without lying is an impossibility, at least don't lie about the amount of pain likely to result from a surgical procedure, or about the taste of some medicine. If you know that something to be done will hurt, say so; if a mixture to be swallowed is unpleasant, say so. If you deceive a child once in such matters, do not imagine that it will trust you again. You do not deserve trust, and you will not get it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The House and Home: A Practical Book
She has not fallen in love. Love has been a flight, not a fall. She has risen into a new life; in her is born a new experience. Perhaps it has come suddenly, with a rush which has overwhelmed her with its tumultuous surprise. Perhaps it has grown gradually, so gradually that she has been quite unconscious of its advent until it has taken complete possession of her. As the water lily bursts open the moment the sun strikes upon it, and the rose turns from bud to blossom so gradually that the closest observation discerns no movement in the petals, so some souls bloom instantly when love touches them with its sunbeam, and others, unconscious and unobserved, pass from girlhood to womanhood. In either case it is love that works the miracle. She has not known the secret of her own heart. Or if she has known it, she cannot tell it to any one else —no, not even to herself! She only knows that within her is a secret room, wherein is a sacred shrine. But she has not the key; and what is enshrined there she will not permit even herself to know. She is a strange contradiction to herself. She is restless away from him and strangely silent in his presence, or breaks the silence only to be still more strangely voluble. She chides herself for not being herself, and has in truth become or is becoming another self. So one could imagine a green shoot beckoned imperiously by the sunlight, and neither daring to emerge from its familiar life beneath the ground nor able to resist the impulse; or a bird irresistibly called by life, and neither daring to break the egg nor able to remain longer in the prison-house of its infancy.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
Some stories in Scripture, such as the story of Jonah, I think are fiction, never intended by the writer to be taken as history; some, such as the story of the floating axe head and the coin found in a fish's mouth, I regard as folklore, incorporated by an undiscriminating editor in the historical record. Nor do I think it necessary to decide just what measure of accuracy characterizes each separate incident. For my faith in Christ rests, not on the miracles, but on Christ himself. Even as he wrought them he declared them to be but inferior evidences of his divinity.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
There are some metaphysical and abstract arguments for the opinion that the mind, the I within, that controls the body, what the Germans call the ego—which is Latin for I—is simple, not complex; that is, one power operating in different ways and doing different things. I am myself inclined to think that the better opinion; but it is not necessary here to go into this question at all, for what we are going to study is not the mind itself, but human nature, that is, the operations of the mind. And there is no doubt that the operations of the mind are complex. There may be, I am inclined to think there is, but one power, which perceives and thinks and feels and wills; but perceiving and thinking and feeling and willing are very different actions, and it is only with the actions that we have to do.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
We think if we can only take the temptation away from men, men will be virtuous. We are mistaken. Men are made virtuous by confronting temptation.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Carry your daily affairs to God. Ask his guidance in every emergency. Expect discoveries of his will. Let the promise of his help quicken all your faculties. Act for yourself energetically. Judge for yourself thoughtfully. Look unto God trustingly. Then will God both act and judge for you.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Each nature requires its own education. The training which will help the man of undue self-esteem, will hurt the man who has too little. A chief end of life is to grow aright; and no man can grow aright.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
God's child shares his Father's immortality.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
I cannot recall that even the supposedly awful temptations of a city life were temptations to us. Our companions were clean companions, our recreations were clean recreations, the plays we went to were clean plays.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
It is late in the fall. The summer birds have fled southward. The summer residents have fled to their city homes. The mountains have blossomed out in all the brilliance of their autumnal colors; but the transitory glory has gone and they are brown and bare. One little flurry of snow has given us warning of what is coming. The furnace has been put in order; the double windows have been put on; a storm-house has enclosed our porch; a great pile of wood lies up against the stable, giving my boy promise of plenty of exercise during the long winter. And still the summer lingers in these bright and glorious autumnal days. And of them the carpenters and the painters are making much in their work on the new library-hall.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
It is true that the argument for a Creator from the creation is by modern science modified only to be strengthened. The doctrine of a great First Cause gives place to the doctrine of an Eternal and Perpetual Cause; the carpenter conception of creation to the doctrine of the divine immanence. The Roman notion of a human Jupiter, renamed Jehovah, made to dwell in some bright particular star, and holding telephonic communication with the spheres by means of invisible wires which sometimes fail to work, dies, and the old Hebrew conception of a divinity which inhabiteth eternity, and yet dwells in the heart of the contrite and the humble, takes its place.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
Next week I went down to New York and called on the young lady to whom Maurice is engaged. Her home is in New York, or rather it was there; for to my thinking a wife's home is always with her husband; and I never like to hear a wife talking of "going home" as though home could be anywhere else than where her husband and her children are. Maurice and Helen were to be married two weeks from the following Friday, for Maurice proposed to postpone their wedding trip till his next summer's vacation; and Helen, like the dear, sensible girl she is, very readily agreed to that plan. In fact I believe she proposed it. She had some shopping to do before the wedding, and I had some to do on my own account, and we went together. I invented a plan of refurnishing my parlor. I am afraid I told some fibs, or at least came dreadfully near it. I told Helen I wanted her to help me select the carpet; and though she had no time to spare, she was very good-natured, and did spare the time. We ladies had agreed-not without some dissent-to get a Brussels for the parlor, as the cheapest in the end, and I made Helen select her own pattern, without any suspicion of what she was doing, and incidentally got her taste on other carpets, too, so that really she selected them herself without knowing it. Deacon Goodsole recommended me to go for furniture to Mr. Kabbinett, a German friend of his, and Mrs. Goodsole and I found there a very nice parlor set, in green rep, made of imitation rosewood, which he said would wear about as well as the genuine article, and which we both agreed looked nearly as well. We would rather have bought the real rosewood, but that we could not afford. Mr. Kabbinett made us a liberal discount because we were buying for a parsonage. We got an extension table and chairs for the dining-room, (but we had to omit a side-board for the present), and a very pretty oak set for the chamber. We did not buy anything but a carpet for the library, for Mr. Laicus said no one could furnish a student's library for him. He must furnish it for himself.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Nothing is trivial to God which is of consequence to us. He is not so absorbed with the affairs of state that he can give no time or thought to the minor concerns of his children's life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Self-esteem is sometimes popularly confounded with approbativeness; it is in actual experience more commonly the antidote thereto. Approbativeness leads us to desire the approbation of others; self-esteem leads us to desire our own. Approbativeness asks what will others think of us; self-esteem, what shall we think of ourselves. Self-esteem tends to give its possessor independence of thought, individuality of action; to make him forceful and vigorous. It is to be found in nearly all born leaders, whether of thought or of action. Its normal and natural exercise produces self-reliance and enforces courage. If it is not excessive, it is a consciousness of power and adds to real strength of character. If it is excessive, it is an imaginary consciousness of power which has no real existence, and is a fatal weakness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
She cannot understand how any woman should not want children, to be her companions and to trust in her, love her, reverence her; children whom she may nurse, protect, teach, guide, govern, mold into manhood and womanhood. To have this possession has been her dream ever since with alternate tenderness and severity she ruled her dolls. The hoped-for hour has come. She welcomes it with a gladsome awe. As she prepares to enter the unknown experience of motherhood, her heart is stirred, but more deeply, with all the glad apprehension with which she entered married life as bride. She goes to that mystic gateway which opens into the infinite beyond, and receives into her keeping God's gift of a little child. She wonders at the Father's confidence in her, wonders that He dares to trust so sacred a task to her care. But one child is not enough. She wishes a brood. The Oriental passion of motherhood possesses her. Another child is given to her, a third, a fourth. They cluster about her, sharing with each other and with her their songs and their sorrows, their toils and their sports. The Holy Family has reappeared again. No old master ever painted such a group; no Raphael ever interpreted, no painter could interpret, her holy gladness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder