American theologian and author (1835-1922)
A pretty little cottage-white, with green blinds; the neatest of neat fences; a little platform in front of the sidewalk with three steps leading up to it,—a convenient method of access to our high country carriages; two posts before the gate neatly turned, a trellis over the front door with a climbing rose which has mounted half way to the top and stopped to rest for the season; another trellis fan-shaped behind which a path disappears that leads round to the kitchen door; the tastiest of little bird houses, now tenantless and desolate,—this is the picture that meets my eye and assures me that Mr. Gear is a man both of taste and thrift, as indeed he is.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Self-esteem is sometimes popularly confounded with approbativeness; it is in actual experience more commonly the antidote thereto. Approbativeness leads us to desire the approbation of others; self-esteem leads us to desire our own. Approbativeness asks what will others think of us; self-esteem, what shall we think of ourselves. Self-esteem tends to give its possessor independence of thought, individuality of action; to make him forceful and vigorous. It is to be found in nearly all born leaders, whether of thought or of action. Its normal and natural exercise produces self-reliance and enforces courage. If it is not excessive, it is a consciousness of power and adds to real strength of character. If it is excessive, it is an imaginary consciousness of power which has no real existence, and is a fatal weakness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
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
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
Which is worthier, the music or the libretto? It is hard to say. But this is certain, that perfect music often redeems a prosaic libretto.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
She cannot understand how any woman should not want children, to be her companions and to trust in her, love her, reverence her; children whom she may nurse, protect, teach, guide, govern, mold into manhood and womanhood. To have this possession has been her dream ever since with alternate tenderness and severity she ruled her dolls. The hoped-for hour has come. She welcomes it with a gladsome awe. As she prepares to enter the unknown experience of motherhood, her heart is stirred, but more deeply, with all the glad apprehension with which she entered married life as bride. She goes to that mystic gateway which opens into the infinite beyond, and receives into her keeping God's gift of a little child. She wonders at the Father's confidence in her, wonders that He dares to trust so sacred a task to her care. But one child is not enough. She wishes a brood. The Oriental passion of motherhood possesses her. Another child is given to her, a third, a fourth. They cluster about her, sharing with each other and with her their songs and their sorrows, their toils and their sports. The Holy Family has reappeared again. No old master ever painted such a group; no Raphael ever interpreted, no painter could interpret, her holy gladness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
I have said that I do not remember ever going into a bar-room or saloon; to that statement I must make one exception. I wanted to know the city from the top to the bottom, its vices as well as its virtues. This desire was partly natural, partly morbid. Defensible or indefensible, it existed. Combining with two or three of my college mates, we hired a policeman to take us through New York. He did the job apparently with thoroughness. He took us into the parlors of one or two houses in Mercer Street, which was then a prostitutes' thoroughfare; then through the Five Points, where no man dared to go by night alone, and even by day went at some hazard; and then to the scene of the worst haunts of the sailors in Water Street. I would not recommend this method of moral vaccination in general, but it was effectual in my case. There has never since that visit been for me any glamour in vice. I had seen it as a critical spectator in all its deformity, and good taste would have kept me from it even if moral principle did not. We did not visit any gambling-house. The interior of a gambling-hell I never saw until many years after, when, with my wife and some other friends, I visited Monte Carlo, where I saw the most unromantic and stupid exhibition of purely sordid avarice my eyes ever beheld.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
Even then, if one looked on man and saw how his aspirations and desires reached out into eternity, how he projected himself into eternity, how he set forces to work that were reaching forward into the far future, — even then it were difficult to see why it should be thought that "death ends all." But when one believes that the whole creation is focused on man, — that the whole process of the planetary system, beginning so far back that not memory nor even imagination can conceive it, issues in man; when one believes that the whole process of the long evolution, purposed in the divine love, thought out in the divine mind, and wrought out by divine energy, has been accomplished for the purpose of producing a thinking, willing, loving man, how is it possible for him to believe that the end of it all is — nothing?
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
In a religious point of view, the history of the world prior to the appearance of Christ may be briefly described as a struggle between the sensuous and the super-sensuous. That struggle was not confined to the Jewish people, nor were the educative influences, which gradually prepared the way for the life of faith on the earth, limited to Palestine. In India, Buddha protested, though in vain, against the gross idolatries of Brahminism. In China, Confucius made a similar, though no more successful attempt to supplant, with a cold but pure morality, the same imaginative but degrading worship. In Greece and Rome there were not a few pure spirits who dimly discerned and mystically interpreted the life of God in the soul. Yet, while the world has never been without some such witnesses, even in its darkest hours, on the whole the strong tendency of the human race has been to ignore the unseen world altogether. Probably to the vast majority of Christendom, and even to many Christians, Paul's expression," We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen," is a mystical expression, which they attribute to a poetical frame of mind, and interpret accordingly.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Among the various types of woman's character which the Bible affords us—and nearly every type of womanly excellence is to be found within its pages, the singer, the preacher, the warrior, the ruler, and, highest and most excellent of all, the faithful wife and mother—two possess peculiar pre-eminence, because they have christened with their names the books which narrate the story of their lives. One of these books—an idyl, a poem in prose—is the story of a peasant-girl who became mother of kings. It is full of a quiet, rural charm which has invested the very name of Ruth with a peculiar tenderness. The other carries us among courts and court intrigues, in times of direst peril, and narrates plots and counter-plots as marvelous and exciting as imagination ever conceived. It is the story of a nation saved by the brave fidelity of a single faithful woman, who, by her queenly courage, has made the name of Esther truly regal through all time.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
But trust in God does not take the place of common sense. I have read stories of devout Christians carrying their perplexities to God, then opening their Bible, and taking the first verse they lighted on as an indication of his will. But I never found in the Bible any authority for this use of it. It is no sibyl's book, no conjurer's cards. This was not Eliezer's way. He exercised his own best judgment, then asked God's blessing on it. Piety is a poor apology for intellectual laziness. Even in the littlest things God works out our salvation for us only when we work it out for ourselves, with the trembling and fear of eagerness. If the compass had been discovered in the days of Moses, Israel would never have seen the pillar of cloud and fire. It is said of Mr. Spurgeon, that when he was first applied to, to inaugurate an orphan asylum, by a lady who put into his hands several thousand pounds for the purpose, he hesitated. He perceived that it was a great undertaking, that it would require a large expenditure of money as well as of time. At last he devoted a day of fasting and prayer to the consideration of the subject. He resolved to undertake the enterprise only in case God should put into his hands a farther sum adequate to commence it. Within twenty-four hours he received by post from an unknown donor the required sum, to be appropriated by him, in his discretion, for Christ's cause. He accepted God's answer. The asylum was founded. It is thus God directs those who look to him for guidance. Life itself becomes luminous. Ways open in which God means that we shall walk. Ways are hedged up before us from which he would turn us aside.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
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
Our Bible class at the Mill has prospered greatly. Mr. Gear was better than his word. The first Sabbath he brought in over a dozen of his young men; the half dozen who were already in the Sabbath School joined us of course. Others have followed. Some of the children of the Mill village gathered curiously about the school-house door from Sunday to Sunday. It occurred to me that we might do something with them. I proposed it to Mr. Gear. He assented. So we invited them in, got a few discarded singing books from the Wheathedge Sabbath-school, and used music as an invitation to more. Mrs. Gear has come in to teach them. There are not over a dozen or twenty all told as yet. If the skating or the sliding is good they are reduced to five or six. Still the number is gradually increasing, and there are enough to constitute the germ of a possible Mission-school. I wish we had a Pastor. He might make something out of it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Of course, we must trim the Sunday school-room as well as the Church, for the children must have their Christmas; and trimmed it was, so luxuriantly that it seemed as though the woods had laid siege to and taken possession of the sanctuary, and that nature was preparing to join on this glad day her voice with that of man in singing praise to Him who brings life to a winter-wrapped earth, and whose fittest symbol, therefore, is the tree whose greenness not even the frosts of the coldest winter have power to diminish.
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
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
I readily promised to seek an occasion to talk with the Deacon, the more so because I really feel for our pastor. When I first came to Wheathedge he was full of enthusiasm. He has various plans for adding attractiveness and interest to our Sabbath-evening service, which has always flagged. He tried a course of sermons to young men. He announced sermons on special topics. Occasionally a political discourse would draw a pretty full house, but generally it was quite evident that the second sermon was almost as much of a burden to the congregation as it was to the minister. Latterly he seems to have given up these attempts, and to follow the example of his brethren hereabout. He exchanges pretty often. Quite frequently we get an agent. Occasionally I fancy, the more from the pastor's manner than from my recollection, that he is preaching an old sermon. At other times we get a sort of expository lecture, the substance of which I find in my copy of Lange when I get home. Under this treatment the congregation, never very large, has dwindled away to quite diminutive proportions; and our poor pastor is quite discouraged. Until about six weeks ago Deacon Goodsole was always in his pew. I think his falling off was the last straw.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
When a man begins to justify the ways of God to man, he has entered on a very dangerous process.
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