Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/44

 AND THE REVEIL 33

Chair of Philosophy at Utrecht, and has had considerable inﬂuence on philosophical and religious thought during the last quarter of the century, as we shall see in alater lecture, writes that the change that the mind of the people had undergone since the middle of the century had rendered a neutral system of education in the lower schools antiquated and impossible, or at least, in so far as it is still possible, pernicious. A people is growing up at present, he adds, without history, and a people without history is a dead people—ready to be absorbed by a more powerful neighbour. As I have some sympathy with Professor van der VVijck’s views, I ought in fairness to quote the opinion of the eminent Arabic scholar, the late Professor Dozy of Leiden. He believed that unless Holland, both in its lower and its higher education, could succeed in shaking itself free from ecclesiastical and doctrinal inﬂuences, it was destined to sink into the intellectual condition of Mohammedan Countries at the present day.

We must now turn back, as introductory to our examination of the Goningen School

Of theology, and also of the theology of c