An interesting indication of the important part played by the dykes in the development of Holland is the number of towns which have been named from the dyke or dam originally built on a site, such as Rotterdam, Schiedam, Amsterdam, and so on. The first important place we passed was Rotterdam, the most active seaport of Holland, with a population of three hundred and twenty thousand, and from the high railway bridge on which we crossed the Maas we had a good view of the boompjes, as they call the magnificent quays, which, with their graceful fringe of trees and their tangled forest of shipping, line the banks of the river for a mile and a half. We caught a glimpse also of the bronze statue of Erasmus, the Dutch scholar, who, as some say, "laid the egg which Luther hatched." On a former visit to Rotterdam I had seen the birthplace of this illustrious man, bearing on its front the inscription, "Haec est parva domus, magnus qua natus Erasmus" (this is the little house in which great Erasmus was born.)
The Hague.
Leaving Rotterdam, we pass on our left Delftshaven, from which a party of the Pilgrim Fathers sailed to America in 1620; then Schiedam, noted for its "schnapps," of which there are more than two hundred distilleries; then Delft, where William the Silent, the immortal founder of Dutch independence, was assassinated by a Jesuit whom the Roman Catholic persecutors of the Netherlands had hired to rid them of their great foeman, but which, I fear, is better known to some of my readers as the place where a certain blue-glazed earthenware used to be made in imitation of Chinese porcelain; and then, fifteen miles from Rotterdam, The Hague, one of the handsomest towns in Holland, with the Royal Palace, and in a lovely park outside the city the royal villa, called The House in the Wood, and two miles away on the sea the fashionable watering-place of Scheveningen, and in the city itself scrupulously clean and bright houses on every hand, where its two hundred thousand people live, and, above all, the picture gallery, with its two world-renowned paintings by Rembrandt and Potter, to say nothing of others scarcely inferior, if at all so, such as Vermeer's "View of Delft," with its red and blue roofs partly lit up with yellow sunlight, a simple view which "is perhaps unmatched by any other landscape in the world for the truthfulness of its atmospheric and light effects and for the vigor and brilliance of its coloring." Paul Potter's "Young Bull" is a marvellous picture, but the one which demands and repays the longest study is Rembrandt's "School of Anatomy," which shows us the celebrated Nicolaas Tulp, in black coat, lace collar and broad-brimmed soft hat, explaining the anatomy of the arm of a corpse to a body of surgeons, who listen to the lecture with the most life-like expressions, and which has been happily characterized as the truest and most life-like representation of the "working of intellect" ever produced.
A Presbyterian Government.
As we had reminded ourselves when visiting the royal residences that the young and beloved Queen Wilhelmina is the only Presbyterian Queen in the world, so we reminded ourselves when visiting the Chambers of the States General that Holland is the only country in the world which has the good fortune to have a Presbyterian preacher for its Prime Minister. Of course, other countries have Presbyterian laymen for prime ministers, Mr. Balfour of Great Britain, for example, but Holland is the only one that has placed the helm of the state in the hands of a preacher. His name is the Rev. Dr. Abraham Kuyper, and he is one of the ablest and most versatile men in the world. His recent book on The Holy Spirit is the greatest monograph on that subject that has appeared since the work of John Owen. He has rendered a great service to the cause of vital religion in checking the rationalistic views of such men as Professor Kuenen, and strongly reasserting the evangelical doctrines to which Holland has been so deeply indebted in the past for the heroic character of her people, and the glorious position she holds in the history of human freedom. Though the Chambers were not in session when we visited the Binnenhof, we took special pleasure in having even the chair of Dr. Kuyper pointed out to us.
Unpresbyterian Church Buildings.
By the way, the cathedrals and other great churches of Holland erected before the Reformation strikingly illustrate how unfit such structures are for Christian worship, according to the simple New Testament model, especially for preaching the gospel. They are adapted only to the spectacular ceremonies of the Roman Catholics and other ritualists. Therefore, any Protestant community which has had the misfortune to inherit a cathedral from the unreformed period has an elephant on its hands. The Dutch people, being mostly Presbyterians, have had this experience, and, finding themselves unable to make the most effective use of these great buildings erected for Romish rites, have allowed them to assume a very unattractive, dreary and barn-like appearance on the inside.
The question may shock our æsthetic friends, but, notwithstanding the incalculable loss to art, would it not have been better for the world if the Protestant countries at the time of the Reformation had macadamized all their cathedrals? And if any one hesitates to answer in the affirmative, let him consider carefully the connection between the modes of worship, and the character of the worshipper, and let him explain to himself clearly why it is that the countries which have adopted the Protestant model, with its steady appeal to the reason, and its earnest insistence upon intelligent apprehension of the truth, are the cleanest, safest, thriftiest and strongest countries in the world, while those which have adopted the Romish model, with its constant appeal to the æsthetic sensibilities, and its millinery, music, processions, incense, and "vain repetitions," are precisely the countries which have suffered the greatest material and moral deterioration, and which were not long ago contemptuously characterized by Lord Salisbury, the late Premier of Great Britain, as "decaying nations."