Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/31

20 THE REVOLUTION a good index to its religious thought. At least this has been markedly the case in Holland. Early in the century Van der Palm was appointed by the Revolutionary Government to a post corresponding to that of a Director of Public Instruction, and the system of religious education he introduced was in force for a full generation. Social and Christian morals were to be taught in the public schools, but not the Church catechisms, and there were no private schools. It may be added that Hygienics, in connection with the schools, was a subject that received considerable attention from Van der Palm. For a time this system seems to have satisﬁed all the Churches, even the Roman Catholic, which had secured substantial beneﬁts from the rearrangement of Church property. There was a good deal of fraternisation among the Churches, partly due, at ﬁrst, to revolutionary ideas, but more so to the indeﬁniteness of the reigning theology. Church union was in the air. Reformed, Remonstrant, and Lutheran clergymen preached in one another’s pulpits, and societies were formed outside the Churches to further a variety of philanthropical objects.