LYMAN ABBOTT QUOTES III
American theologian and author (1835-1922)
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
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
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
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
The spirit which in the modern Church has sometimes sought to found Christian faith on signs and wonders appears to me to be almost as much one of unbelief as the spirit which outside the Church denies the miraculous altogether.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
You, mother, are not responsible to set the whole world right; you are responsible only to make one pure, sacred, and divine household.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
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
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
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
No man can be patient who has not strong passions, for patience is passion tamed.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
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
Christ is not the world's medicine, but the world's physician; and his prescriptions are various for various disorders. To grow in holiness is to grow in healthiness; and this requires a knowledge of your own nature, that you may know what needs feeding and what needs pruning.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
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
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
Here we are at last. And here the evergeens are about us in a profusion which would make the eyes water of my honest friend the Dutch grocer who supplied me with my family trees so many years in New York. Our smoking nag is over his impatience now, and, being well blanketed, understands what is wanted of him quite as well as if he were tied, and stands as still as if he were Squire Slowgoes' fat and lazy "family horse." With pants tied snugly over our topboots to keep out the intruding snow, we plunge into the woods. The ringing blows of our hatchets on the cedar-trees bring down a mimic shower on our heads and backs. Young Wheaton understands his business, and shows me how the fairest evergreens are hid beneath the snow, and what rare forms of crystalline beauty conceal themselves altogether beneath this white counterpane. So, sometimes cutting from above and sometimes grubbing from below, we work an hour or more, till our pung is filled to its brim. Long before we have finished Jip has returned from his useless search, and the neighing horse indicates his impatience to be off again.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The sermon was on the words—"Do this in remembrance of me." It was a doctrinal sermon. I am not sure that it might not have been a useful one—in the sixteenth century. It was a sermon against Romanism and Lutheranism and High Church episcopacy. The minister told us what were the various doctrines of the communion. He analyzed them and dismissed them one after another. He showed very conclusively, to us Protestants, that the Romanists are wrong, to us Presbyterians that the Episcopalians are wrong, to us who are open Communionists that the close Communionists are wrong. As there does not happen to be either Romanist, Episcopalian, or close Communionist in our congregation, I cannot say how efficacious his arguments would have been if addressed to any one who was in previous doubt as to his conclusions. Then he proceeded to expound what he termed the rational and Scriptural doctrine of communion. It is, he told us, simply a memorial service. It simply commemorates the past. "As," said he, "every year, the nation gathers to strew flowers upon the graves of its patriot soldiers, so this day the Christian Church gathers to strew with flowers of love and praise the grave of the Captain of our salvation. As in the one act all differences are forgotten, and the nation is one in the sacred presence of death, so in the other, creeds and doctrines vanish, and the Church of Christ appears at the foot of Calvary as one in Christ Jesus."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
She does not simulate youth, and yet she is young. Her smile is as captivating as ever, her laugh as merry and as contagious; and though she can no longer romp with her juniors, she enjoys a vivacious game by proxy as much as she ever did in person, and teases with the same innocent and admirable coquetry. Age has quieted her body but not sobered her spirit. As the life of youth is still hers, so are all its interests. In truth, they have widened with the widening years. As her children have grown up and entered into their several professions, she has accompanied them. Whatever touches their life touches hers, whatever interests them interests her. If she cannot enter into their fields, she can at least come to the fence and look over. So, disavowing all professional knowledge, she is yet singularly intelligent in medicine, law, journalism, theology, and teaching. Her children, when they come home, find her always a ready pupil, and, often to their surprise, their intellectual comrade. Although infirmity begins to put its limitations on her activities, never did life seem to her to be so large, so varied, so full of ever-broadening interest. She occasionally brings out of the past sacred and stimulating memories. But she does not live in the past. She lives in her children, that is in the present, and in her grandchildren, that is in the future.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
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
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
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