ese subtle and finely wrought
abstractions in our pages. We aspire not to the lofty heights of
theological and supernatural contemplation, where the atmosphere becomes
too rarefied for ordinary constitutions. Rather we attempt an objective
and level survey of remarkable phenomena manifesting themselves on the
earth; direct or secondary emanations from those distant spheres.

For in those days, and in that land especially, theology and politics
were one. It may be questioned at least whether this practical fusion of
elements, which may with more safety to the Commonwealth be kept
separate, did not tend quite as much to lower and contaminate the
religious sentiments as to elevate the political idea. To mix habitually
the solemn phraseology which men love to reserve for their highest and
most sacred needs with the familiar slang of politics and trade seems to
our generation not a very desirable proceeding.

The aroma of doubly distilled and highly sublimated dogma is more
difficult to catch than to comprehend the broader and more practical
distinctions of every-day party strife.

King James was furious at the thought that common men--the vulgar, the
people in short--should dare to discuss deep problems of divinity which,
as he confessed, had puzzled even his royal mind. Barneveld modestly
disclaimed the power of seeing with absolute clearness into things beyond
the reach of the human intellect. But the honest Netherlanders were not
abashed by thunder from the royal pulpit, nor perplexed by hesitations
which darkened the soul of the great Advocate.

In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlours, on
board herring smacks, canal boats, and East Indiamen; in shops,
counting-rooms, farmyards, guard-rooms, ale-houses; on the exchange, in
the tennis-court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or
bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other,
there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and
Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the
pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the
tinker dropped a kettle half mended, the broker left a bargain
unclinched, the Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden shoes forgot the
cracks in his pinkie, while each paused to hold high converse with friend
or foe on fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge; losing himself in
wandering mazes whence there was no issue. Province agains