American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Immortality does not seem to me to be capable of scientific demonstration. If by immortality we simply mean that those who seem to have died continue to live after death, ghosts, slates, table-tippings, rappings, and such like might, perhaps, afford a scientific demonstration of this not very important fact. But if immortality means a life in the other world that transcends any life in this, a life far beyond any experience here below, a life free from the trammels of the body, a life glorious beyond all imaginings, it is impossible that it should be demonstrated. For such a life lies in the future, and science has to do exclusively with the present and the past. It may anticipate the future, but it can test only what actually is. All that science can do respecting immortality is to look at life from the evolutionary point of view and see what evolution would naturally lead us to anticipate in the future, — death or life. And it appears to me that belief in evolution, so far from weakening faith in immortality, strengthens it, and I might almost say necessitates it. It does not demonstrate immortality, and yet I do not see how one can be a consistent evolutionist and think that "death ends all."
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
If I had only life's book to read ... I should not believe in a God of love. I should turn Persian, and believe in two gods, one of love and good-will, one of hate and malice.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Personality of God
A graceful and blessed old age must have three elements in it: a happy retrospect, a peaceful present, and an inspiring future. And old age cannot have either one of these three if the youth has been wasted and manhood has been misspent.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Men who do want God, who are really in earnest to find God, who do not live in the outward world altogether, but have some vision of the inner, who do not stop at the creed or the church or the Book, who do not call God to an account for the way in which he conducts himself, still fail to find God because they want God only for what God will bring to them.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
It is hardly necessary to point out the function or dwell upon the necessity of conscience in human life. It is fundamental to all that is human in life. Without it men would be brutes; society would be wholly predatory; the only law recognized would be the law of the strongest; the only restraint on cupidity would be self-interest. There could be neither justice nor freedom. Trade would be a perpetual attempt at the spoliation of one's neighbor. Law could be enforced only by fear, and government would be of necessity a despotism. The higher faculties uninfluenced by conscience would rapidly degenerate. Reverence would no longer be paid to the good and the true, but only to the strong and the terrible; religion would become a superstition; God a demon ruling by fear, not by law; punishment a torment inflicted by hate and wrath, not a penalty sanctioned by conscience for disregard of its just and necessary laws; and benevolence itself, unregulated by a sense of right and wrong, would become a mere sentiment, following with its tears the robber as readily as the Messiah to his crucifixion, and strewing its flowers as lavishly on the grave of the felon as on that of the martyr. In history have been seen all these exhibitions, not of the absolute elimination of conscience from human life, for conscience has never been wholly wanting in the most degraded epoch of the most degraded nation, but of its obscuration and its effeminacy.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
In all ages of the world the use of physical organs by the mind and spirit has been recognized, not only by the philosophers, but also by the common people. The ancient Hebrews put the seat of the emotions in the bowels; hence the phrase, " bowels of mercies," as used in Scripture. This was probably because strong emotion affects the bowels. Later, for an analogous reason, because of the effect of strong feeling on the heart and circulating system, common language fixed upon the heart as the seat of the emotions. This notion still lingers in such phrases as " a warm-hearted friend," "a good-hearted fellow." But it is now well established that the real seat of both the affections and the intellect is in the brain. By this is not meant that they are located in the brain. They have no location; they are omnipresent in the body, as God is omnipresent in the universe, equally controlling all its parts. It is more accurate, therefore, to say that it is now well established that the material or physical organ of all thought and feeling is in the brain; that every mental and emotional activity employs some part of the brain; that every such activity uses up some brain tissue, requiring, therefore, a new supply; and that, therefore, the healthful action of the mind requires a good brain, and the best action of the mind requires good digestion and good circulation, since on these depend the renewal and replenishing of the brain.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
God is always revealing himself, and has always been revealing himself. He has always been knocking at the door; he has always been standing at the window. He has always been showing his character. They who have seen it best and most clearly, and had power to tell us what they have seen, are the world's prophets. What is distinctive in respect to Hebrew law is not its universal applicability to the human race — there is a great deal in the Hebrew law to which we no longer pay any attention; it is the recognition of the fact that God is the great lawgiver. What is peculiar in the Hebrew history is not its narration of great battles, great statesmen's endeavors and achievements; it is the history of the dealing of God with a particular people. God is as truly with the American race as he ever was with the Hebrew race; as truly with Abraham Lincoln as he was with Moses. The difference between the Hebrew race and the American race is the difference between the Old Testament Scriptures and the modern newspaper. The modern newspaper is enterprising, and it gathers news, and gathers gossip that is not news, from the four quarters of the globe; but it fails to see God in human history. The Old Testament prophets did not show the same enterprise, did not have the same wideness of view; but they did see God in human history, and have helped us to see him. That vision of God is equally characteristic of the fiction of the Bible — Ruth, Esther, Jonah, the parable of the prodigal son (there are some people who think it is irreverent to suggest that there is any fiction in the Old Testament, but quite right to find it in the words of Christ in the New), and of the drama of the Bible — the epic drama of Job, the love drama of the Song of Songs. In these is seen a manifestation, a revelation of goodness and truth and righteousness, and, above all, of a personal God dealing with men. This is the characteristic of the Hebrew poetry. We find more beautiful phrasing in Wordsworth, or in Tennyson, or in Longfellow, or in Whittier, but nowhere do you find in literature, ancient or modern, such discoveries of God as in the Hebrew Psalter. The "Eternal Goodness" may seem to you more beautiful than the One Hundred and Third Psalm; but would Whittier have written " Eternal Goodness" if he had not read the One Hundred and Third Psalm?
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
"I don't believe in no kind of fiction, nohow," said Mr. Hardcap, emphatically. "What we want is facts, Mr. Laicus-hard facts. That's what I was brought up on when I was a boy, and that's what I mean to bring my boys up on."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The object of the American college in 1850 was to prepare the student for one of the three learned professions — law, medicine, or the ministry. I do not think that any one of the members of my class looked forward to another than one of these three careers. Engineering was not regarded as a learned profession, nor journalism, nor literature, nor music, nor art, nor acting, nor agriculture, nor teaching, nor business. For business what was needed was not education, but experience. Teaching was not a profession. Very few chose it as their life work. College professors frequently, college presidents almost uniformly, were clergymen who from choice or necessity had left the pulpit for the college chair; other teachers had generally taken up the work for bread-andbutter reasons or en route to something else. The farmer looked upon "book larnin'" with good-humored contempt, not without some justification, since the agricultural books and papers of that day were largely the work of academicians without practical experience.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
No man will find God unless he seeks after God for God's own sake, loves him for himself, and not for the gifts which he may bestow.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Literature, music, art, and the stage were thought to be only for bohemians, who were regarded as the unpractical estrays of life who could do nothing better than act, paint, play, and write stories.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
It is only by human experiences that we can interpret the Divine.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
I believe that God is the Great Companion, that we are not left orphans, that we may have comradeship with him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Great Companion
Evolution is described by John Fiske as "God's way of doing things." Theology also may be described as an attempt to explain God's way of doing things. Thus, to a certain extent the science of evolution and the science of theology have the same ultimate end. Both attempt to furnish an orderly, rational, and self-consistent account of phenomena. The supposed inconsistency between science and religion is really an inconsistency between two sciences. The theologian and the scientist have given different, and to some extent inconsistent, accounts of God's way of doing things. It is important for us to know which account is correct. It is even religiously desirable that we should know, since our understanding of God's influence upon the human soul affects that influence.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
As I look back, I can remember something of the view which it seems to me I held when I was entering into the ministry. It was something like this: There is a great and good God. He is somewhere in the centre of the universe — whether in the body or out of the body I knew not, and yet in my conception I embodied him. He is the creator and the ruler of the world. He had made the world. I conceived of him as making the world as an architect makes a building. I rather think somewhere, in some of my earlier sermons, that figure would be found worked out — he had turned it in a lathe; he had erected the pillars; he had woven the carpet of grass; he had ornamented it with the flowers. You have heard that from other ministers, and no doubt you would have heard it from me when I was a young man. And as I conceived of God creating the world as an engineer creates an engine, so also I conceived of him regulating this world as an engineer regulates the engine. When men said to me, "Do you believe in miracles? Do you believe that God has set aside natural law?" I said, " Oh, no, but he uses natural law. As an engineer uses the steam and the fire, or as an electric engineer uses the electricity, so God uses the forces of nature. He is in his engine, with his hand on the lever; he can add to its speed or he can diminish its speed, or he can halt it, or he can make it go backward, or he can turn it in the one direction or the other direction. He made the engine and he rules the engine." Something like that was my conception of God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
A bad God is worse than no God at all.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
It is true that even to the heathen death did not end all. They believed in something after death, but they knew not what--a vague, shadowy, unsatisfactory immortality.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Other Room
It is said of Jesus that He grew in wisdom and in stature. He did not know everything in the beginning. His wisdom was a growth. This is the universal law of the individual, who always grows in his knowledge of what we call religious truth, no less than in his knowledge of what we call secular truth. He is no more born with an accurate knowledge of God, truth, purity, righteousness, than with an accurate knowledge of geology, geography, astronomy, history, or language. The simplest intellectual declarations respecting God are unmeaning to a little child, — as, God is a Person. The simplest spiritual declarations respecting God mean but little — as, God is love. To the child in the infant class this does not and cannot mean what it means to the grandmother, who has passed through all the phases of love, and learned in the school of experience all the meaning of love. Does one ask, What does Christ mean by saying that we must become as little children if we would enter the kingdom of heaven? He means that, however much we know, we must be eager to learn more. Does any one ask, What does He mean by the saying, Of such is the kingdom of heaven? He means, out of such eagerness to learn more, the kingdom of heaven is developed in the soul. We all practically recognize the truth that the child must grow into the knowledge of God, truth, duty.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
It is a poor sort of fatalism which makes men fold their hands and wait for fortune.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths