American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Immortality does not seem to me to be capable of scientific demonstration. If by immortality we simply mean that those who seem to have died continue to live after death, ghosts, slates, table-tippings, rappings, and such like might, perhaps, afford a scientific demonstration of this not very important fact. But if immortality means a life in the other world that transcends any life in this, a life far beyond any experience here below, a life free from the trammels of the body, a life glorious beyond all imaginings, it is impossible that it should be demonstrated. For such a life lies in the future, and science has to do exclusively with the present and the past. It may anticipate the future, but it can test only what actually is. All that science can do respecting immortality is to look at life from the evolutionary point of view and see what evolution would naturally lead us to anticipate in the future, — death or life. And it appears to me that belief in evolution, so far from weakening faith in immortality, strengthens it, and I might almost say necessitates it. It does not demonstrate immortality, and yet I do not see how one can be a consistent evolutionist and think that "death ends all."
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Faith has not lost its power. The soul still enjoys this privilege of receiving inspiration from above. It is not the special prerogative of a few saints. It is the common right of all. It is not an occasional, exceptional gift. It is constant, continuous, the law of our being. It is not a miracle, interfering with the operations of the human soul. It is the condition of our soul's true life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Real human nature is made up of curious contradictions. Strangely conflicting master-passions struggle for the victory.
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
If I had only life's book to read ... I should not believe in a God of love. I should turn Persian, and believe in two gods, one of love and good-will, one of hate and malice.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
Little leading makes much following.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
"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
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
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
Man is not only the supreme result of evolution thus far, — he is the final result of evolution; there is nothing beyond him. If one asks, How do we know that there may not be something inconceivable to us beyond? the answer is, We cannot know; but in our attempt to unriddle the enigma of the universe we must think with our faculties and be governed by our limitations, and we can conceive nothing higher than man. We can conceive of man infinitely improved; we can conceive of him cultivated, developed, enlarged, enriched, purified; but of anything essentially higher than man — no. Nothing can be conceived higher than to think, to will, to love. If we look back along the pages of history, these two truths we have learned from the universe: first, that all its processes have been for the purpose of manifesting One who thinks, who wills, who loves; second, that the purpose in the manifestation of this One is the creation of a race of free moral agents, who can themselves think and will and love. The inorganic world existed before the vegetable, and the vegetable world existed before the animal, and the lower animal existed before man, but man exists for nothing beyond. The very topmost round of the ladder has been reached: to know right from wrong, to do the right and eschew the wrong, to understand invisible distinctions, to perceive the invisible world, to struggle toward something higher and yet higher, and yet always to know, to resolve, to love, — this is supreme.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
For evolution does not teach that the processes of what we call nature cannot be brought under spiritual control. On the contrary, it shows their operation under the spiritual control of man, guided and directed to a definite purpose by human intelligence and human will. Evolution is carried on by what we call natural selection up to the point when man appears upon the scene; then man himself begins to direct, control, modify, regulate, evolution. He shapes it as he will; his intelligence masters it and directs it. He determines whether the soil shall produce a rose or a lily, an oak or an elm. He finds a prairie strewed with grass and wild flowers, and out of that same prairie he evolves this year a cornfield, next year a wheatfield. Early travelers tell us of a great American desert, apparently useless to man, which extended from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains. It has now become a fertile and prosperous region. Man has made this former wilderness to bud and blossom as a rose. He has used the forces of nature, has conformed to the laws of nature, and thus has regulated the evolutionary processes of nature. In thus directing them to a predetermined end, he follows in the footsteps of One greater than he is. The charcoal-burners in the mountains, who fell the trees and burn them in a furnace in which very little oxygen is admitted, are simply imitating on a small scale what in the far-off centuries God did when He turned the great trees of the carboniferous era into coal. Out of this coal formerly men distilled the illuminating oil. They did but repeat what God had done in the former ages when He filled the subterranean reservoirs with a like material by a similar process. Our dynamo — a magnetic wheel revolving with great rapidity in a magnetic field — imitates God's dynamo; for now we know that this globe on which we live is itself a great magnet, and is itself revolving in a magnetic field. The growths of the past have been under the supervision of a controlling will, directed by intelligence to benevolent ends. The processes of nature and of civilization combine to demonstrate beyond all question that matter is subordinate to spirit. If by nature is meant the physical realm, then the supernatural is not only about us, but within us. The whole fabric of modern civilization is based upon this: that matter is controlled by that which is superior to matter; that spirit can direct, control, manipulate, physical forces.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
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
The artist does not really create; he discovers.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Great Companion
But order is not itself a virtue: it is only a means to an end. The end is general comfort and general convenience, and she never sacrifices the end to the means.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
Among the impulses whose object is a preservation of existence must also be put the love of offspring. So much has been said and written about parental love, about mothers' love especially, that it may seem to the reader doubtful whether this impulse belongs here among the lower animal impulses. But a moment's reflection will convince him that the love of offspring is in its lowest forms a purely animal instinct; seen in the cat's care for her kitten, the hen's for her chickens, the cow's for her calf in every farm-yard; seen also, alas! as a mere blind semi-sensual instinct, in many a home, where the father or mother cannot bear to inflict pain, or thwart a desire, or permit a disappointment, or allow a burden, and so the child grows up, coddled and tended, to be weak and wayward and willful, and often worse. This parental instinct, guided and inspired by the higher nature, is the child's guardian from present evil, and guide into future manhood; but unguided and uninspired, it protects only from pain, which is God's method of discipline, and seeking only happiness, guides often into destruction and misery. It is, too, quite evident that it is necessary for the protection of existence; for the infant, whether of man or animal, is rarely able at first to protect himself; the higher his rank in the scale of being the greater the necessity for protection; and if there were no parental instinct, if there was nothing but a general and distributed sentiment of pity, he would certainly surfer greatly, and would generally die for want of the power in himself of self-protection. The parental instinct endows him with all the faculties and powers of his parent, especially with those of his mother—for in both brutes and men this instinct is almost invariably the strongest in the female—until his own powers have attained sufficient growth to make him able to protect himself.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Last Sabbath evening, on my way to church, I stopped, according to promise, to see the Deacon. As I went up the steps I heard the sound of music, and waited a moment lest I should disturb the family's evening devotions. But as the music continued, and presently the tune changed, I concluded to knock. Nettie, the Deacon's youngest daughter, who by the way is a great favorite with me, answered the knock almost instantly. The open hymn-book was in her hand, and before I could get time to ask for the Deacon, she had, in her charmingly impulsive way, dragged me in, snatched my hat from my hand, deposited it on the table, and pushed me into the parlor. In fact, before I well knew what I was about, I found myself in the big arm-chair with Nettie in my lap, taking part in the Deacon's second service.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
All nations and all eras appear also to be gathered here. There are Swiss cottages with overhanging chambers, and Italian villas with flat roofs, and Gothic structures with incipient spires that look as though they had stopped in their childhood and never got their growth, and Grecian temples with rows of wooden imitations of marble pillars of Doric architecture, and one house in which all nations and eras combine—a Grecian porch, a Gothic roof, an Italian L, and a half finished tower of the Elizabethan era, capped with a Moorish dome, the whole approached through the stiffest of all stiff avenues of evergreens, trimmed in the latest French fashion. That is Mr. Wheaton's residence, the millionaire of Wheathedge. I wish I could say he was as Catholic as his dwelling house.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
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