Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/28

 AND THE REVEIL 17

the names of Clarisse at Leiden, Heringa at Utrecht, and Muntinghe at Groningen may be mentioned as the leading theologians in the early years of the century. Leiden has always been renowned for its Hebrew scholars. It was not, however, so much by his learning as by his singularly beautiful style, simple and digniﬁed, that Van der Palm was distinguished. As a student he was more given to éo/vm than to study, a game that has at least a certain historical afﬁnity to our golf. His 82316 for the Young was one of the ﬁrst Dutch books I read. It is not a crammed little text-book, like those of our degenerate age, but a substantial and spacious work in twenty-four volumes. What Clarisse said of him, that he was a t/zeologus éz'élz'cus no” dogmaz‘z'ms, may be said of all this group. While not controverting the doctrine of the Church, the tendency of the time was to try to smooth away its sharp edges. Tired of the scholasticism of early Dutch theology, the endless discussions of the Voetians and CocceianS, refuge was sought in a kind 0f Biblical theology. Biblical theology as a

B