It should have supposed the Church as a ,community as an objective power, and in this objective domain it sbould have vindicated the significance of the individual spiritual life and of the subjective confessing.

But it failed to do this. From 'vindicating the subjective rights of the individual it soon passed into antagonism against the objective rights of the community. This resulted dogmatically in the controversy about the objective work of God, viz., in His decree and His election, and ecclesiastically in antagonism against tire objective work of the office through the confession. It gave supremacy to the subjective element in man's free will and to the individual element in the deciding of unchurchly conflicts in the Church. And so it retained no other aim than the conversion of individual sinners; and for this work it abandoned the organic, and retained only the mechanical method.

As such it celebrated in the so-called Reveil its most glorious triumph, and penetrated nearly all the Protestant churches,' and even the Episcopal Church under the name of Evangelicalism or Low Churchism. As a second reaction against the second decline of the Protestant.churcheo, of that time this triumph undoubtedly brought a great blessing.

But when the necessity arose to reduce this new spiritual life to a definite principle, upon this to construct a Protestant-Christian life and world-view in opposition to the unchristian philosophies and to the essentially pantheistic life and world-view, and to give these position and to maintain it, then it pitiably failed. It lacked conscious, sharply defined principles; with its individualism and subjectivity it could not reach the social questions, arid by reason of its complete lack of organic unity it could notformulate an independent life and world-view; yea, it stood everywhere as an obstacle to such formations.

For this reason it is absolutely necessary to teach the Protestant churches clearly to see this dark shadow of Methodism, while at the same time they should continue to study its precious significance as a spiritual reaction.

Hence my contending with Methodism and my persistent point ing to the imperative necessity of vindicating over against and alongside of the purely mechanical subjectivity the rights of the organic social in all human life, and of satisfying the need of the power of objectivity in presence of the extravagant statements of

xiv PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR subjectivity. This presses all the more since in the Methodist theology of America the modern tendency is gaining ground.. The Work of the Holy Spirit may not be displaced by, the activity of the human spirit. AMSTERDAM, April zr,:8gg.

EXPLANATORY NOTES TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

DR. KUYPER'S work on the Holy Spirit first appeared in the Heraut in weekly, instalments, after which it was published in book form, Amsterdam, X888.

This explains the object of the author in writing the book; viz., the instruction of the people of the Netherlands. Written in the ordinary language of the people, it meets the need of both laity and clergy. o

However, depth of thought was not sacrificed to simplicity of speech. On the . contrary, the latter was only the instrument to make the former lucid and transparent.

The Heraut is a religious weekly of which, Dr. Kuyper has been the editor-in-chief for more than twenty years. It is published on Friday, and forms the Sunday reading of a large constituency. Through its columns, Dr. Kuyper has taught again the people of the Netherlands, in city and country, the principles of the Reformed faith, and how .to give these principles a new development in accordance with the modern conscience of our time.

Dr. Kuyper is not an apologist, but an earnest and conscientious reconstructionist. He has made the people acquainted with.the symbols of the Reformed faith, and by expounding the Scriptures to them he has maintained and defended the positions of those symbols. His success in this respect appears conspicuously in the reformation of the Reformed Churches in 1886, and in the subsequent development of marvelous energy and activity in Church and State'. which are products of revived and reconstructed Calvinism.. Without the patient toil and labor of this quarter of a century, that reformation would have been impossible.

In his religious and political reformations, Dr. Kuyper proceeded from the personal conviction that the salvation of Church and State could be found only in a return to the deserted foundations of the national Reformed theology; but not to reconstruct it in its

NOTES TO THE AMERICAN EDITION

worn-out form. " His fresh, brave spirit is entirely free from all conservatism" (Dr. W. Geesink). He is a man of his time,as well as for his time. The new superstructure which he has been rear-

, ing upon the carefully reuncovered foundations of the Reformed theology he seeks to adapt to all the needs, demands, and distresses of the present. In how far he has succeeded time only can tell.

Since 1871 he has published in the columns of the Heraut and afterward'in book form the following: " Out of the Word," Bible. studies, four volumes; " The Incarnate Word,"" The Work of the Holy Spirit," three volumes, and " E Voto Dordraceno," an explanation of the Heidelberg Catechism, four volumes. This last work is a rich treasury of sound and thorough theology, dogmatic and practical. He has published several other treatises which have not yet appeared in book form. Among these we notice especially " On Common Grace," which, still in process of publication, is full of most excellent reading. The number of his works amounts already to over one hundred and fifty, a partial list of which is to be found following this introduction.

The following works have been translated into English: " Encyclopxdia of Sacred Theology" (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898) ; " Calvinism and Art";- " Calvinism and Our Constitutional Liberties"; " Dantheism and Destruction of the Boundaries"; " The Stone Lectures." ,

For the better understanding of the work, the translator begs to offer the following explanations

" Ethical Irenical," or simply " Ethical," is the name of a movement in the Netherlands that seeks to mediate between modern Rationalism and the orthodox confession of the old Reformed Church: It seeks to restore peace and tranquillity not by a return to the original church order, nor by the maintenance of . the old Confession and the removal of deviating ministers through trial and deposition (Judicial Treatment), but by making efforts to find a common ground for both parties. It proceeds from the idea that that which is diseased in the Church can and will return to health:' partly by letting the disease alone to run its course (Doorzieken) forgetting that corruption in the Church is not a disease, but a sin;

partly I,r a liberal diffusion of Bible knowledge among the people (Medical Treatment).