American theologian and author (1835-1922)
There is nothing in the great dome under which we stand, nothing in the light and graceful arches which surround us, nothing in any curious device or cunning mechanism which you shall find within this building, nothing in any lifelike statue, nothing in any exquisitely colored painting, nothing even in the music which has brought us here together, which can compare for beauty or for grandeur, with such a crowd, expectant, eager, happy, as is here — people everywhere. The whole body of the floor filled with reserved seats and black with people. Stairways impassable, turned into tiers of sofas, filled with people. Ladders, tables, boards turned on one side changed suddenly, by temporary cabinet-makers, into settees, covered with people. Galleries railed round with lines of people. People even hanging outside the railing on the stairways, and sitting on the very ornaments of the gallery. People everywhere. Hurrying to and fro in by-passageways; promenading on the balconies; creeping round high up in the dome, on the little platform where the lamplighter goes to light the chandelier; crowding from the hot Palace into the hotter ice cream saloons adjoining, and crowding out again; and finally, having given up all hope of hearing the music, going out in such crowds that, when we leave in the middle of the second part we have to go down a block to get into an omnibus, as it is coming up, in order to obtain a seat.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
It seems to me, then, that the relation of nature and the supernatural to Christian thought has undergone a great change in the last half century; and that it is a change which promotes Christian life, because it brings God nearer to us in our Christian thought, and makes religion seem more natural and more real. In the thought of to-day God is not apart from nature and life, but in nature and life; creation is continuous; all events are providential; revelation is progressive; forgiveness is through law, not in violation of it; sacrifice is the divine method of life-giving; incarnation is not consummated until God dwells in all humanity and Jesus Christ is seen to be the first-born among many brethren. Then, when God's work is done, and he is everywhere, — as he is now everywhere but in the hearts of those who will not have him, — when he is in human hearts and lives, as he has been in all nature and in all history, then will come the end, and God will be all and in all.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
There are many men, and a large number, who, though they do not wish to be rid of God, do not very much care to have him.
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. God is in all humanity, and every man is a child of God whom we are to endeavor to bring back to his Father. God is in history, forgiving and redeeming, as Christ was in Palestine, forgiving and redeeming. God is in human experience, inspiring, uplifting, life-giving. Our message to our congregations is not a mere ethical law, not a mere philosophy about God, not a mere reiteration of a traditional creed, not a mere interpretation of the Bible. But through ethics, and philosophy, and the creed, and the Bible, we are to bring this threefold message: the message of science — " We are ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed;" the message of history — "There is a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness;" the message of literature —" Speak to him, for he hears; closer is he than breathing, nearer than hands and feet." "We are all his offspring; he is not far from any one of us; in him we live and move and have our being."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
The child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
To Jesus Christ sin was a disease to be cured rather than a crime to be punished. It awakened his pity, not his anger. Condemned for associating with sinners, he replied on one occasion, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." On another occasion he said that he had come to seek and to save that which is lost. And to him a lost soul was a soul not yet found. He compared such a soul to a coin mislaid, which the owner was seeking; to a sheep strayed from the fold, which the shepherd was seeking; to a prodigal son, whose return the father was awaiting. There is no one for whom society has so little hope as a lost woman; but Jesus never despaired of the recovery of even a lost woman. Even the Judas who betrayed him he sought to rescue with reproachful greeting: Friend, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss? There was only one character whose destiny he seemed himself unable to avert; the religious man whose religion was a false pretense, who was pious, but not humane; who devoured widows' homes and for a pretense made long prayers. The offal of Jerusalem was carried out of the city into the valley of Gehenna and there thrown upon fires always left burning, and there it was consumed. "Alas! for you hypocrite," cried Jesus, in an outburst of despairing pity, "how can you escape Gehenna?" To him such false pretenses seemed like the offal of the universe, doomed to destruction.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Courage is the Christian's coronation. There is no crown without it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Neither man nor woman of the world could long resist the subtle influence of that home; the warmth of its truth and love thawed out the frozen proprieties from impersonated etiquette; and whatever circle of friends sat on the broad piazza in summer, or gathered around the open fire in winter, knew for a time the rare joy of liberty — the liberty of perfect truth and perfect love. Her home was hospitable because her heart was large; and any one was her friend to whom she could minister. But her heart was like the old Jewish Temple— strangers only came into the court of the Gentiles, friends into an inner court; her husband and her children found a court still nearer her heart of hearts; yet even they knew that there was a Holy of Holies which she kept for her God, and they loved and revered her the more for it. So strangely were commingled in her the inclusiveness and the exclusiveness of love, its hospitality and its reserve.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
But neither painting, literature, music, nor architecture is so impressive as life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Impressions of a Careless Traveler
As for myself I am somewhat puzzled. I do not want our pastor left to preach to empty pews. But I am greatly enamored of the Deacon's second service.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
She not only loves her children, she respects them. They have wills, tastes, thoughts, judgments of their own, and this is as she wishes it to be. She distinguishes clearly between counsel and command: command must be obeyed; counsel may be disregarded without rebuke and without loss of favor.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
The girlish talk of love and lovers is henceforth stale and commonplace. The cheap jokes of the comic papers on love and its poor counterfeit, flirtation, are a blasphemy. Love-romances and love-poems have lost their charm, so inadequate are they to tell love's true story. She is herself the romance; she is herself the poem.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
"Your Bible tells me," said he, "that God wrote his laws with his finger on two tables of stone; that he tried to preserve them from destruction by bidding them be kept in a sacred ark; and that despite his care they were broken in pieces before Moses got down from the mountain top. I believe he writes them impartially in nature and in our hearts, that science interprets them, and that no Moses astonished out of his presence of mind can harm them or break the tablets on which they are engraven."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish