By PROF. BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD, D.D., LL D.,
Of Princeton Theological Seminary.
It is fortunately no longer necessary to formally introduce Dr. Kuyper to the American religious public. Quite a number of his remarkable essays have appeared of late years in our periodicals. These have borne such titles as “Calvinism in Art,” “Calvinism the Source and Pledge of Our Constitutional Liberties,” “Calvinism and Confessional Revision,” “The Obliteration of Boundaries,” and “The Antithesis between Symbolism and Revelation”; and have appeared in the pages of such publications as Christian Thought, Bibliotheca Sacra, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review—not, we may be sure, without delighting their readers with the breadth of their treatment and the high and penetrating quality of their thought. The columns of The Christian Intelligencer have from time to time during the last year been adorned with examples of Dr. Kuyper’s practical expositions of Scriptural truth; and now and again a brief but illuminating discussion of a topic of present interest has appeared in the columns of The Independent. The appetite whetted by this taste of good things has been partially gratified by the publication in English of two extended treatises from his hand—one discussing in a singularly profound way the principles of “The Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology” (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), and the other expounding with the utmost breadth and forcefulness the fundamental principles of “Calvinism” (The Fleming H. Revell Company, 1899). The latter volume consists of lectures delivered on “The L. P. Stone Foundation,” at Princeton Theological Seminary in the autumn of 1898, and Dr. Kuyper’s visit to America on this occasion brought him into contact with many lovers of high ideas in America, and has left a sense of personal acquaintance with him on the minds of multitudes who had the good fortune to meet him or to hear his voice at that time. It is impossible for us to look longer upon Dr. Kuyper as a stranger, needing an introduction to our
favorable notice, when he appears again before us; he seems rather now to be one of our own prophets, to whose message we have a certain right, and a new book from whose hands we welcome as we would a new gift from our near friend, charged in a sense with care for our welfare. The book that is at present offered to the American public does not indeed come fresh from his hands. It has already been within the reach of his Dutch audience for more than a decade (it was published in 1888). It is only recently, however, that Dr. Kuyper has come to belong to us also, and the publication of this book in English, we may hope, is only another step in the process which will gradually make all his message ours.
Certainly no one will turn over the pages of this volume—much less will he, as our Jewish friends would say, “sink himself into the book”—without perceiving that it is a very valuable gift which comes to us in it from our newly found teacher. It is, as will be at once observed, a comprehensive treatise on the Work of the Holy Ghost—a theme higher than most which could occupy the attention of the Christian man, and yet one on which really comprehensive treatises, are comparatively rare. It is easy, to be sure, to exaggerate the significance of the latter fact. There never was a time, of course, when Christians did not confess their faith in the Holy Ghost; and there never was a time when they did not speak to one another of the work of the Blessed Spirit, the Executor of the Godhead not only in the creation and upholding of the worlds and in the inspiration of the prophets and apostles, but also in the regenerating and sanctifying of the soul. Nor has there ever been a time when, in the prosecution of its task of realizing mentally the treasures of truth put in its charge in the Scriptural revelation, the Church has not busied itself also with the investigation of the mysteries of the Person and work of the Spirit; and especially has there never been a time since that tremendous revival of religion which we call the Reformation when the whole work of the Spirit in the application of the redemption wrought out by Christ has not been a topic of the most thorough and loving study of Christian men. Indeed, it partly arises out of the very intensity of the study given to the saving activities of the Spirit that so few comprehensive Treatises on the work of the Spirit have been written. The subject has seemed so vast, the ramifications of it have appeared so far reaching, that few have had the courage to undertake it as a whole. Dogmaticians have, to be sure, been compelled to present the entire
range of the matter in its appropriate place in their completed systems. But when monographs came to be written, they have tended to confine themselves to a single segment of the great circle; and thus we have had treatises rather on, say, Regeneration, or Justification, or Sanctification, or the Anointing of the Spirit; or the Intercession of the Spirit, or the Sealing of the Spirit, than on the work of the Spirit as a whole. It would be a great mistake to think of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as neglected, merely because it has been preferably presented under its several rubrics or parts, rather than in its entirety. How easily one may fall into such an error is fairly illustrated by certain criticisms that have been recently passed upon the Westminster Confession of Faith—which is (as a Puritan document was sure to be) very much a treatise on the work of the Spirit—as if it were deficient, in not having a chapter specifically devoted to “the Holy Spirit and His Work.” The sole reason why it does not give a chapter to this subject, however, is because it prefers to give nine chapters to it; and when an attempt was made to supply the fancied omission, it was found that pretty much all that could be done was to present in the proposed new chapter a meager summary of the contents of these nine chapters. It would have been more plausible, indeed, to say that the Westminster Confession comparatively neglected the work of Christ, or even the work of God the Father. Similarly the lack in our literature of a large number of comprehensive treatises on the work of the Holy Spirit is in part due to the richness of our literature in treatises on the separate portions of that work severally. The significance of Dr. Kuyper’s book is, therefore, in part due only to the fact that he has had the courage to attack and the gifts successfully to accomplish a task which few have possessed the breadth either of outlook or of powers to undertake. And it is no small gain to be able to survey the whole field of the work of the Holy Spirit in its organic unity under the guidance of so fertile, so systematic, and so practical a mind. If we can not look upon it as breaking entirely new ground, or even say that it is the only work of its kind since Owen, we can at least say that it brings together the material belonging to this great topic with a systematizing genius that is very rare, and presents it with a penetrating appreciation of its meaning and a richness of apprehension of its relations that is exceedingly illuminating.