There is no doubt...that Christianity is imperilled by great and serious dangers. Two life-systems are wrestling with one another.... Modernism is bound to build a world of its own from the data of the natural man, and to construct man himself from the data of nature; while...all those who reverently bend the knee to Christ and worship Him as the Son of the living God, and God himself, are bent upon saving the "Christian Heritage." This is the struggle... .

In this struggle Apologetics have advanced us not one single step. Apologists have invariably begun by abandoning the assailed breastwork, in order to entrench themselves cowardly in a ravelin behind it.

... If the battle is to be fought with honor and with a hope of victory, then principle must be arrayed against principle; then it must be felt that in Modernism the vast energy of an all-embracing life-system assails us, then also it must be understood that we have to take our stand in a life-system of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power. And this powerful life-system is not to be invented nor formulated by ourselves, but is to be taken and applied as it presents itself in history (Abraham Kuyper, "Calvinism a Life-System," in Lectures on Calvinism (The Stone Lectures, Princeton University, 1898).