For, indeed, without sin there would have been neither magistrate nor state-order; but political life, in its entirety, would have evolved itself, after a patriarchal fashion, from the life of the family.
We understand hereby, that the family, the business, science, art and so forth are all social spheres, which do not owe their existence to the State, but obey a high authority within their own bosom; an authority which rules, by the grace of God, just as the sovereignty of the State does.
The question is not if the candidate’s heart is favorable to Christianity, but if he has Christ as his starting point even for politics, and will speak out His name!
Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the church upon every aspect of human life.
To have faith in the Word, Scripture must not grasp us in our critical thought, but in the life of the soul.
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.
The motive of art comes to us not from what exists, but from the notion that there is something higher, something nobler, something richer, and that what exists corresponds only partially to all of this.
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.
Unity is the ultimate goal of all the ways of God.
The Holy Scripture is like a diamond: in the dark it is like a piece of glass, but as soon as the light strikes it the water begins to sparkle, and the scintillation of life greets us.
What is hell other than a realm in which unholiness works without restraint in body and soul?
We cannot be passive and silent towards those who reject God’s Word and our holy faith.
A charity which knows only how to give money is not yet Christian love. You will be free of guilt only when you also give your time, your energy, and your resourcefulness to help end such abuses for good, and when you allow nothing that lies hidden in the storehouse of your Christian religion to remain unused against the cancer that is destroying the vitality of our society in such alarming ways.
Sun, moon, and stars beckon people to worship the Creator – until people lose sight of the living God and begin to worship the sun, moon, and stars themselves.
Every State-formation, every assertion of the power of the magistrate, every mechanical means of compelling order and of guaranteeing a safe course of life is therefore always something unnatural;.
But “To Be Near Unto God” in the midst of busy avocations yields its sweetest blessedness when it is cultivated in the face of sin and the world, as an oasis in the desert of life.
Though it was not right, and never can be, we understand what went on in the heart of those who sought escape from the world, in cell or hermitage, for the sake of unbroken fellowship with God. It might have been efficacious, if in withdrawing from the world they had been able to leave the world behind. But we carry it in our heart. Wherever we go it goes with us.
Modern science is dominated by distrust when it comes to our own deepest sense of life, and that distrust is nothing but unbelief.
Kuyper notes that the scholar is distinct in setting the scope of his stewardship on the mind itself. “Not merely to live,” he writes, “but to know that you live and how you live, and how things around you live, and how all that hangs together and lives out of the one efficient cause that proceeds from God’s power and wisdom.
God creates history, while people create an epic or a drama, drawn either from God’s history or from unreality and pure fiction.