LYMAN ABBOTT QUOTES II
American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Every soul is a battlefield.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Imagine for one moment that God desires to reveal Himself to the human race; how can He make that revelation except in the terms of a human experience? This is what He has done. He who, in olden time, spoke through prophets; He who, from the beginning, was the Word, when the race, in the spiritual process of its development, was ready for that later disclosure, entered into one human life and filled it full of Himself, that by looking at that life we might comprehend what the life of God is in the world. This is what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews declares: "God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds." First in fragments, in partial utterances, in broken speech He revealed little parts of Himself; these men can comprehend only in single letters which men must learn, — for they must understand the alphabet before they can understand the grammar of divinity; later He comes and fills one man with Himself and makes that One stand out in human life as the revelation and disclosure of Himself. This is what John says: "That which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and which our hands handled, concerning the Word of life, . . . declare we unto you." As the artist transcends all his pictures, as the orator transcends all his speeches, so God transcends all manifestations of God. It is that concerning the Word which the beloved disciple has seen, and that only, which he can declare to others. This is the meaning of the heavenly voice: "This is my beloved Son." He is the Son of God, because all his life is brooded by, begotten of, proceeds from the Father. Some of our life does, and some does not. We walk in the world like Siamese twins, joined together, now speaking the life of God, and now speaking the life of the world. We are Seventh of Romans, flesh and spirit in combat with each other; sons of the earth and sons of God strangely commingled. He was the only begotten Son of God, because all his life flowed from the divine fountain and the divine source. This is the meaning of such declarations as that of Paul: "In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." He was One into whom the holy affluence of the divine nature was poured, that He might set it forth to men. This is the meaning of Paul's other declaration: "God was in Christ." Jesus Christ was the tabernacle in whom the self-revealing God dwelt, and through whom He revealed Himself. In short, Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh; that is, such a manifestation of God as was possible in a human life, a manifestation of what Dr. van Dyke has well called " the human life of God."
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
When the Bible is thus regarded as the sifted literature of a people whose genius was spiritual, as the genius of Rome was legal, as that of Greece was philosophical, and as that of the Anglo-Saxon has been commercial, the intellectual and moral difficulties disappear which the unscriptural dogma of infallibility has created. He who thus believes in the evolution of revelation no longer has to tease his mind by arguing that the creative days were aeons, that the sun standing still was an optical delusion due to peculiar refraction of its rays, and that some whales have throats big enough to allow the passage of a man. He frankly treats the stories of creation, of Joshua's campaign, and of Jonah's adventures as literature characteristic of the childhood age of the world, and looks for the moral lessons which lie behind them.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
There must be some honest lawyers at the New York bar, and some impartial judges on the New York bench, but I should not like to be set to find them.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
But the heart finds no refuge in an Infinite and an Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. That refuge is found only in the faith that God has entered a human life, taken the helm, ruled heart and hand and tongue, written in terms of human experience the biography of God in history, revealed in the teaching of Christ the truth of God, in the life of Christ the character of God, in the passion of Christ the suffering of God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
I am convinced that no mere intellectual opinion is a sin. If Mr. Gear is in darkness it is because he neglects some known if not some recognized duty. My work is not to convince him of the error of his opinions. I probably never could do that. And his opinions are not of much consequence. My work is to find out what known duty he is neglecting, and press it home upon his conscience. And so far I have not discovered what it is. He is one of the most conscientious men I ever knew. Yet something is wanting in Mr. Gear. I believe he half thinks so himself. He is mentally restless and uneasy. He seems to doubt his own doubts, and to want discussion that he may strengthen himself in his own unbelief. But still I make no progress. Since that first night I have got no farther into his heart.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
If, then, fellow-Christian, you are sometimes perplexed by arguments which you can not answer, recur to this hidden witness on whose testimony your faith is really founded. If the Bible is really the bread of life to your soul, if it gives comfort to you in affliction, peace in storm, victory in sore battle, you need no other evidence that it is the Word of God. If Christ is to you a present help, if you hear his voice counseling you, and see his luminous form guiding you, and hear in your own soul his message to your troubled conscience," Peace, be still," you need no other argument, as you can have no higher one, that he is Savior and God to you. This sight of the soul is above all reason. Mary, hearing the message of the disciples that Christ was arisen, believed it not. Coming to the sepulchre, and finding it empty, even the declaration of the angel was insufficient to assure her. But the voice of her Lord, though he but uttered in well-known accents her name, "Mary," was enough. She doubted, could doubt no more. It is not on the witness of men, nor even on that of angels, our faith in a crucified and a risen Savior rests; but on this, that he has spoken our name, and turned, by the very sweetness of his voice, our night of weeping into a day of unutterable joy. "Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
There are many in the Church of Christ who think of God as a just and punitive God, who must be satisfied either by penalty laid on the guilty, or by an equivalent for the penalty. That is one form of paganism. There are many who, reacting against that conception, think of God as an indifferent, careless God, who does not care much about iniquity, does not trouble Himself about it, is not disturbed by it! That is another form of paganism. And there are many who try to solve the problem by thinking of two Gods, a just God and a merciful God, and imagining that the merciful God by the sacrifice of Himself appeases the wrath of the just God. That also is a modified form of paganism. The one transcendent truth which distinguishes Christianity from all forms of paganism is that it represents God as appeasing His own wrath or satisfying His own justice by the forthputting of His own love. But He saves men from their sins by an experience which we can interpret to ourselves only by calling it a struggle between the sentiments of justice and pity.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
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
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah epitomizes the Gospel. Every act in the great, the awful drama of life is here foreshadowed. The analogy is so perfect that we might almost be tempted to believe that this story is a prophetic allegory, did not nature itself witness its historic truthfulness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
He who says, "I know no fear," is no hero. No man knows courage unless he does know fear, and has that in him which is superior to fear, and conquers it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Christ's sympathies are broader and His love is larger than we think.... We hedge him round with our poor creeds, and shut Him up in our little churches, and think He works only in our appointed ways. He breaks over the barriers we put about him, and carries on His work of love in hearts that we think are beyond all reach of Him or us. We cannot tell our brother how to find the light. The light will find him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
What I see, as I look back through the more than threescore years to the dim mental photograph of myself left in my mind, is a feeble boy, somewhat under the average in height, very much under the average in weight and strength, fairly good in swimming, skating, climbing, and tramping, but quite unable to hold his own in the rougher sports of the boys, somewhat solitary, somewhat a recluse, and naturally timid. And yet I could not have been quite a coward, for I remember, even now with a curious sense of pride, that when a big bully of a boy (probably not so much of a brute as I now imagine him to have been) hectored me beyond endurance, I challenged him to a fight, and we retired behind the barn, with a small group of boys as onlookers, and fought a fisticuff duel. Doubtless I got much the worse of our encounter, for I cannot conceive that my fist would have hurt anything much bigger than a housefly, but at least I won his respect, and the bullying stopped. I have never been for peace-at-any-price as a man, and I was not as a boy.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
Religion was not always a dread to me. For one of my great ambitions was to be a minister, and one of my favorite childish vocations was preaching. I see myself now, a pale-faced, anemic, slim chap of ten or eleven, with all the appearance but none of the habits of an ascetic, preaching to a congregation of empty chairs.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
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
It costs something to give life. And the great God above us—it has cost him something to give his life. It has cost him his Son; or, if we transfer the figure, it has cost the Son the crown of thorns and the cross and all the Passion to give himself. He is the example — showing what we may be; he is hope — inspiring us with the ambition to be; he is still with us, pouring his life unto us; he is the great sufferer and the great self-sacrificer — pouring out his life-blood that he may give his life-blood to us.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Do not think that you can fight corruption without while you let corruption fester within.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
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
A golden thread, woven into the Old Testament history, renders the various lives whose stories it recounts only different phases of the same experience. That golden thread is faith.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Evolution believes that man is emerging from an animal condition. The body is the animal out of which he is eventually to be developed. The animal still clings to him. It is at once a help and a hindrance. It is a help to his spiritual development because it is a hindrance, and because the spiritual development comes by battle, and in no other way. There is no possible way by which a man can acquire temperance unless he has appetites to be subdued; no way by which he can acquire self-control, unless he has animal passions to be controlled; no way by which he can acquire courage, unless he has timidity to be overcome. There must be the temptation within as well as the moral nature within, or the moral nature cannot be developed, for it is developed only by conflict with the temptation. First of all, then, man is an emerging and developing being, drawn out from, lifted up from, a lower animal condition. He is in battle with his own body. He is like the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis; like the bird pecking its way out of the shell; like the seed breaking its husk and emerging from the ground. The seed is in captivity to the ground, and must be emancipated; the bird is in captivity to the shell, and must be freed from its imprisonment; the insect is in captivity to the chrysalis, and must break from its prisonhouse. And as the plant is not a plant until it has broken away from the soil and come into the sunlight, as the bird is not a bird until it has broken out of the shell and come into the air, as the butterfly is not a butterfly until it has escaped from the chrysalis, so not until the man has broken away from the animal and come out of it and conquered it and subdued it is he truly a man. The evolution of the spirit is itself redemption from the flesh.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist