LYMAN ABBOTT QUOTES III
American theologian and author (1835-1922)
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
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
Mere philanthropy and humanity ... are not religion. There must also be piety. The soul must live in the divine presence; must inhale the Spirit of God; must utter its contrition, its weaknesses, its wants, and its thanks-givings to its Heavenly Father.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
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
An untempted soul may be innocent, but cannot be virtuous, for virtue is the choice of right when wrong presses itself upon us and demands our choosing.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
As society is educated under the teaching of God's Gospel, it passes by a natural reaction from hatred of sin into simple compassion and pity. Then we pick the drunkard out of the gutter, and coddle him and set him up on the platform to be straightway our teacher; for we have now no sense of wrath against inordinate appetite. We are overwhelmed with pity for the murderer, with no restraining sense of justice against him, and send him gifts, — broiled chicken and costly flowers, — and parade his name in the newspapers almost as a hero to be worshiped. We say that we are charitable. In fact we have forgotten that which is the basis of all moral character, — to abhor that which is evil. As the first century represented the state of indifference to iniquity, as the Middle Ages represented the state of wrath against iniquity, so this nineteenth century often represents morbid sentiments of pity. We are not so much concerned with the drunkard as with his headache and his misery. We are not so much troubled by covetousness as by poverty, and are more eager to form anti-poverty societies than anti-covetous societies. It is the evil which sins bring upon men that brings sorrow to our hearts rather than sin itself. Nor shall we come into a moral state which is worthy of the children of God until we have taken these two factors, wrath against sin and pity because of sin, and found a way to unite them in one common experience. Not merely wrath against sin and pity for the sinner. No woman who is pure but must have felt a sense of revulsion from the impure woman. No man who is perfectly truthful but must have felt a sense of loathing for a liar. No man who is honest but must have felt a sense of antagonism, hate, wrath, indignation — call it what you will, there are no words adequate to express it — for the dishonest man. And yet with this sense of indignation against that which is iniquitous and shameful, there is also in the heart a great pity for the sinful man. We both hate him and sorrow for him; and out of these two combined experiences there grows mercy.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
He who would see God must use the faculty with which God is seen; and if he would do this, he must let men who are rich in the faculty which perceives the invisible, — which looks not at the things which are seen and are temporal, but at the things which are not seen and are eternal, — guide, teach, inspire him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
I look out upon the universe and I see that it is a universe, a variety in unity. I see that there is a unity in all the phenomena of nature, and that science has more and more made that unity clear, and I see that there is one Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. And I see too, it seems to me very clearly, that this Energy is an intellectual Energy; that is, that the physical phenomena of the universe are intellectually related to one another. The scientist does not create the relations; he finds them. They are; he discovers them. All science is thinking the thoughts of God after him. It is finding thought where thought has done its intellectual work; it is learning what are those intellectual relationships which have been in and are embodied in creation.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
And the first thing that Christ says to us is this: Is that the kind of life you want to live? Is that the kind of person you want to be? Do you want to live in this world to see what you can get out of it, or do you want to live in this world to see what you can put into it?
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
This is what evolution means--ordered progress; development from poorer to richer, from lower to higher, from less to greater--progress. In the material universe, progress to higher forms; in the moral universe, progress to higher life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
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
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
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
You orthodox people ... say that no man can come to God with an unregenerate heart; and mine is an unregenerate heart. At least I suppose so. I have been told so often enough. You tell us that no man can come that has not been convicted and converted. I have never suffered conviction or experienced conversion. I cannot cry out to God, "God be merciful to me a sinner." For I don't believe I am a sinner. I don't pretend to be perfect. I get out of temper now and then. I am hard on my children sometimes, was on Willie to-night, poorly fellow. I even rip out an oath occasionally. I am sorry for that habit and mean to get the better of it yet. But I can't make a great pretence of sorrow that I do not experience.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Solemn faces do not make sacred hours.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
When man would make a rose with tools, he fashions petals and leaves of wax, colors them, manufactures a stalk by the same mechanical process -- and the rose is done. When God makes a rose, he lets a bird or a puff of wind drop a seed into the ground; out of the seed there emerges a stalk; and out of the stalk, branches; and on these branches, buds; and out of these buds roses unfold; and the rose is never done, for it goes on endlessly repeating itself. This is the difference between manufacture and growth. Man's method is the method of manufacture; God's method is the method of growth. What man makes is a finished product -- death. What God makes is an always finishing and never finished product -- life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
It is only by human experiences that we can interpret the Divine.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist