Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/41

 30 THE REVOLUTION

thought that had taken place since the ﬁrst quarter of the century. The second was the question of the relation of the Church to its doctrine and the signiﬁcance of the sub- scription formula. The latter point will serve as an introduction to what I have to say in my next lecture about the contemporary Groningen school of theology—a school that Groen’s party had directly in view all throughout the controversy. The theologians of Groningen admitted frankly that they deviated from traditional orthodoxy, but held that they did so legitimately from an ecclesiastical point of view, and—-a matter of more importance in regard to theological teaching in a university ——in the interests of theological science.

Van der Palm’s system of education seems to have worked smoothly enough for about a generation. After the Belgian revolution in 1830, which Groen held would never have occurred if the Government had not thrust secular education on the people against their will, a strong desire sprang up both among Roman Catholics and in Groen’s party for what they regarded as more distinctive Christian