American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Warm hearts are better than great thoughts.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The most beautiful statue that Powers ever chiseled does not compare for grace and beauty with the Divine model. The same mystic element of life is wanting.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
If the brain is impaired the mind is invariably affected; if, on the other hand, the brain is uninjured, the mental and moral powers will remain unaffected, though the rest of the body may be to all intents and purposes well-nigh dead. It is true that the brain is so closely connected with the nervous system, which pervades the whole body, that any thing which impairs the nerves of the body impairs the brain, and therefore affects the mind; but the general principle, that every other part of the body may be weakened and the mind be left comparatively unimpaired, provided the brain is uninjured, has had many striking illustrations in the history of great mental work achieved by chronic invalids. A very striking illustration of this is afforded by the extraordinary story of John Carter. At the age of twenty-one he fell from the branch of a tree, forty feet in height, and was taken up unconscious. Examination showed a severe injury to the spinal column, effectually disconnecting the brain from the rest of the nervous system, and depriving the body of all power of motion from the neck downward. He soon recovered consciousness, but never moved a limb again. But his brain, and with it the powers of his mind and spirit, were unimpaired. From being ungodly and ignorant, he became both devout and intelligent, a great reader, and soon learned to write, to draw, and even to paint, holding the pencil or the camel's hair brush between his teeth, enlarging or reducing the copies before him with great artistic skill and perfect success. He lived in this condition for fourteen years, his whole body from the neck downward being paralyzed and helpless, while his mind and spirit were not only uninjured but grew brighter and clearer to the end. It was evident that the accident which had left only the head uninjured had left all the organs of thought and feeling uninjured.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Carry your daily affairs to God. Ask his guidance in every emergency. Expect discoveries of his will. Let the promise of his help quicken all your faculties. Act for yourself energetically. Judge for yourself thoughtfully. Look unto God trustingly. Then will God both act and judge for you.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
The power that is to redeem him must be a power working within, not without.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Why, in a world made and ruled by a beneficent being, should there be suffering, — not accidental, incidental, occasional, but wrought into the very woof of life? The first sound of the babe is a cry; the last sound of the dying man is, ordinarily, a sigh or groan; and from the cradle to the grave the sad refrain of sorrow sounds. Neither the merry music of pleasure, the clatter of industry, nor the noise of battle can effectually drown it. We can understand some aspects of this mystery. Why sin should bring with it penalty we can understand; why imperfection should require suffering as a discipline for its removal we can understand. But the innocent suffer more than the guilty: the mother more than the wayward son; the hero on the battlefield laying down his life for the nation, or suffering racking pain in the hospital, more than the ambitious politician who provoked the war; the martyr offering his life for the Church more than the bigot who fires the fagots. How is this? Why should innocence suffer as well as guilt — often more?
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Gradually my whole conception of the relation of God to the universe has changed. I am sure that I have not lost my experience of God. I am far more certain now than I was forty years ago that God is, and that God is not an absentee God. I am not quite so certain as I once was about some of the manifestations which I once thought he had made of himself. I am a great deal more certain than I once was of his personal relation to me. My experience of God has changed only to grow deeper, broader, and stronger. But my conception of God's relation to the universe has changed radically. My hypothesis was — God an engineer who had made an engine and sat apart from it, ruling it; God a king who had made the human race and sat apart from men, ruling them. That was my hypothesis; now I have another hypothesis. And I think the change which has come over my mind is coming and has come over the minds of a great many. I think that there is nothing original in what I am going to say to you this morning, for I am only going to interpret to you a change, perhaps not altogether understood, which is being wrought in the mind of the whole Christian Church. I think my change only reflects your change. But whether that be true or not, I am sure the change has taken place in me.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Never lie to a child about doctors or medicine or anything else; but if you feel, as some people seem to feel, that life without lying is an impossibility, at least don't lie about the amount of pain likely to result from a surgical procedure, or about the taste of some medicine. If you know that something to be done will hurt, say so; if a mixture to be swallowed is unpleasant, say so. If you deceive a child once in such matters, do not imagine that it will trust you again. You do not deserve trust, and you will not get it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The House and Home: A Practical Book
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
So long as the creed is a window, and we see God through it, it is good ... but when men are content simply to believe in the creed, or in the church, or in the Bible, they are worshipping idols.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
That God is in nature, filling it with himself, as the spirit fills the body with its presence, so that all nature forces are but expressions of the divine will, and all nature laws but habits of divine action -- this is the doctrine of Fatherhood.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
Each nature requires its own education. The training which will help the man of undue self-esteem, will hurt the man who has too little. A chief end of life is to grow aright; and no man can grow aright.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
I cannot recall that even the supposedly awful temptations of a city life were temptations to us. Our companions were clean companions, our recreations were clean recreations, the plays we went to were clean plays.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
So the end draws daily nearer, and no one guesses it except herself. Her life is not ebbing away, it is at its flood. She has trained herself in the habit of immortality, the habit of looking, not at the things which are seen and are transitory, but at the things which are not seen and are eternal. Her anticipatory ambitions for her children and her grandchildren are boundless, and the hopes for herself which made radiant the dawn of her life seem dim beside the higher hopes for her loved ones which fill life's eventide with sunshine. Her husband and herself are lovers still; the honeymoon has never set, never even waned; and to his love is added that of those whom God has given to her. She thinks to live naturally is the best preparation for dying peacefully; rarely, therefore, does she allow herself to forecast the coming day. When she does, not with dread but with a solemn gladness she looks forward to emancipation from the irksome bonds of the fettering body and to embarkation for that unknown continent where many colonists are already gathered to give her greeting. Faith, hope, love — these are life. And her faith was never so clear, for her heart was never so pure; her hopes were never so great, for experience has enlarged them; and her love was never so rich, for God, who is love, has been her life Companion.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
But one truth must ever grow clearer — the truth that there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to which we can neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain this one absolute certainty, that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
The combination of old and new makes Genoa a city of curious contrasts. Driving through the city, we passed along broad avenues cut through old portions of the city, the hills cut down—for Genoa is built on hills—the valleys filled up, old houses being demolished, new houses going up. We drove in five minutes from new Genoa to old Genoa, and were in streets so narrow that the residents of the upper stories might almost shake hands across the street, and easily can, and I suspect do, carry on gossip with one another; streets bounded by tenements six, eight, or even ten stories in height, the walls ornamented with ancient frescoes, peeping at us from between the articles of the week's wash hung in graceful festoons from the windows like decorations for a festal day. Now we were in a lane so narrow that there was scarce room for our carriage, which must drive on a walk lest it run over some of the children that swarm out of the crowded tenement; now in an avenue so broad as to give abundant room to the trolley line in the center of the avenue without discommoding the carriages; now we were looking up between the tenements at a narrow strip of blue sky overhead, as we might look up from the bottom of a sunless canon in Colorado; now we were looking off from a plaza on the brow of one of the encircling hills upon the city below and the harbor around which the city clusters; now we had as street companions half - dressed children and hard, weary - faced women, with colored kerchiefs for head-gear, and short skirts and sometimes ragged and dirty ones; now we had fine ladies reclining at ease in luxurious carriages as they who had never known either work or care, and theatrically appareled nurses with babies as much overdressed in their fluffy garments as their infantile brothers in the poorer quarters were underdressed in their rags and tatters. And yet in it all a certain picturesqueness of color, and, to the stranger, oddity of fashion, which went far to redeem the one aspect from mere ostentation and the other from mere squalor.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Impressions of a Careless Traveler
It is true that wisdom has wealth in the one hand and pleasure in the other, that her ways are ways of pleasantness, her paths are paths of peace; but she will never come to one who follows her for the sake of the wealth in the one hand or the pleasure in the other.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
My faith in miracles rests also on my faith in Christ -- he himself a greater miracle by far than any attributed to him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
It was a pretty place. A little cottage, French gray with darker trimmings of the same; the tastiest little porch with a something or other—I know the vine by sight but not to this day by name—creeping over it, and converting it into a bower; another porch fragrant with climbing roses and musical with the twittering of young swallows who had made their nests in little chambers curiously constructed under the eaves and hidden among the sheltering leaves; a green sward sweeping down to the road, with a few grand old forest trees scattered carelessly about as though nature had been the landscape gardner; and prettiest of all, a little boy and girl playing horse upon the gravel walk, and filling the air with shouts of merry laughter—all this combined to make as pretty a picture as one would wish to see. The western sun poured a flood of light upon it through crimson clouds, and a soft glory from the dying day made this little Eden of earth more radiant by a baptism from heaven.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish