American theologian and author (1835-1922)
I believe that God is the Great Companion, that we are not left orphans, that we may have comradeship with him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Great Companion
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
"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
"I don't believe in no kind of fiction, nohow," said Mr. Hardcap, emphatically. "What we want is facts, Mr. Laicus-hard facts. That's what I was brought up on when I was a boy, and that's what I mean to bring my boys up on."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
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
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
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
I have a repugnance to be known and understood by everybody. I do not like to have my feelings or my thoughts every one's property.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
God is our native air. The godless soul gasps out a feeble life in a vacuum. "I will not leave you orphans," saith Christ; "I will come to you." Yet, despite this promise, how many orphaned Christians there are. They are not exactly fatherless. They have a memory of a father in the dim past. They have a hope of a Father in the far future. But now they live without him. They are like travelers in a long and gloomy tunnel. They look back to the days of the patriarchs and prophets. There is light there. They look forward to the revelations of the future life. There is light there. But here and now it is dark.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
God is constantly better than his promise. He does not limit Himself by our expectations.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
A graceful and blessed old age must have three elements in it: a happy retrospect, a peaceful present, and an inspiring future. And old age cannot have either one of these three if the youth has been wasted and manhood has been misspent.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
"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
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
I acknowledge myself, then, a radical evolutionist, — it is hardly necessary to say a theistic evolutionist. I reverently and heartily accept the axiom of theology that a personal God is the foundation of all life; but I also believe that God has but one way of doing things ; that His way may be described in one word as the way of growth, or development, or evolution, terms which are substantially synonymous; that He resides in the world of nature and in the world of men; that there are no laws of nature which are not the laws of God's own being ; that there are no forces of nature, that there is only one divine, infinite force, always proceeding from, always subject to the will of God; that there are not occasional or exceptional theophanies, but that all nature and all life is one great theophany; that there are not occasional interventions in the order of life which bear witness to the presence of God, but that life is itself a perpetual witness to His presence; that He transcends all phenomena, and yet is the creative, controlling, directing force in all phenomena. In so far as the theologian and the evolutionist differ in their interpretation of the history of life — that is, upon the question whether God's way of doing things is a way of successive interventions or a continuous and unbroken progress — I agree with the evolutionist, not with the theologian. My object in this volume is to show that religion — that is, the life of God in the soul of man — is better comprehended, and will better be promoted, by the philosophy which regards all life as divine, and God's way of doing things as the way of a continuous, progressive change, according to certain laws and by means of one resident force, than by the philosophy which supposes that some things are done by natural forces and according to natural laws, and others by special interventions of a Divine Will, acting from without, for the purpose of correcting errors or filling gaps.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
He who thus regards the Bible is not in the least troubled by finding errors in it; he expects to find such errors. They do not in the least militate against the value of the Book. It is quite immaterial to him that the world was not made in six days; that there never was a universal deluge; that Abraham mistook the voice of conscience calling on him to consecrate his only son to God, and interpreted it as a command to slay his son as a burnt offering; that Israel misinterpreted righteous indignation at the cruel and lustful rites of the Canaanitish religion for a divine summons to destroy the worship by putting the worshipers to death; that a people undeveloped in moral judgment could not and did not discriminate between formal regulations respecting camp life and eternal principles of righteousness, such as, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, but embodied them in the same code, and seemed to regard them as of equal authority; that a people half emancipated from the paganism which imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before He can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system that were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
To say that the Great Companion is dead, is not to say that there is no God. The dead also live; but between them and ourselves all communion and companionship seem to most of us impossible. So to many in our own time, to many without the Church, to some within it, living companionship with a living God is an experience unknown. They believe in what Carlyle calls a "hypothetical God," but he is to them only a hypothesis. They look back through the ages for some evidence of a God who revealed himself centuries ago; they look forward with anticipation to a God who will reveal himself in some future ephiphany; but of a God here and now, a God who is a perpetual presence, a God whom they can see as Abraham saw him, with whom they can talk as Moses talked with him, who will inspire them with courage as he inspired Gideon, with hope as he inspired Isaiah, and with praise as he inspired David, they do not know.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Great Companion
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
Life proceeds from life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
I always went to church. Of my religious experience I shall speak hereafter, tracing it through the various stages of its growth from boyhood to old age. Enough to say here that I cannot share the belief of those who think, or perhaps I should say feel, that the church has degenerated in the last half-century. During a part of that time I attended the Mercer Street Presbyterian Church. Some forty or fifty boys and girls from an orphan asylum made what seemed to me an important part of the congregation. The boys sat in one gallery, the girls in the gallery opposite. I do not recall that I ever heard the minister tell a story, use an illustration, or point a moral lesson which by any possibility could appeal to these children. There may have been connected with this church some mission chapel, but I do not think so. If so, it was not in evidence. I do not think I ever heard of one. The attitude of the churches in New York City was then much what the attitude of the village church is to-day: its duty was to care for the individuals and the families in its own congregation. For these attendants there were plenty of services — not to say a surplus; but going out into the world preaching the Gospel to every creature was left to be done by the missionary societies, which were supported by the churches with more or less liberality. Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and some time later Dr. W. S. Rainsford in New York, were pioneers in church missionary work. It hardly need be said that there was no social settlement work and no Young Women's Christian Association; the Young Men's Christian Association was just coming into existence.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences