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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
My faith in God rests on my faith in Christ as God manifest in the flesh -- not as God and man, but as God in man.
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
Brevity is the soul of the prayer-meeting.
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
We lawyers learn to study the faces of our witnesses, to form quick judgments, and to act upon them.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
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
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
The ideal of character always runs beyond the attainment.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
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