Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/7

Rh on Dogmatics in Holland, that Dr Bavinck is still a comparatively young man, and that his place, therefore, belongs to the present rather than to the past century.

I remark in my First Lecture that the main interest in the study of religious thought in Holland during the period dealt with, centres in the question of Church and Doctrine. This is an additional reason, I think, for regarding the subject as having a certain fitness for a lectureship founded to commemorate a professor of divinity or systematic theology. I have made no attempt to draw lessons, bearing on present-day questions among ourselves, from the story I have tried to tell. I may say however, that I have found it, in this respect, suggestive, and possibly some who may take the trouble to read my book may do the same.

In what is necessarily merely a sketch of a very wide subject, I have had to leave unnoticed many important writers, some of whose books I have read with interest. I take this opportunity of gratefully mentioning the name of Dr Bronsveld, of Utrecht, whose