This collection of Kuyper’s observations, remarks, and aphorisms about the church’s essence is organized, without any mention of the sources, in three rubrics: “About the Being of the Church,” “About the Manifestation of the Church,” and “About the Life Revealed in the Church.” As an introduction to this anthology, Kolfhaus wrote a brief biography of Kuyper that traces the development of his vision of the church.

According to Kolfhaus the essence of the church had been much discussed in England and the Netherlands during the past century; however, Christians in Germany had remained nearly silent about the church and its calling. Partly due to the appalling course of the First World War, Germany was now being forced to inquire into the being and the task of the church. Kolfhaus intended this pithy anthology to contribute to Germany’s reflection on these subjects.

A portion of the print run was published with a different cover. The cover has a different design and is furnished with the imprint: “Schriftenverlag des Reichverbandes deutscher evangelischer Schulgemeinden, Wuppertal-Barmen, Siegestrasse 128.” This same publisher also published Kolfhaus’s Um die Zukunft des Volkes. Ein Blatt aus dem Lebensbuch Dr. Abraham Kuypers (Barmen, 1927), which documented Kuyper’s participation in the Dutch school struggle. Kolfhaus also later published Christusbekenntnis und Politik (Elberfeld, 1933)—a study of Kuyper’s vision and efforts toward bringing about a Christian politics—which Kolfhaus intended as a contribution to the contemporary discussion about the German political situation.