THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF SCANDINAVIA.

BY REV. M. FALK GJERTSEN OF MINNEAPOlis.

A nation's soul is

THE nations may be said to possess souls. its nationality or national character. It is different from the soul of the individual in that it is not born simultaneously with the nation, but formed and developed through generations of common life, labor, and intercourse. It does not die with the nation. The nation, as such, may pass out of existence, but the spirit and the results of a strong nationality, as, for example, the Greek or Roman, pass over into the possession of the world and its history and stamp indelible impressions on it. In the development of national character there is no agency more potent than that of religion. It determines the moral worth and strength of the people. A nation may be numerically and territorially weak and yet be nationally strong and produce positive results that become a blessing to the world. The northern nations commonly called Scandinavians have at different epochs of the world's history exerted a marked influence upon its development. The vikings of old roamed over the seas and infused their courage and love of liberty into the nations where they settled. At the most critical time in the history of Europe it was Swedish piety and Swedish steel, under the leadership of Gustavus Adolphus, that hewed a way for Protestantism and human liberty, and to-day from the northern horizon of those far-distant countries comes flashing across the sea, like bright northern lights, the most faithful and intense Protestantism with pious hearts, strong arms, and willing hands for its work and defence. The established church in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is the Lutheran. Its ministers are appointed by the government, and the general affairs of the church are under its management. The great religious revivals and movements have been inside the established church. It is only of late years that other denominations have established them

selves in those countries. The rationalistic tendencies of speculative theology, led by the philosophy of Hegel and his followers, came like a blighting wind sweeping from Germany over the church of the north. The clergy and the theologians became secret and open rationalists, substituting reason for revelation and looking upon devotional piety as a weakness and a disease. But in all three countries a mighty awakening has taken place, and so powerful has been its moral influence that rationalism has had to pack up its household effects and leave the church, and the revealed word of God contained in the Bible has been given its proper place as the infallible rule of faith and life.

This great revival took place almost simultaneously in Norway and Denmark.

NORWAY,

the last and the least amongst earth's civilized nations, had changed from Romanism to Protestantism in a peculiar manner. Protestantism did not supplant Romanism through the convictions and free choice of the people, but through a royal mandate from Copenhagen, Norway being a province under Denmark. In Denmark the clergy and the people embraced with eagerness the Lutheran doctrine with its liberation from the papal yoke. In far-distant Norway they knew almost nothing of Lutheranism until a law was proclaimed in all the churches that the national religion was changed from Roman Catholic to Lutheran. One Sunday there is Catholic and the next Sunday there must be Lutheran worship in all the churches. But the religion of a people is not a thing that can be put off or on like a coat, and the consequence was that Catholic ideas and prejudices lived amongst the people for several generations, until Bishop Eric Pontoppidan inoculated Lutheranism into the people by beginning with the children in his admirable work, "The Explanation of Luther's Catechism," a book that was adopted throughout the whole land in the schools, and studied. and committed to memory in childhood by the whole nation. The body of the Lutheran doctrine having thus become the property of the religious convictions of the people, the spirit of God breathed upon it and gave it a beautiful, wonderful, and powerful life through the religious revival by Hans Nilsen Hange, a common farmer, who at the age of 25 years commenced to

exhort the people to repentance, faith in Christ, and a godly life. He commenced his work in 1786. The earnestness of his exhortations brought the ill-will of the worldly-minded upon him, and his success as a preacher excited the bitter jealousies of the rationalistic clergy, and these elements, taking advantage of a law against conventicles, had him thrown into prison for no other offence than preaching the gospel of Christ. He languished in his miserable prison-hole for seven long years and lost his health. During the war with Denmark the English fleet prevented all importation from abroad. The whole country was suffering from the want of salt, and there was apparently not a man in Norway who knew how to manufacture salt except Hans Nilsen Hange, who, besides being a devoted Christian, also was a most practical man with wonderful talents. The government took him out of prison. He established several salt factories, saved the country from terrible suffering, and when the work was completed they put him back again in chains. When liberated, in 1811, he was an invalid, and during the last thirteen years of his life he had to confine his work to receiving friends, giving advice, and thus leading the movement that now was being taken up and carried on by others. It spread with wonderful rapidity, changing the character of whole communities; became national; broke through all persecution and opposition; led to the establishment of Norway's Society for Foreign Missions, an institution inside the established church and still entirely independent of it, representative and self-governing in its character, one of the most successful missionary societies of this age, having on the Island of Madagascar 36 missionaries, with 1100 native preachers and teachers trained in the society's theological seminary at Antananarivo, more than 10,000 communicants in the church, 30,000 children in the schools, hospital for the lepers, asylums for orphans, neglected children, and liberated slave children. Besides Madagascar a great work is being done in Zululand, approaching in importance the Madagascar work. Amongst the missionaries are four young Scandinavian-Americans, graduates of Augsburg Seminary in Minneapolis. Next, the Hange revival reached the University, captured two professorships, caught the theological students, and sent out into the parishes a host of young ministers totally different from the old stock, servants of God who placed themselves side by side with the

preaching laymen for the conversion of men. Coming simultaneously with the political regeneration of the country (Norway being established as a separate monarchy, with its own constitution and house of representatives, in 1814), it exerted remarkable influence politically. In selecting their representatives for the Storthing the people found its truest and stanchest friends amongst the adherents of this movement. They became leaders of the liberal party, and hold the balance of power in Norway to-day. A United States senator, having travelled through Norway, made the statement that he had never seen a people where the law of the land was held in such respect and obeyed so loyally, and this fact is a direct consequence of this remarkable revival. It began away down in obscurity amongst the farmers, pressed itself gradually forward and upward, reached the university and the government, spread to both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and to far-off heathen lands.

DENMARK

experienced the same revival. The so-called "Hanges Friends" made regular trips to Denmark and found brethren there. Seder Larsen Dous, also a common farmer, became the leader of the movement there. It bore a permanent fruit in the so-called Inner Mission Society, which society sprung from this revival. Its work has been and is to-day being greatly blessed; a great many of the clergy have been influenced by it and belong to it, and some of them are the most powerful preachers in the land. In Denmark this movement from below was met by a remarkable movement from above, and the two became in many respects coworkers although not assimilating. This movement had for its originator and leader Bishop Nicolai Fredrik Severin Grundtvig, a man of true and sincere piety, of great personal influence, a happy combination of courage and kindness, with the strength of a giant and a heart as warm and soft as a child's-a true northern skald in his wonderful poetry. A man of singular power, and preaching a living faith in Christ, he soon found a host of followers, both amongst the clergy and the people. He was a sworn foe of rationalism and the old so-called classical culture. He declared war upon the college or "Latin School," as it is called in Scandinavia, in so far as it rests upon Greek and Roman classics. The school should put us in touch with life and the living, not with the grave and the

dead,—an idea that seems to have considerable life in it at the present time; witness the educational exhibits at the World's Fair. It is the handwriting on the wall dooming old systems, prophesying and making way for a new education, the Kindergarten, the Sloyd, industrial training for boys and girls, an education for practical life. The idea of Grundtvig led to the establishment of the so-called "People's High Schools," "Folkehoiskoler "-an institution that hardly can be found outside the Scandinavian countries; the nearest to it is perhaps the so-called University Extension Course here in America. In these schools the instruction was given more through lectures than by books, the tendency being to look upon the text in the books as a dead letter, while the oral lecture was a "living word." The lectures were given in the interest of religion, patriotism, and love of liberty. Grundtvig's influence extended to the whole north, although it never became so prominent in Sweden as in Norway. These schools exérted a marked influence upon the youth amongst the middle classes, and many of the liberal representatives have received the training for their political life in these schools. In 1825 Bishop Grundtvig made what he calls his "matchless discovery" in theology, which discovery his followers made the "Shibboleth" of the whole movement. It is in Grundtvig's own words thus: "That the words from the Master's life in his own ordinances, and especially the confession of the whole Christian church in baptism, the so-called Apostolic Confession, is exclusively the only living and adequate testimony by which the Christian faith and the spirit of Christ can be propagated and imparted."

These two tendencies in Denmark, that of the "Inner Mission" movement and the Grundtvig movement, led to the establishment of independent churches, the so-called elective churches (Valgmeingheder). They refuse to receive their pastors by selection and appointment of the government, they choosing their own pastors. In their influence upon the people the "Inner Mission" movement has confined itself to the religious work, while the Grundtvig element has not hesitated to put educational and political issues on its programme.

It would hardly be proper to leave the consideration of the religious condition of Denmark without mentioning a name that is well known to the English-speaking theological world-that of Bishop Martenson, author of the well-known works on dog