th, and did not permit him to attribute anything more
than a relative value to the church of the Gentiles, "the church before
the millennium."

Groen Van Prinsterer appeared at a time when the revival had taken
definite shape, but he attached himself to its interests and contributed
more than any one else to its development. He is one of those decided
characters who are mentioned by friends and enemies with great
animation. Studiously rejecting the individuality taught him by the
school of Vinet, and reticent of his personal opinions, he has incurred
the animadversions of some of his warmest admirers. Being a man of
continual literary and political activity, he has taken part in all the
important movements of his times. He is the Guizot of Holland. Though
banished for a time from his seat in the States General by the
Catholics, Revolutionists, and Rationalists, he did not intermit his
labors to lead back the masses to evangelical piety. His powerful
influence has been in favor of home missions and similar agencies. He
has comprehended the revival, in all its scope, more clearly than any
one else. He says of it that "it was neither Calvinistic, nor Lutheran,
nor Mennonite, but Christian. It did not raise for its standard the
orthodoxy of Dort, but the flag of the Reformation, the word of God. And
though it found the doctrine of salvation admirably expressed in our
symbolical books, appreciated a rule of education so conformable to the
Holy Scriptures, and opposed the doctrines of the church and the duty of
her ministers to the usurpations of Rationalism, it never thought of
accepting and imposing the absurd and literal yoke of formularies with
an absurd and puerile anxiety. A spirit of Christian fraternity
predominated over the old desires."

The direct associated result of the revival was the Reunion of Christian
Friends. It was presided over by Groen Van Prinsterer, and held
semi-annual sessions in Amsterdam from 1845 to 1854. Its monthly
journal, _The Union, or Christian Voices_, was conducted by Pastor
Heldring, a warm-hearted man who has made himself illustrious in the
annals of beneficence by his labors for home missions, by his foundation
of an asylum for little neglected girls, and by similar charitable
works.

Other pastoral associations sprang up in consequence of the new life,
but some of them failed in a few years because of the want of a common
symbol of faith. Groen Van Prinsterer hailed with joy every i