should succeed, we may consider the government overthrown and the Union gone forever. It is our duty, therefore, to resist all such proposals, no matter how plausible. If we must be defeated in war, let it be so; - but do not let us surrender any principle for which we contend.

When we look at the sin involved in war, we must regard it as a good thing that this sin should show itself. War is not the greatest of evils, the national selfishness beneath it is the greatest evil. War is only a symptom of the deeper disease. In this sense, war is providential; it shows us ourselves in this dark glass; it makes the inward state of the nation take form outwardly.

So it was necessary for Christ to be crucified, that thus men might see the evil of their sin. So we see in this war, that we, as a people, are not what we should be; we see our want of true life, our need of more generosity, nobleness, and magnanimity.

Therefore, in the midst of this great calamity, we need not be troubled as though there were no meaning in it, and no good to come out of it. Troubled we must be, but not troubled so. God is guiding events still: they are moving forward toward a better future than has been seen yet. The first step in that future will be peaceful reunion, or peaceful separation, the next step, after some time, emancipation and end of slavery, and then, at last, will appear a true Christian democracy.

Thus Christ always comes, in the clouds of heaven; thus he comes amid darkness and storms, wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and pestilence. But he comes, and the world advances, through all these struggles and trials, to its great and perfect destiny.

ART. VI.-THE CHURCH OF HOLLAND.

1. Mélanges de Critique Religieuse. Par EDMOND SCHERER. Paris, Genève, Amsterdam: Joël Cherbuliez. 1860. 8vo. pp. 588. 2. Essais de Critique Religieuse. Par ALBERT RÉVILLE. Paris, Genève, et Rotterdam: Joël Cherbuliez. 1860. 8vo. pp. 493.

WE prefix to the present paper on the Church of Holland, which is only the continuation and completion of the essay in the January number of this Review, the titles of two new volumes, not mentioned in the sketch, which very fairly represent the freedom, scholarship, and ability of that Church at the present time. In the Review of Current Literature we shall describe more fully the contents of these volumes, and mention what seem to us to be their merits and their defects. Here we can only say, that a Church is signally fortunate which can count two such men among its teachers and preachers as Edmond Scherer and Albert Réville. They are the peers, in every respect, of Stanley, Jowett, and Temple in the English Church, and are allies whom the liberal Christians of America may claim with confidence and pride. We would add to these names that of Edward Reuss, who is one of their fraternity, were it not that his professorship at Strasburg seems to preclude mention of him as a preacher in the Church of Holland.

* The religious tendency personified in Van der Palm could have an enduring triumph only with the proviso, that the great problems of faith should be left untouched, and that profound religious needs should not come to the light. But when Europe had in some degree recovered its quiet, after the terrible commotions of the French Revolution and of the Empire, men were surprised to hear voices supposed to have been silenced again speaking openly,- voices which the noise of the storm had only overpowered, but not subdued. Every one knows the general spirit of reaction which in Europe followed the

* Translated from an essay, by Albert Réville, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for June 15, 1860.

infatuation, so sadly undeceived, which had aroused the great revolutionary movement. Old kings, old laws, the old faith,such was the formula which found in the political and relig ious world of that epoch numerous and strong echoes. Europe, torn to its vitals by wars and political overturnings, had become very serious again. The season of bouquets to Chloris had passed, as well in philosophy and theology as in literature. Holland, which had suffered less than many other lands, at least in its religious condition, from the frivolous spirit of the eighteenth century, was for that reason later in feeling the distrust universally diffused toward all that this spirit had engendered; but it was, nevertheless, compelled to share this distrust in its turn. The Methodist excitement of England found its way into and through the land, aided both by Catholic tradition, which was far from being absorbed by the ideas of the age, and the national sentiment, which had too many grievances against certain results of the Revolution to be very fond of anything which seemed to wear its colors. Poetry, politics, and the religious revival concurred to give a growing force to the Calvinist reaction. About the year 1823, a group of men eminent in more than one direction, gathering themselves around the poet Bilderdyk as a centre, summoned, with increasing vehemence, their country to throw off its dogmatic indifference, to return to the vivifying sources of national theology, and to regenerate itself by a much more active share than heretofore in those missionary, evangelical, and charitable enterprises which were beginning to take such marvellous expansion in Protestant lands. This return to the ancient Reformed doctrines is easy to explain, — especially among men who were scarcely touched by the difficulties aroused by modern inquiry. Piety is by preference archaic; the mature man, beaten by the tempest, readily goes back to the faith of his earlier years. This movement, favored by the aristocratic party, which saw in it still another guaranty against the demands of liberalism, was fortified, especially among the lower classes, by the renewed antagonism between the Protestant and Catholic Churches. The growing difficulties with Belgium, the issue of the revolution which followed, so mortifying to Dutch patriotism, the bolder as

sumptions of Ultramontanism, disposing of a third at least of the population as if this were a single man, all these forced the Protestants on in a path where it was very hard to separate the essential principles of Protestantism from the form which its fathers had given to it in the glorious days of the national insurrection. In these last years this movement has come to take proportions alarming to those firm partisans of liberty who love this too well to sacrifice it to the desire of contending against its enemies. When, in 1853, the Court of Rome, in its wisdom, resolved to reinstate the episcopal hierarchy among the Catholics of Holland, yet, by an unaccountable forgetfulness of propriety, threw insulting defiance to the history and religion of a majority of the Dutch people in its manner of publicly setting forth the motives of this resolution, a fearful rage took possession of the Protestant masses, to whom, before the world, such useless and unmerited insults were given. No sooner had the pontifical address become public in the land, than innumerable protests, with many thousands of signatures, were sent up to the king, to assure him that the dear Hervormde Kerk, the Church of his glorious ancestors, the martyrs of liberty, was living yet, had not the least intention of dying, and was in no way willing to accept the abusive epitaph which men on the other side of the Alps were proposing to write on what they called its "tomb." In short, it needed all the combined prudence of the king, the Chambers, the Reformed Synod, and the upper classes to quiet this movement, which some politicians were able to use in furtherance of their views, but of which it were absurd to deny the honesty. We have mentioned it as an instance of the force which the Protestant tradition in Holland still possesses.

This ardent reaction in the direction of the old Calvinism is the cause, as we think, of the contrary extreme which has made itself very prominent for several years past. The unbelief of the last century found but little sympathy in Holland, as we have already stated. Nevertheless, it was not entirely without adherents in this country. On the other hand, the lack of strict philosophical studies, and the slight fancy for abstruse speculation, made Holland a slow and distant follower, rather than an actor, in the imposing and tragic fortunes of

German philosophy. There were minds, however, which could not fail to be charmed by the strong ideas of Hegel. All know with what rapidity, after the master's death, Hegelianism gained authority from Strauss, and influences even worse. The fear of a return of the old Calvinist bigotry brought about in Holland a curious alliance between Deism and Pantheism,opposite tendencies, which joined themselves now in profound hostility to the Christian Church, and even to Christianity. A monthly magazine, De Dageraad (The Aurora), was started at Amsterdam to popularize these negative ideas. The most incredible confusion, an indescribable motley of antagonistic ideas and sentiments, has marked the five years of life which this miscellany has already attained. It has given us the spectacle of a union of would-be Voltairian mockery with the lucubrations of an intolerable Hegelian pedantry. We ought, however, to say, that latterly the Hegelianism of the Dageraad seems to cast into the shade its Voltairian Deism, which change is certainly a progress. Yet, even from its own point of view, the organ of which we are speaking seems to us to be taking a false direction. It is contributing to that very religious narrowness against which it professes to fight, just as Socialism in other lands has shown itself to be the surest aid to political reactions. While the spirit of the age, and the interest, well understood, of the Christian religion itself, demand that a severe criticism, of which none may doubt the freedom, shall vindicate and uphold the rights of science against the trenchant pretensions of religious dogmatism, it is equally unphilosophical to mount this as a battery against the Church and Christianity. Such tactics fatally beget a sectarian temper, which cannot contend to advantage with the same temper elsewhere under other forms; and it needs no reflection to see that criticism will be no more disinterested in the camp of obstinate negation than in that of affirmation at any cost.

Moreover, the effects of this tendency have been, up to the present time at least, quite inappreciable upon the people, the immense majority of whom regard the Dageraad as a bad book, to be read only in secret, an opinion which confirms by its extravagance all that we have just been saying. As to the Orthodox movement, so called from its wish to restore in