In his career of nearly seventy years, Lyman Abbott divided his life between the roles of journalist and clergyman. As a Protestant minister, he was aligned with the activist movement that preached the reform-minded doctrines known collectively as the Social Gospel. As an editor, he shaped a religious magazine that competed on equal terms, both in substance and in audience, with the major public-affairs weeklies of the era. Known in journalism primarily as the editor of the Outlook, Abbott was also an industrious contributor to other magazines and the author of a shelfful of books popularizing religious issues. Although his critics concluded that neither his preaching nor his journalism often reached beyond the superficial, none could doubt his immense productiveness or his ability to sense and exploit popular trends.

Abbott was born on 18 December 1835 in Roxbury, Massachusetts, into a family of Congregationalist educators. His mother, Harriet Vaughan Abbott...