LYMAN ABBOTT QUOTES
American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Time never works. It eats, and undermines, and rots, and rusts, and destroys. But it never works. It only gives us an opportunity to work.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Before you, reader, lie these diverging paths. In your life there is, or has been, the solemn crisis-hour which determines all the future. To you God repeats the solemn adjuration," Choose you this day whom ye will serve." Befog this question as you may, it is still the question of your life, on whose decision time and eternity depend. The question is not, indeed, always simple. But to every one the question comes. These diverging paths seem sometimes, at the outset, to be parallel to one another. But one is the path of duty. The other is the path of pleasure and preferment. One leads through the fertile plains of Egypt. The other seems to end in the wilderness of Paran. Mephistopheles does not usually acknowledge his name, as he did to Faust. But it is always the Prince of evil, however disguised, that makes the offer, "All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Christ points to the rugged road — his feet have marked it with his own blood—his Cross shines through the darkness and the clouds which overhang it—while his voice says, with tenderness, yet with divine authority, "Follow thou me." To follow him will cost something, may cost much. To pioneer that path cost him how great a sacrifice. But to turn away, what does that cost? honor, manliness, immortality, heaven, God. When selfishness and sense entice, be honest with yourself—count the cost. Before you reject the poverty of Israel's fellowship for even a princely inheritance in Egypt, ponder the question which Christ addresses to you, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
At length the long-wished-for fall of 1856 arrived — long wished for because I could not be sure of an income adequate to support a wife until I was admitted to the bar, and I could not be admitted to the bar until I was twenty-one.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
There is evil in excess; there is evil in scant measure.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
A miracle constantly repeated becomes a process of nature.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
It seemed to me much more than the mere question whether the negro should remain in slavery; that it really involved the question whether liberty should be strangled on the continent dedicated to liberty.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
A knowledge of human nature is the first condition of the successful conduct of life. Every business man, lawyer, doctor, statesman, needs it. If a man should attempt to farm without any knowledge of seeds and soils, or to mine without any knowledge of metals, he would be sure to fail; how can he succeed in dealing with men if he knows nothing about human nature.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Christ ransoms, Christ feeds, but, grandest truth of all, Christ frees—frees us from the fetters we have welded on our own wrists.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Too long have we stood at the foot of the cross or at the door of the tomb, and not seen the stone rolled away and the triumphant Saviour emerging. Too long we have thought of the life of Christ ending with his passion and death. But the greatest part of his life is his post-resurrection life. For the message of the Gospel is not merely that Jesus Christ lived and died eighteen hundred years ago, living here for three short years and then disappearing, to be an absentee Christ; it is that God is always pouring out his life upon men and into their hearts, lifting them up out of their sins, succoring them from their remorse, and making them live again.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Personality of God
If I could conceive it possible that this universe were governed by a wisdom no greater than I am able to comprehend, I should not be able to believe in a God of infinite wisdom; for finite wisdom cannot comprehend infinite wisdom.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Evolution is the history of a process, not the explanation of a cause. The doctrine of evolution is an attempt on the part of scientific men to state what is the process of life; not an attempt to state what is the cause of life. When Isaac Newton discovered and announced the doctrine of attraction and gravitation, he did not undertake to explain why the apple falls from the bough to the earth, nor why the earth revolves around the sun in its orbit; he simply stated what he had seen, — that all matter acts as if its bodies were attracted to one another inversely as the square of the distance. So the evolutionist does not attempt to explain the cause of phenomena; he simply recites their history.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
I had gone through, or at least gone near, "every form and shape of skepticism." I could not accept the Bible as a final and ultimate authority, and stated my view in these words: "The Bible is not a book, it is a library, written by various persons and at various stages of the world, a part of them so far back in antiquity that their authorship is a question not free from difficulty. . . . What is the reason of our consent to this absolute authority which the Bible claims over us? I think there are comparatively few in the Church who could answer that question or would if they could." I had not yet found an answer to this question, or at least any fuller answer than my cousin gave to my very frank confession of my perplexities: I wrote her, "I think you are right that our experience of the truths of the Bible is the best evidence of its source." One thing was for me absolutely settled; I would not rest my religious faith on habit; I would not rest content with nothing more than an inherited faith in the Bible, and this is what I thought I should do, "if I give nothing more than a reasonless assent to it through timidity or laziness without understanding the reasons there are for its acceptance."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
It needed no divine revelation to assure us that God loves. The language of nature and the experience of our own hearts are an adequate witness to this truth, so simple as to be almost self-evident. That which gives to the Bible revelation of God's character its peculiar significance is the fact that it reveals him one who affords the highest exemplification of Christ's precept," Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." The revelation of God's love, suffering for the sake of those that despise it, though so simple, is yet so august, so sublime, that our selfish hearts can not comprehend it, and our shallow philosophy obscures or denies it. Christ crucified is to-day as much as ever " unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness;" as much as ever the power and wisdom of God to those that comprehend it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
The noblest names in history are those, the records of whose lives are written in their own blood. To suffer is grander than to do: this has passed into a proverb. For illustrious lives we ransack, not palaces, but prisons.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
God has put His children in the world, as pupils are put in a laboratory, and has set them to work on the great problems of life — Who am I? What does this world mean? Who is over me? What are the laws of the moral life? How must I conduct myself toward my neighbor? How must he conduct himself toward me? What is our future destiny? These problems God has left us to work out for ourselves, by our own quest, under His patient, guiding, inspiring influence. The Bible is a record of man's laboratory work in the spiritual realm, a history of the dawning of the consciousness of God and of the divine life in the soul of man. It contains the story of his spiritual aspirations, his dim, half-seen visions of truth, his fragments of knowledge, his blunders, his struggles with the errors of others, and with his own prejudices.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
There is an epidemic of animal magnetism, which in our day would be called hypnotism. It runs its brief course and then disappears, but for six weeks is a dominating fashion. There is one boy who is peculiarly susceptible to the influence, whatever it was, or is, and another boy who has peculiar power as an "operator." Often the victim gets pathetically angry when his tormentor, apparently without previous preparation, tells him what he must do and what he must not do, and he is powerless to resist. There is a young man from the village who is supposed by us boys to be a past-master in this curious art. Always desirous of investigating new phenomena and having a share in new experiences, I apply to this young man to operate on me, and I am quite ready to submit myself to his influence for the sake of finding out what it is. So I take my seat and obey his directions, while he makes the passes which are supposed to be needful to put me to sleep. Then he places his thumb on the bridge of my nose and tells me that I cannot open my eyes; this I instantly proceed to do and to look him serenely in the face. He turns from me with the contemptuous remark that I am not a good subject.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
Every yielding to temptation is a hindrance, not a help, to moral development; but every temptation offers what, rightly employed, is an indispensable means of moral development. For all moral development is through temptation to virtue.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
The problem of sin is not to be confounded with the fact of sin. As to the fact, there is no room for question. All the great dramatists have recognized it in their portrayal of remorse, indignation, penalty, repentance, forgiveness, restoration. The great historians have recognized it, in depicting the struggle of righteousness with moral evil. Religious worship is largely founded upon it; for religious worship is largely an endeavor of the worshiper to rid himself of the present burden and the future penalty of sin. All government recognizes it; for certainly the first if not also the chief function of government is to protect the innocent from the sins of the sinful. He who denies the fact of sin denies the police and the prison, the temple and the priest, the battle-field and the martyrdom, Shakespeare and Aeschylus. The problem is not, Is there sin? but, Whence comes it? If we are to cure a disease, we must know its nature and origin. What is the nature and origin of sin, the cure of which is alike the problem of government, education, and religion,— of the courts, the school, and the church?
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
The specialists aver that most men have a streak of insanity in them. A thoroughly sane mind is as rare as a thoroughly healthy body. To keep the mind well balanced, to preserve it in good order, to enable it to work clearly, quickly, efficiently, regularly, requires a knowledge of the mind and of the conditions of mental health. The ministers assure us that all men are diseased morally. Life abundantly bears out their assertion. No man is perfectly healthy, morally; for perfect health is a perfect balance of all the moral powers. Every faculty has its own disease. The conscience may become cruel—witness the Inquisition. Religion may become superstition—witness the history of all pagan and some forms of the Christian religion. Love may become sentiment—witness the story of many a child ruined by the false love of a doting mother. And observe that every man's body, mind, and spirit is distinct from every other man's. Its conditions of health are peculiar. What is one man's meat is another man's poison. One man needs cereals, another meat; one man needs to read more fiction, another needs to abandon it altogether. One man needs to cultivate his reverence, another his conscience, a third his sympathy. To produce, to cultivate, to maintain health of body, mind, and spirit, every man has need to know his own nature, the laws of his own being, the condition of his own health.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature