LYMAN ABBOTT QUOTES II
American theologian and author (1835-1922)
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
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
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
Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. It is simply a history of the process of life. With the secret cause of life evolution has nothing to do. A man, therefore, may be a materialistic evolutionist or a theistic evolutionist; that is, he may believe that the cause is some single unintelligent, impersonal force, or he may believe that the cause is a wise and beneficent personal God. I repeat what I have already said in this volume, that I am a theistic evolutionist; that is, I believe that the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed, which is the All in all, is an Energy that thinks, feels, and wills, — a self-conscious, intelligent, moral Being. Evolution does not claim to be the last word. There is no last word. Evolution itself is inconsistent with the idea that there can be any last word. The doctrine of evolution is the doctrine of perpetual growth, and therefore every word spoken prepares for another and a further word. If it is to be accepted at all, it is to be accepted as, on the whole, the grandest generalization of our age, if not of any age, — the best statement of the process of life that has yet been uttered.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
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
The Bible always anticipates something higher, larger, nobler than was ever known in the past. When Abraham goes out of the land of paganism to a land he knows not what, he is not called back to Eden. When Moses calls the children of Israel out of the land of Goshen into the Promised Land, it is to a new land that is to be opened up to them; their looking back is continually reprobated and condemned. When the exiles are called out of Babylon, it is not with any conception that the old condition of things is to be restored; it is to a new and larger glory, when " Gentiles shall come to thy light, and the nations to thy rising." When Christ comes, He never bids His disciples look back for the golden age. He tells them of a kingdom to come, not of a kingdom that has been. He tells them that greater works than He has done, His disciples shall do; the future has more for them than the past. Paul never suggests that the race is to go back to Eden, to Isaiah, to David, to Moses. His call is always toward a nobler future. Finally, the last book of the Bible is a prophetic book; the garden it portrays is not the garden of Eden. In this garden of the Apocalypse the very leaves are for the healing of the nations, and the fruit is of many kinds, yielded every month, and all freely to be plucked; and alongside this garden is the great city, the New Jerusalem, the fruit of centuries of Christian civilization.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Every soul is a battlefield.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
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
The ideal of character always runs beyond the attainment.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Then the Deacon took down the family bible and opened it to the story of Joseph. He asked the children how far he had got. They answered him very sagely, and their responses to a few questions which he put to them showed that they understood what had gone before. Then he read part of one chapter, that which describes the beginning of the famine, and, asking Joe to bring him the full volume of Stanley's Jewish Church, he read the admirable description of an Egyptian famine which it contains. By this time Bob was fast asleep in his mother's arms. But all the rest of us kneeled down and repeated the Lord's prayer with the Deacon—another of his queer notions. The neighbors think he is inclined to be an Episcopalian, because he wants it introduced into the church service, but he says he does not really think that the Lord was an Episcopalian, and if he was it would not be any good reason for not using his prayer. Then the children kissed good-night, all round, and went to bed. Mrs. Goodsole took Bob off to his crib, and the Deacon and I were left alone. It was long past time for church service to begin, so I abandoned all idea of going to church, and opened to the Deacon at once the object of my errand. I told him very frankly that we not only missed him from the church, but that the pastor felt that his example was an unfortunate one, and that the church generally were afraid he was growing luke-warm in the Master's service, and I gently reminded him of the apostle's direction not to forget the assembling of ourselves together.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
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
He that heeds the Gospel message must be ready to do as Lot did. He had neither time nor opportunity to save any thing but himself from the universal wreck. Houses, lands, property, position, honors, friends—all must be left behind. Every interest bound him fast to Sodom—every interest but one. All were offset by that fearful cry," Escape for thy life." What ransom is too great to give for that? The conditions of the Gospel are not changed. The voice of Christ still is," Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he can not be my disciple." It is no easier in the nineteenth century than in the first to serve both God and Mammon. The judgment which God visited upon Ananias and Sapphira is perpetually repeated. The Church is full of dead Christians, struck down with spiritual death, because they have kept back part of the price—because they have not given all to Him who gave up all that he might ransom them from sin and death.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
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
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
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
If the consciousness of God is possible to all healthful souls, why are so many men and women without this consciousness? There are men and women, not a few, who do not want God. They would be very glad to have God if he were always on their side; glad to have God if he would always do what they want him to do. But a supreme will, a masterful will, a will to which they must conform, they do not want.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
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
The Reformation broke down the ecclesiastical system for the Reformers and the children of the Reformers. The Protestant world said, " The Pope is not the vicar of God; the Church is not the supreme and final authority." The Church had held to the sacredness of the Bible, but to the Bible as the constitution of the Church. It was not for the common people; it was for the Church; and the Church was to interpret it and to declare its meaning. The Protestant Reformers went back of the Church, of the priesthood, of the human mediators, to the Bible. They said, " Any man may take this constitution; any man may interpret it." But still Protestantism accepted and adopted — unconsciously, perhaps — the notion of an absentee God. Still God was conceived of as enthroned in the centre of the universe, as the Moral Governor; and laws as edicts issued from him; and sin as disobedience to those laws; and forgiveness as remission of a future penalty; and the Bible as the book of his laws, and an authoritative statement of certain conditions precedent to obtaining that forgiveness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
A miracle no longer seems to me a manifestation of extraordinary power, but an extraordinary manifestation of ordinary power. God is always showing himself. Perhaps some of you may think this is a new theology; but this particular bit of theology is as old as Augustine, and as orthodox. It is Augustine who said, a birth — I am not quoting his exact words, but I am giving the spirit of them — a birth is more miraculous than a resurrection, because it is more wonderful that something that never was should begin to be, than that something which was and ceased to be should begin again. The difference between the birth and the resurrection is that one is made palpable to our senses every day, and the other in the one great event of human history was made palpable to the senses of a few witnesses in years long gone by. The mere fact that a miracle is an extraordinary event seems to me to constitute no reason for discrediting it. For the credibility of an event does not depend upon the nature of the event, but upon the nature of the testimony which attests it. If the Old Testament told the story of a naval engagement between the Jewish people and a pagan people, in which all the ships of the pagan people were absolutely destroyed, and not a single man killed among the Jews, all the skeptics would have scorned the narrative. Every one now believes it — except those who live in Spain.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God