REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA, The, is one in denominational polity and doc trinal type with the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the Netherlands, and bore that name until the year 1867. The beginnings of dis tinctive Reformed Church theology should be credited to The Brethren of the Common Life? This was a unique organization of Chris tian community-life throughout the Nether lands, indirectly inspired by the consecrated mystic, John Ruysbroek of Brussels, designed and formally established at Deventer and Zwolle in North Holland by Ruysbroek's de voted pupil and friend, the enthusiastic evangelist-missionary, Gerard de Groote, in the last year of his life, 1384, and fully organized and developed by de Groote's like-minded fellow-worker, Florentius Radewyn, during the last 16 years of the 14th century, which were also the closing and crowning of the life of this truly diligent and admirable man. Absolute loyalty to the will and person of the Lord Jesus Christ in everything, as necessarily exemplified in continual personal study and obedience of the Scriptures, was the one all-important purpose in the daily life of these single-hearted Christian leaders. For the more practical and complete realization of their one supreme purpose many varied per sonal and community activities were developed; conspicuous among these were transcribing and multiplying copies of the Old and New Testa ments, the early Church Fathers and other truly good books; the grouping of these *copyists* in community-families of not more than 20 persons under the same roof ; daily study of the Scriptures, the classic languages and the simpler sciences; the establishing and employing of schools, academies and colleges for the educat ing of the youth; providing needed teachers as well as needy students in already flourishing schools — with the special design of encourag ing and helping every ambitious boy to an edu cation anywhere in the Netherlands; and daily, ordered and useful work of some kind for every person; for preaching Christ and Chris tian duty, teaching, publishing, farming, gardening, sharing handiwork of any and every useful kind, made up the regular program of the *Brethren of the Common Life.* This
carefully organized Christian system, during the century preceding the dawn of the great Reformation, produced such men as Thomas a'Kempis, saintly author of The Imitation of Christ' •,'Rudolph Agricola, famous for reviving classical studies and freeing learning from scholastic fetters; Alexander Regius, the great est educational reformer of his age; Desiderius Erasmus, the foremost humanist, scholar and author of the Renaissance; and John Wessel, more popularly known as Wessel Gansfort, philosopher, physician and pioneer organizer of the earliest Protestant theological system.
Besides these eminent men, the schools of the *Brethren of the Common Life* trained a great number of lesser leaders, who were in fluential for better things in education, and morals and spiritual life. De Groote and Florentius appreciated the value of the spirit ual treasures bequeathed to them by the great est of all the mystics, Ruysbroek, the vener able abbot of Gruenthal, and Tauler, the im passioned evangelist of the Rhine Palatinate; and realizing clearly the supreme crisis of their time, and their own supreme obligation through the service of fellow-men to seek the greater glory of God, they established wisely and per manently their efficient brotherhood of Chris tian communities, which directly for nearly two centuries, and indirectly for all succeeding time, was influential in making Holland pre-emi nently the home of civil, intellectual and re ligious liberty. And to these founders and trained leaders of the (Brethren of the Com mon Life* the Reformed Church in Holland and in America is indebted --al2ove all others for a religious faith always scriptural, simple and spiritual, which exalts to supreme place the salvation and imitation of the Divine Redeemer, the imperial authority of Holy Scripture, the Fatherhood of God and the true love and serv ice of mankind. These men in Holland shared with Wyclif of England and Huss of Bohemia the honor of faithful preparatory work in the 14th and 15th centuries as evangelical re formers before the Reformation.