Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/42

 AND THE REVEIL 31

teaching in the schools. When a member of Groen’s party got a place in a Dutch ministry and was asked to draw up a new Education Bill, there were great hopes of gaining this end. The chiefproposals in Van der Brugghen’s Bill were that in all public schools Christian and social virtues were to be inculcated, while more distinctive religious teaching might be given by the Churches in the schools outside the usual school hours. At the same time, under certain conditions, private schools might be legalised and subsidised by the State. Groen vehemently opposed this scheme. In his mind Christian virtue and Christian doctrine were inseparable, and the Bill was dropped. This led to a split in the party. Beets the poet denounced Groen’s action as criminal, and Chantepie de la Saussaye, who had wavered for a time on the Educational Question, drew aside more deﬁnitely from a party with which he had a certain sympathy, but, for reasons that will be seen when we come to trace in a later lecture the rise of the ethical school of theology, with Which he had never been intimately connected. AS I shall not have occasion to refer again to