Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/43

 32 THE REVOLUTION

the question of religious education in the Dutch schools, I shall notice here very brieﬂy its later history. A good many years after the time of the Van der Brugghen Bill the political party founded by Groen came into ofﬁce in coalition with the Roman Catholics under a statesman of Scottish descent, whose family has long held an honourable place in the civil and military history of Holland, and has given a distin— guished educationist to this country in Lord Reay; and by an Act known as the Mackay Law, the public and the Christian schools were put on practically the same footing with regard to State support. At the present day these schools are to be seen side by side in almost every village in Holland. To the outsider this seems a deplorable state of things. What meaneth this waste of money and teaching power, to say nothing of other aspects of the subject that, in Dutch phrase, “spring into the eye "? Still, the Dutch are the best judges of what suits them best, and it is interesting to notice the opinion on the subject of one of their most enlightened philosophical writers. Professor van der Wijck, who succeeded Opzoomer in the