Editorial January 14, 1905 ISSUE

A Cry in the Wilderness

John B. Willis

There are few men who have come into the inheritance of a larger and nobler opportunity than that of the distinguished preacher and journalist upon whose shoulders, eighteen years ago, the mantle of Henry Ward Beecher was laid. Whether as pastor and editor, or as lecturer and philanthropist, Dr. Lyman Abbott has ever displayed a breadth of sympathy, a purity of purpose, a vigor of thought, and a venturesomeness of faith which have enabled him to wield an influence that has been both signal and far-reaching.

Caring more for truth than for its human expressions, he has often evinced an indifference to conventional thought and stereotyped religious convictions, and one of his late utterances has begotten a tide of comment and criticism which well illustrates the fact that the declaration of a non-conformist is always no less interesting for the thought it begets, than for that which it contains. The nature of the echo which a given statement, at a given time, awakens, supplies one of the essential bases for the study and interpretation of history.

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