American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Did you ever consider the difference between a real flower and a wax imitation? The latter may be quite as beautiful. It may deceive you at first. And yet when you discover the deception you are disappointed. "The lack of fragrance," Jennie suggests. No! the flower may be odorless. It is the lack of life. I do not know what there is in that mystic life that should make such a difference. But I am sure that the charm of the flower is in its life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
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 period of which I am writing, 1850-60, is perhaps the most dramatic politically in the history of the country. The Compromise of 1850 was introduced by Henry Clay and supported by Daniel Webster for the purpose of settling the slavery question for all time and taking it out of politics. It had the opposite effect. It fanned the smoldering emblems of popular discontent into a fierce flame of mutual animosity, and proved the precursor of a prolonged and bloody war. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise opened to slavery territory which that Compromise had pledged to freedom, and this repeal intensified in the North a distrust of Southern politicians and their Northern allies. The refusal of the Northern reformer to accept the new agreement was taken in the South as a new declaration of war against slavery, and a new argument for a dissolution of the Union. The Fugitive Slave Law brought the slaveholder into the North in pursuit of his escaping slave, and made vivid and real to the North the slave system which had before been remote and dim. The underground railway, organized for the escape of fugitive slaves to Canada, and the resistance offered to the law, sometimes by protracted legal proceedings, sometimes by mobs led by men of national reputation, intensified the indignation of the South against the North.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
We celebrate on Christmas, not the birth of Santa Claus, the patron saint of the children; not merely the birth of the Christ-child, symbol of all innocent childhood; nor yet alone the birth of the martyr-hero, leader and type of all who have lived and loved and suffered for their race. We celebrate a new unveiling of God to humanity, the dwelling of God in humanity. We celebrate the day when the love of God dawned on the world and the fear of the gods began slowly and sullenly to give way before the coming of the new day. Every year Christmas repeats its message: Fear God no more. He brings liberty to the enslaved, light to the despairing, purer joy to the glad. He is the Comforter of the sorrowing, the Physician of the sick, the Healer of the sinful, the Friend and Companion of man.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Commerce is a form of warfare.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
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
There are many men, and a large number, who, though they do not wish to be rid of God, do not very much care to have him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
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
A bad God is worse than no God at all.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
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
Jesus Christ is not a manifestation of certain attributes or qualities of God; he is God manifest in the flesh. He is not a temporary manifestation of God's mercy or pity, leaving his justice and his anger to be revealed in the future. There is no justice and no wrath in God which is not manifested in Jesus Christ; and there is no pity and no mercy in Jesus Christ which is not a reflection of the eternal pity and mercy of God. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." To understand Jesus Christ is to understand God.
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
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
If the impure and the unjust, the drunkard and the licentious, are loathsome to us, what must be the infinite loathing of an infinitely pure Spirit for those who are worldly and selfish, licentious and cruel, ambitious and animal! But with this great loathing is a great pity. And the pity conquers the loathing, appeases it, satisfies it, is reconciled with it, only as it redeems the sinner from his loathsomeness, lifts him up from his degradation, brings him to truth and purity, to love and righteousness; for only thus is he or can he be brought to God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith the preacher. To which I add, especially husbands. No man is proof against the flatteries of love. At least I am not, and I am glad of it.
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
Conscience is the factor which recognizes the inherent and essential distinction between right and wrong, and which impels to the right and dissuades from the wrong. It does not come within the province of this book to discuss either the basis of ethics or its laws; to consider either why some things are wrong and others are right, nor to point out what is wrong and what is right. That belongs to moral science, not to mental science. It must suffice here to say that the distinction between right and wrong is recognized in all peoples, and is one of the first objects of perception in childhood. Standards differ in different races and in different ages. The power of moral discrimination is subject to education both for good and for evil. But the sense of ought is as universal as the sense of beauty. That there is a right and a wrong is as evident to every mind as that there is a wise and a foolish, a beautiful and an ugly, a pleasant and a disagreeable.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature