American theologian and author (1835-1922)
It is not youth we want at Wheathedge, but spiritual life and earnestness. At least it is to be thought of. But as to salary-how we are to get a first class man at a third class salary puzzles me. I shall have to refer that to Mr. Wheaton. He is the financier of our church I believe.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
It is not easy to formulate in a sentence that change which has come over my thought, and, as I believe, the thought of the present generation, respecting God's relation to man. Shall I say we are coming to think of God as dwelling in man rather than as operating on man from without? This might be taken to imply a denial or at least a doubt of God's personality, and of man's personality as distinct and separate from God's, and this implication I vigorously and energetically disavow. If I speak of God in man, it is as one speaks of one soul working within another, so that the two personalities intermingle, the two lives are intertwined. Perhaps it will be better to attempt no formal statement of the general principle; rather to illustrate it by special applications.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
I wish you could have seen that parsonage last Friday, the day that Mr. Mapleson and his wife were to arrive. The walks were trim. The plot before the piazza had been new sodded. The grapevine was already putting out new buds as if it felt the effect of the Deacon's tender care. There was not a weed to be seen. The beds, with their rich, black loam turned up to the sun, had a beauty of their own, which only one who loves to dig among flowers as much as I do can appreciate. Mr. Glazier had made the dingy old house look like a new one. After all there is nothing I like better for a cottage than pure white with green blinds. Inside we had a lovely carpet on the parlor, and the new set of imitation rosewood. A beautiful bouquet from Mrs. Wheaton's garden stood in the bay window, which looks out upon the river. My girl, lent for the occasion, was in the kitchen; and in the dining-room there was supper spread just for two, with cake, preserves, and pies enough in the closet (every body in the parish had sent in supper for that evening) to keep the parson supplied for a month at least. I was the last to leave the house, and I did not leave it till I heard the whistle of the train. Then I ran over to Miss Moore's little cottage, which is right across the way. Her parlor window was full of ladies peering out, first and foremost of whom was little Miss Flidgett, who thus gratified her wish to see how they would take it. The Deacon, who was fixing something about the stable, was almost caught. But he heard the carriage-wheels just in time to run into the shed, and I could see him there holding the door open a crack and peering out to see what passed. Even dignified Mrs. Wheaton could not resist the temptation to be passing along, accidentally of course, just as the parson drove up. Mr. Wheaton had called for them at the depot. It was arranged (with them, that is) that he was to take them right to our house, and they were to stay there till they could decide whether to board or keep house. He proposed to them, however, according to pre-arrangement, to stop a minute at the parsonage on the way. "Mrs. Mapleson," he said, "can see what it is and how she likes the house, and the location; and besides I have an errand to do at the store."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
I am accustomed to judge of men by their companions, and books are companions. So whenever I am in a parlor alone I always examine the book-case, or the centre table—if there is one. In Mrs. Wheaton's parlor I find no book-case, but a large centre table on which there are several annuals with a great deal of gilt binding and very little reading, and a volume or two of plates, sometimes handsome, more often showy. In the library, which opens out of the parlor, I find sets of the classic authors in library bindings, but when I take one down it betrays the fact that no other hand has touched it to open it before. And I know that Jim Wheaton buys books to furnish his house, just as he buys wall paper and carpets. At Mr. Hardcap's I find a big family Bible, and half a dozen of those made up volumes fat with thick paper and large type, and showy with poor pictures, which constitute the common literature of two thirds of our country homes. And I know that poor Mr. Hardcap is the unfortunate victim of book agents. At Deacon Goodsole's I always see some school books lying in admirable confusion on the sitting-room table. And I know that Deacon Goodsole has children, and that they bring their books home at night to do some real studying, and that they do it in the family sitting-room and get help now and then from father and from mother. And so while I am waiting for Mr. Gear I take a furtive glance at his well filled shelves. I am rather surprized to find in his little library so large a religious element, though nearly all of it heterodox. There is a complete edition of Theodore Parker's works, Channing's works, a volume or two of Robertson, one of Furness, the English translation of Strauss' Life of Christ, Renan's Jesus, and half a dozen more similar books, intermingled with volumes of history, biography, science, travels, and the New American Cyclopedia. The Radical and the Atlantic Monthly are on the table. The only orthodox book is Beecher's Sermons,—and I believe Dr. Argure says they are not orthodox; the only approach to fiction is one of Oliver Wendell Holmes' books, I do not now remember which one. "Well," said I to myself, "whatever this man is, he is not irreligious."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Theology is the science of religion. It is the result of an attempt made by men to state in an orderly and systematic manner the facts respecting the life of God in the soul of man. It involves intellectual definition of the various forms of consciousness which constitute the religious life. Its relation to religion is the relation of other sciences to the vital phenomena which they endeavor to explain. With the growth of the human intellect there comes a wiser study of life, a better understanding of it, a new definition of its terms, and a new classification of its phenomena. The life does not change, but man's understanding of it changes. There is a new astronomy, though the stars are old; a new botany, though vegetable life is unchanged; a new chemistry, though the constituent elements of the universe are the same. So there is a new theology, though not a new religion. God, sin, repentance, forgiveness, love, remain essentially unchanged, but the definitions of God, sin, repentance, forgiveness, and love are changed from generation to generation. There is as little danger of undermining religion by new definitions of theology as there is of blotting out the stars from the heavens by a new astronomy. But as religion is the life of God in the soul of man, definitions which give to man a clearer and a more intelligible understanding of that life will promote it, and definitions which are, or seem to be, irrational, will tend to impede or impair it. To this extent theology affects the religious life as other sciences do not affect the life with which they have to deal.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Of course Christmas itself passed without recognition. I went, as is my wont, with my wife and my prayer-book, to the Episcopal Church. Our Christmas waited till Sunday. A glorious day it was. The sun never shone more brightly. The crisp keenness was gone from the air. The balmy breath of spring was in it. The Church never was so full before and never has been since. The story of its decorations had been spread far and wide, and all Wheathedge flocked to see what the Presbyterians would make of Christmas. The pulpit, the walls, the gallery, the chandelier were festooned with wreaths of living green. A cross-O tempora! O mores!-of cedar and immortelles, stood on the communion table. Over the pulpit were those sublime words of the sublimest of all books, "He shall save His people from their sins." Opposite it, emblazoned on the gallery, was heaven and earth's fitting response to this sublime revelation, "Glory be to God on high." Miss Moore was better than her word. She managed both choir and minister. Both were in the spirit of the occasion. The parson never preached a better sermon than his Christmas meditation. The choir never sung a more joyous song of praise than their Christmas anthem. And before the influence of that morning's service I think the last objection to observing Christmas faded out.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Man, then, is an animal, and has ascended from a lower animal; but he is something immeasurably more than an animal. How did he get this something more? At what stage in his existence was it implanted in him? In what way? On this point the Church has never agreed. Theologians have been divided in opinion into four schools, giving four separate answers to this question. The first is creationism, — the doctrine that into every man, at some stage of his existence, presumptively at the time of his birth, God, by a miraculous or supernatural act, implants the divine spirit. The second is traducianism, — the doctrine that at some period in the history of the human race God breathed the breath of divine life into some remote ancestor, and that the race has inherited that breath of life throughout all subsequent ages. The third is evolutionism, — the doctrine that this higher life of man, this moral, this ethical, this spiritual nature, has been developed by natural processes as the higher physical phases of life have been developed by natural processes. The fourth is conditional immortality, — the doctrine that the spiritual nature is developed and made dominant in men only as by faith they lay hold on God, and that there are men upon the earth who to all intents and purposes are but little higher than the animals, and will sink back into the animal and finally become extinct. Whichever of these views one holds, he may still hold that man is two men. He may think that the divine element is implanted in each individual at birth; or he may think that it was implanted in some individual at a certain point in the race development and has since been inherited by all his posterity; or he may think that it is implanted by a special act of divine grace, not in all individuals, but only in a certain elect circle, — those whom God chooses, or those who choose to accept it; or he may believe that it comes through evolutionary process eventually to all men, growing gradually out of that which is not spiritual; but, whichever theory of its origin he entertains, he may be sure that this spiritual life exists to-day. We have the spiritual life, — the life of conscience, faith, hope, love. On this fact religion is based; it does not depend on the question where this spiritual life came from, or at what point in the development of the race or the individual it began to appear. For religion has to do with what is and what is to be. It leaves science to deal with the past.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
If we trace the history of the moral and spiritual development of the race, we find first and lowest that state of mind in which sin is looked upon with allowance, indifference, unconcern. Men laugh at sin, or even honor it. Their gods are lawless and wicked. The gods of classic Greece and Rome were drunken, hateful, licentious, thieving, lying gods. What was said by Isaiah of the Israelitish nation might have been said of them: they were full of iniquity from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. The Psalmist recognizes this low conception of divinity, when in one of the Psalms he says, "You thought that God was altogether such an one as you are." There are in all our great cities men and even women who are living in this moral state, in whom sin awakens no remorse, to whom the drunkard is only an object of amusement, to whom licentiousness is matter of jest if not of admiration. There have been epochs in human history characterized by this moral state, even late in the Christian era. The literature of England in the reign of Charles the Second is full of illustrations of this death in life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Courage is caution overcome.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
"The ten commandments have been before the world for over three thousand years," said I. "The number that have learned them and accepted them as a guide, and found in them a practical help is to be counted by millions. There is hardly a child in Wheathedge that does not know something of them, and has not been made better for them; and hardly a man who knows Solon even by name. We can hardly doubt that the one is as well worth studying as the other, Mr. Gear."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
When we got back to the Church we found it warm with a blazing fire in the great stove, and bright with a bevy of laughing girls, who emptied our sleigh of its contents almost before we were aware what had happened, and were impatiently demanding more. Miss Moore had proposed just to trim the pulpit-oh! but she is a shrewd manager-and we had brought evergreens enough to make two or three. But the plans had grown faster by far than we could work. One young lady had remarked how beautiful the chandelier would look with an evergreen wreath; a second had pointed out that there ought to be large festoons draping the windows; a third, the soprano, had declared that the choir had as good a right to trimming as the pulpit; a fourth, a graduate of Mount Holyoke, had proposed some mottoes, and had agreed to cut the letters, and Mr. Leacock, the store keeper, had been foraged on for pasteboard, and an extemporized table contrived on which to cut and trim them. So off we were driven again, with barely time to thaw out our half-frozen toes; and, in short, my half morning's job lengthened out to a long days hard but joyous work, before the pile of evergreens in the hall was large enough to supply the energies of the Christmas workers.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
What has science to offer? This: that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed. No longer an absentee God; no longer a Great First Cause, setting in motion secondary causes which frame the world; no longer a divine mechanic, who has built the world, stored it with forces, launched it upon its course, and now and again interferes with its operation if it goes not right; but one great, eternal, underlying Cause, as truly operative to-day as he was in that first day when the morning stars sang together — every day a creative day. That is the word of science.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
There are some metaphysical and abstract arguments for the opinion that the mind, the I within, that controls the body, what the Germans call the ego—which is Latin for I—is simple, not complex; that is, one power operating in different ways and doing different things. I am myself inclined to think that the better opinion; but it is not necessary here to go into this question at all, for what we are going to study is not the mind itself, but human nature, that is, the operations of the mind. And there is no doubt that the operations of the mind are complex. There may be, I am inclined to think there is, but one power, which perceives and thinks and feels and wills; but perceiving and thinking and feeling and willing are very different actions, and it is only with the actions that we have to do.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
The Bible is not one homogeneous book, but a collection of literature, gathered out of a much larger range of literature, and embodying the history of the growth of the consciousness of God in one people, preeminent among the peoples of their time for the perception of God. It is the sifted utterances of the chosen prophets of a peculiar people, peculiar in their spiritual genius. It is inspired, because the lives of the men and the hearts of the writers were lifted above the common errors and prejudices of their time; not because they were wholly freed from human prejudice and misconception. It contains a revelation of God; but the revelation is one in human experience, and subject to the adumbrations of human experience.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Of self-sacrifice the Cross is the sublimest of all illustrations. It has cost God something to love.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Nothing is trivial to God which is of consequence to us. He is not so absorbed with the affairs of state that he can give no time or thought to the minor concerns of his children's life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
It is a shame for a man to be a millionaire in possessions if he is not also a millionaire in beneficence.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
I firmly believe that the method which sets theological theories against scientifically ascertained facts, is fatal to the current theology and injurious to the spirit of religion; and that the method which frankly recognizes the facts of life, and appreciates the spirit of the scientists whose patient and assiduous endeavor has brought those facts to light, will commend the spirit of religion to the new generation, and will benefit--not impair--theology as a science, by compelling its reconstruction.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Warm hearts are better than great thoughts.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The experience of personal communication with God is as universal as the human race. Appreciation of the divine presence is more common than appreciation of art, music, or literature. Men and women who do not respond to music, see no beauty in pictures, never read, and could not understand literature if it were read to them, yet find comfort in sorrow, strength in temptation, courage in danger, and added joy in their enjoyments from the sense of a Father's presence.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God