How often has not the parallel been drawn and the golden age of the Roman Empire, when the external brilliancy of life likewise dazzled the eye, notwithstanding that the social diagnosis could yield no other verdict than ‘rotten to the very core’?
Abraham Kuyper
Abraham Kuyper
… we have gratefully
… we have gratefully to receive from the hand of God the institution of the state with its magistrates as a means of preservation…. On the other hand … by virtue of our natural impulse, we must ever watch against the danger which lurks for our personal liberty in the power of the state.
Abraham Kuyper
Every science in a
Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.
Abraham Kuyper
The sovereignty of the
The sovereignty of the state as the power that protects the individual and that defines the mutual relationships among the visible spheres, rises high above them by its right to command and compel. But within these spheres … another authority rules, an authority that descends directly from God apart from the state. This authority the state does not confer but acknowledges.
Abraham Kuyper
The seminaries must be
The seminaries must be like the churches’ poor relations, prolonging their existence with austerity.
Abraham Kuyper
Unchecked, the dominating influences
Unchecked, the dominating influences of money and of barren intellectualism would reduce the life of emotions to freezing point. And, unable to grasp the holier benefits of religion, the mysticism of the heart reacts in the art-intoxication. …. In this cold, irreligious and practical age the warmth of this devotion to art has kept alive many higher aspirations of our soul, which otherwise might readily have died, as they did in the middle of the last century.
Abraham Kuyper
Calvinism is an all-embracing
Calvinism is an all-embracing system of principles… It is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and form that specific religious consciousness there was developed first a particular theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life.
Abraham Kuyper
God created hand, head,
God created hand, head, and heart; the hand for the deed, the head for the world, the heart for mysticism.
Abraham Kuyper
Unity is the ultimate
Unity is the ultimate goal of all the ways of God.
Abraham Kuyper
The curse should no
The curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life.
Abraham Kuyper