Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/59

50 century. To the student of Calvin, however, who knows that in his view of the unio mystica, as expressed especially in his doctrine of the Lord's Supper, there are points of close connection between the Imitatio and the Institutio, that will not seem strange.

The second influence that went to form the modern Groningen school was the study of Plato—not that side of the many-sided Plato that appealed to the Conservative statesman Groen van Prinsterer, but as he was represented in the writings, and more especially in the mode of teaching, of Professor van Heusde of Utrecht. Before looking at this latter influence I shall notice a principle which was always prominent in the Groningen School, and which they derived from the old mystical school of North Holland. They expressed it in alliterative Dutch in such phrases as "Niet de Leer, maar het leven," not the doctrine but the life; "Niet de leer, maar de Heer," not the doctrine but the Lord. "What will it avail thee," we read in the Imitatio, "to dispute profoundly of the Trinity, if thou be void of humility and art thereby displeasing to the Trinity? …