The kingdom of God, therefore, as consisting of those who acknowledge, worship, love, and obey Jehovah as the only living and true God, has existed in our world ever since the fall of Adam. It has ever been the light and life of the world. It is the salt by which it is preserved. It is the leaven by which it is ultimately to be pervaded. To gather his people into this kingdom, and to carry it on to its consummation, is the end of all God’s dispensations, and the purpose for which his eternal Son assumed our nature. He was born to be a king. To this end He lived and died and rose again, that He might be Lord of all those given to Him by the Father.

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, 597.

By a consent almost universal the word regeneration is now used to designate, not the whole work of sanctification, nor the first stages of that work comprehended in conversion, much less justification or any mere external change of state, but the instantaneous change from spiritual death to spiritual life. Regeneration, therefore, is a spiritual resurrection; the beginning of a new life. Sometimes the word expresses the act of God. God regenerates. Sometimes it designates the subjective effect of his act. The sinner is regenerated. He becomes a new creature. He is born again. And this is his regeneration. These two applications of the word are so allied as not to produce confusion. The nature of regeneration is not explained in the Bible further than the account therein given of its author, God, in the exercise of the exceeding greatness of his power; its subject, the whole soul; and its effects, spiritual life, and all consequent holy acts and states. Its metaphysical nature is left a mystery. It is not the province of either philosophy or theology to solve that mystery. It is, however, the duty of the theologian to examine the various theories concerning the nature of this saving change, and to reject all such as are inconsistent with the Word of God.

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 6.

The help of the Spirit in prayer. While we are in this world, hoping and waiting for what we see not, we must be praying. Hope supposes desire, and that desire offered up to God is prayer; we groan.

Matthew Henry, Commentary on Romans 8:26-27

Evangelism has its roots in eternity.

R. B. Kuiper, God-Centered Evangelism, 13.

The following is a plea for God-centered, in contradiction to man-centered evangelism. In other words, it presents a theology of evangelism. And this theology is based squarely, as every theology must be, on the infallible Word of God. Holy Scripture demands an evangelism which is of God, through God, and unto God (Rom. 11:36). Precisely that is the thrust of this volume.

R. B. Kuiper, God-Centered Evangelism, 8.

In 1902, Synod sent yet another memorial to both the House and Senate, protesting the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

We . . . respectfully represent that all men, irrespective of race or color, are endowed with certain natural and inalienable rights, among which are the rights to travel in any land they may choose to visit, to make their homes in any country they may prefer, and to have their wives and children with them under the same roof.

But of these and other rights the Chinese people who come, or wish to come, to the United States, are unjustly deprived by the operation of the Federal law known as the Chinese Restriction Act. . . .

Third. The Golden Rule is applicable to nations as well as to individuals. If any European government would shut us out of their territory, we would complain bitterly. . . . Even Confucious said: “Do nothing to another that you would not be willing that he should do to you. . . .”

For these and similar reasons, we, your petitioners, do respectfully and most earnestly ask you either to repeal or make such amendments to the Chinese Exclusion Act as the law of humanity, as well as divine law, requires.

Defending basic human rights, Synod also denounced the persecution of Jews in 1903. “The Synod . . . expresses its sympathy with the persecuted Jews of Eastern Europe. As a part of the Church of Christ, we declare that the spirit of Anti-Semitism is not the Spirit of Christ.”

William J. Edgar, History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1871-1920, 100.

Civil government can be the ordinance of man in no sense that is inconsistent with its being strictly and properly the ordinance of God.

William Symington, Messiah the Prince, 145.

The visible church catholic possesses a duration commensurate with time. It is a perpetual society. It has existed, without intermission, from the period of its formation to the present hour, and shall continue to exist, without interruption, to the end of time. Different dispensations, indeed, there have been, but, under them all, the same church; nor was there ever an instant when its being was suspended. . . . The floods of error and persecution can never reach the church’s Head: and while the head is above water the body is safe.

William Symington, Messiah the Prince, 94-95.

The decree of God is founded in wisdom, Eph. 3:9-11, though we do not always understand it. It was formed in the depths of eternity, and is therefore eternal in the strictest sense of the word, Eph. 3:11. Moreover, it is effectual, so that everything that is included in it certainly comes to pass, Isa. 46:10. The plan of God is also unchangeable, because He is faithful and true, Job 28:13, 14; Isa. 46:10; Luke 22:22.

Louis Berkhof, Summary of Christian Doctrine, VIII. 1. a.

The uniformity of the laws of nature is a constant revelation of the immutability of God. They are now what they were at the beginning of time, and they are the same in every part of the universe. No less stable are the laws which regulate the operations of the reason and conscience. The whole government of God, as the God of nature and as moral governor, rests on the immutability of his counsels.

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, 540.