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We have gathered here today, as Protestant Reformed brethren and sisters, to celebrate Rev. Hoeksema’s 25th anniversary as minister of the Word of God. Surely, no higher calling can any mortal have than to be minister of God’s Word. The connection between this anniversary and our Standard Bearer is not difficult to see. Of these 25 years he has labored now almost 16 years as Editor-in-Chief of our well-known semi-monthly standard of the truth of the Holy Scriptures. Besides, the Standard Bearer surely represents his untiring efforts in the proclamation of the sovereign grace of God which we love. Hence,...

At the after-dinner program of the banquet which marked the closing of the second convention, the host committee had arranged an interesting debate on the topic, “Should doctrinal differences be minimized?” The affirmative position was maintained by two young men of Fuller Ave. Young Men’s Society, John Piersma and Walter Hof man. The negative was represented by two young ladies from Talitha Society, Alice Reitsma and Eileen Slopsema. No judges were needed because the Messr. Piersma and Hofman capitulated to the negation in their closing speeches. In order that the views expressed might have a wider circulation, the debaters have...

Setting forth afresh, and now in all likelihood about to pass out of that region, there met Him one who came running- in all eagerness, as anxious not to lose the opportunity, and who kneeled to Him with great reverence as having the most profound respect for Him as a righteous man, and who said, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” Jesus might at once and without any preliminary conversation have laid on him the injunction that He did at the last, and this might equally have served the final end that...

Liberty or freedom has been variously defined as follows: 1. Freedom from restraint; 2. exemption from the power and the control of another; 3. the power of acting as one thinks fit; 4. a state of exemption from positive law. Some of the above-cited definitions are not of a kind that should be endorsed. For, when analyzed, they turn out to be the gateway to a positively unchristian thought-structure. The saint of old who sang, “O how love I thy law; It is my meditation all the day. . . . I understand more than the ancient, because I keep...

It is difficult to obtain a proper conception of the war that is now raging in Europe. Certain it appears, that in the two decades since the last “world war” modern culture has made tremendous strides in the progress of the “art” to destroy one another! Haw the “common grace” theorists would explain the present conflagration of hatred and destruction one could be curious to know. Difficult it is, too, at the present time to discover and pass a correct judgment on what may be the immediate historic cause of the present war, and to which of the two conflicting...

Up among the hills of Galilee, in a basin surrounded by swelling eminence, which shut it in on every side, lies the little village of Nazareth. Its name does not occur in Old Testament history. Josephus never mentions it, though he speaks of places lying all around it. Its inhabitants were not worse than their neighbors, nor exposed on account of their character to any particular contempt, yet Nathaniel, himself a Galilean, could say, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? so small and insignificant was the place. It was here, as in a fit retreat, that the...

If true freedom consists in abiding in one’s element, then, would He be free, must likewise abide in an element fitted for His mode of being. What, then, may this element be? And the answer is ready: His own glorious self. In self He must live, move and rest would He be free. For He is eternal God, a being of infinite perfection, inclusive of all that is superbly true, lovely and good, uncaused yet the cause of all things and constituting in relation to these things the one single point of divergence and convergence. God, then, is free and...

Originally it was not my purpose to write about the overture from the consistory of Hudsonville requesting that our churches approach the Protesting First Christian Reformed Church of Kalamazoo with a view to a possible reunion of that church with our churches. In the first place, to rehearse the history that caused the separate existence of the Kalamazoo church is very distasteful to me. That part of our history that concerns our relation to this church recalls incidents that are far more corrupt and grievous than that which brought about our ejection from the Christian Reformed Churches. I believe that...

A real joy it was to us that we might have the opportunity to make a tour through our churches in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana and California, and to speak for them in lectures and in the ministry of the Word. Almost all of our churches there are fields in which we used to labor for a shorter or longer period in the past, and are organized by us personally, so that the reader will readily understand that next to my own Fuller Ave. congregation I feel attached to them. And it was a very pleasurable experience to visit them and...

At sundry times and in divers manners I have heard a question asked which I here find in the 15th Psalm. Some put it this way: Where will you spend eternity? I know, I know: the question put into that form usually comes from the corner of those that dilute the Gospel of God; they present the race to eternity as a game of chance; they emphasize the responsibility of man at the expense of God’s Sovereign counsel. I know all that. But the question itself is not necessarily wrong. It may be a theme that is pregnant with meaning....