e important service to the Dutch church. Their
elevation of ethics to a proper position in theological instruction has
been a national boon, while their unwavering zeal for the education of
the masses and of children will always remain a monument to their honor.
While they were the first to establish Sunday Schools in Holland, they
have given a new impulse to missions. They defend religion against
skepticism, and picture the latter in all its deformity.

But the Groningen system has almost totally failed of its object. It did
not unite the zeal of the fathers with the science of the present day.
Though opposed to Rationalism, it is more negative than positive, and is
less distinguished for its doctrines than for its absence of them. It
claims that the Church neither possesses nor needs doctrines. Therefore,
it destroys the line of demarcation between the various confessions and
that confessional Latitudinarianism, which is the direct offspring of
the destructive principles of the Rationalism and Liberalism of the
eighteenth century.

THE SCHOOL OF LEYDEN. In no theological system had any satisfaction been
afforded to the joint feeling of attachment to the old confessions and
of a desire to develop them in conformity with the requirements of the
age. Many rejected the Groningen school because it depreciated the
formularies of the church, and did not know how to value their scope or
to elaborate them for immediate usefulness. The Leyden school filled the
vacancy. Taking its origin in a disposition to establish a connection
between the faith of the Reformers and our own, its aim has been to
unite the old traditions with the new opinions.

The father and expounder of the School of Leyden is Professor Scholten,
formerly of Franeker, but now of Leyden. He is well known as the author
of historico-critical introductions, and of a _History of Philosophy_,
but his reputation has been acquired mainly by his _Doctrines of the
Reformed Church_, a work of great clearness, profound erudition, and
romantic interest. As the reader peruses its fascinating pages he is
bound by a spell which he cannot easily break. The remark of Dugald
Stewart, on reading Edwards _On the Will_, occurs to him with peculiar
appositeness, "There is a fallacy somewhere, but the devil only can find
it."

There is, according to Scholten, a distinction between the principles
and dogmas of a Church. The former are the norm and touch-stone of the
latter. The Re