THE following quotation from Dr. Kuyper’s Calvinism has some things that are worthy of attention. Dr. Kuyper was Professor of Theology at the Free University of Amsterdam and Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Our quotation does not imply that we accept all Dr. Kuyper’s theological opinions for we certainly do not and there are many things stated in his Calvinism with which we have no sympathy. The lectures, of which the book is composed, were delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1898. “Not every intimate intercourse,” he says, “with the unconverted world is deemed lawful, by Calvinism, for it placed a barrier against the too unhallowed influence of this world by putting a distinct veto upon three things, card playing, theatres, and dancing—three forms of amusement which I shall first treat separately, and then set forth in their combined significance.
Card Playing
“Card Playing has been placed under a ban by Calvinism, not as though games of all kinds were forbidden, nor as though something demoniacal lurked in the cards themselves, but because it fosters in our heart the dangerous tendency to look away from God and to put our trust in Fortune or Luck. A game which is decided by keenness of vision, quickness of action, and range of experience, is ennobling in its character, but a game like cards, which is chiefly decided by the way in which the cards are arranged in the pack, and blindly distributed, induces us to attach a certain significance to that fatal imaginative power, outside of God, called Chance or Fortune. To this kind of unbelief, every one is inclined. The fever of stock-gambling shows daily how much more strongly people are attracted and influenced by the nod of Fortune, than by solid application to their work. Therefore the Calvinist judged that the rising generation ought to be guarded against this dangerous tendency, because by means of card-playing it would be fostered. And since the sensations of God’s ever enduring presence was felt by Calvin and his adherents as the never-failing source from which they drew their stern seriousness of life, they could not help loathing a game which poisoned this source by placing Fortune above the disposition of God, and the hankering after Chance above the firm confidence in His will. To fear God, and to bid for the favours of Fortune, seemed to him as irreconcilable as fire and water.”
[We omit his comments on the Theatre owing to the demands of space for one thing and because we do not agree with some of his statements.—Editor.]
The Dance
“As far as the Dance is concerned, even worldly papers, like the Parisian Figaro, at present justify the position of the Calvinist. Only recently an article in this paper called attention to the moral pain with which a father takes his daughter into the ball-room for the first time. This moral pain, it declared, is evident, in Paris at least, to all who are familiar with the whisperings, indecent looks and actions prevalent in those pleasure-loving circles. Here, also, the Calvinist does not protest against the Dance itself, but exclusively against the impurity to which it is often in danger of leading.
With this I return to the barrier of which I spoke. Our fathers perceived excellently well that it was just these three: Dancing, Card Playing, and Theatre-going, with which the world was madly in love. In worldly circles these pleasures were not regarded as secondary trifles, but honoured as all-important matters: and whoever dared to attack them exposed himself to the bitterest scorn and enmity. For this very reason, they recognized in these three the Rubicon which no true Calvinist could cross without sacrificing his earnestness to dangerous mirth, and the fear of the Lord to often far from spotless pleasures. And now may I ask, has not the result justified their strong and brave protest? Even yet, after a lapse of three centuries, you will find, in my Calvinistic country (Holland), in Scotland, and in your United States, entire social circles into which this worldliness is never allowed to enter, but in which the richness of human life has turned, from without, inward, and in which, as the result of a sound spiritual concentration, there has been developed such a deep sense of everything high, and such an energy for everything holy, as to excite the envy even of our antagonists” (Calvinism, pp. 119-122).
These sentiments are not from a Free Presbyterian but from a Hollander with a broad outlook on life and with anything but an ultra-puritanic view of things. Dr. Kuyper shows very plainly that it is vital to Calvinism that the Church keep clear of card-playing, the theatre and dancing and thus directs our attention to the wider issues involved instead of fixing our eyes on a case of discipline like that at Dornoch as the press of this country seem bent on doing. There is much more than this involved and the wider issues whether realised or not by the pressmen who gave such publicity to this case yet they are unconsciously bringing the wider issues before the whole country.