THE CHURCH.
“Mighty stands the cross of God,
Smiling homeward to the soul.”
_Almquist._
One reason why the fishermen were so anxious to reach Soberud was, that
the next day was Sunday, and they wanted a day of rest, and a church
to go to; and that was not to be met with, on the Torjedahl, nearer
than Christiansand itself. Hitherto their church had been a remarkably
tall fir-tree, which had, somehow or other, been overlooked by the
wood-cutters, and stood some little way within the forest. It had been
chosen on account of its fancied resemblance to a church spire, as it
towered above the rest of the foliage; and the lower branches having been
cut away, and the space round its trunk enclosed and decorated with green
boughs—as all Swedish churches used to be decorated on high days before a
royal ordinance was passed which forbade it,—and the ground strewed with
fresh juniper and marsh-marigolds—as church floors are to this day,—it
did make a very fair forest church for fine weather; and as all the party
could sing, more or less, the service was performed a good deal more
ecclesiastically than it is in some of our English cathedrals.
Norway is not in communion with England; indeed, strictly speaking,
neither Norway nor Denmark are churches at all,—they are merely
establishments. Sweden may, by some stretch of imagination and a little
implicit faith in its history, be considered a church, and is so
considered by the Bishop of London, who has authorised the Bishop of
Gothenborg to confirm for him. But though neither the Englishmen, nor
even the Swedes, considered themselves at liberty to communicate in the
church of Soberud, there was no reason whatever against their joining in
either the ottesång or the aftensång (morning or evening service), or
even against their being present at the högmässe, or communion itself.
The men, who had no very accurate ideas of theology, had joined in the
English service very readily, and, indeed, had taken a good deal of
pains in decorating the forest church, for both Tom and Torkel could
read English as well as they could speak it; and Jacob pretended to do
so. They were, however, all of them, extremely pleased at having the
opportunity of going to a consecrated church.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable features of the country is the respect
and reverence which all classes pay to their churches, combined with the
very little effect which religion has on their conduct. Norwegians will
face all sorts of weather, in order to be present at the högmässe of
Sunday. Large sums of money—that is to say, large in comparison with the
wealth of the parishes—are spent upon their churches, which are always
in perfect repair, and always most carefully swept, and trimmed with
rushes or green sprigs. A man would lose his character at once, and would
be shunned by his acquaintance as a hopeless reprobate, if he neglected
confirmation, or the Lord’s supper. Nothing, indeed, is more common than
to see, as an advertisement—“Wanted, a confirmed cook or housemaid;”
which advertisement in no ways relates to the capacities of the servant,
but simply to her age, it being taken for granted that a person of a
certain age must have been confirmed. Indeed, the legislature interferes
with this: few offices can be held by unconfirmed people, or by those
who are not communicants; and the legislature is only the interpreter of
public opinion. No man is at present molested for any religious opinions
he may please to hold; he simply loses his civil rights by seceding from
the national religion. In fact, Norway is the most complete illustration
of the establishment principle which exists in the world.
At the same time, education, as it is popularly called—that is to say,
secular instruction—is almost universal. No one ever meets with a
Norwegian unable to read and write. It may fairly be said that there is
no country in the world in which the standard of popular education is
so high, and the standard of popular morality so low,—where the respect
for religion is so very great, and the ignorance of religion so very
profound,—as it is in Norway. Sweden may be second in this paradox, but
Norway is by far the first.
It is not difficult to account for both these phenomena. Few countries
suffered more extensive church spoliation in the good old Reformation
times than Norway and Sweden; and when, after that convulsion, men began
to gather up the fragments, they had to choose between an ill-paid
clergy whose social position would be inferior to that of almost all
their parishioners, and a sufficiently paid clergy with enormous and
unmanageable parishes. They chose the latter, perhaps wisely, as more
likely to preserve the character and influence of the church till better
times should come. They, therefore, grouped the parishes into districts,
few of which were under ten or twelve miles long, and wide in proportion,
some very much larger, and one more than a hundred miles in length.
These districts are a collected group of parishes, whose churches are
still kept up under the name of Annexkyrker, and service is occasionally
performed in them, as a sort of protest of their right.
Over these districts they placed rectors (Pfarrherrer), whose revenue,
though not what we should call large in our country, is, nevertheless,
greater than that of most of their parishioners; they gave them good
parsonage houses (præstgaards), and, in almost every case, provided
a dowager house and farm for their widows. And, while they rendered
their position an object of competition, they provided that it should
be adequately filled, by establishing the most searching examinations
and the most careful provisions. The consequence of this is, that the
Norwegian clergy are almost invariably very superior people, and, in a
country where the election is absolutely free, they are very generally
chosen members of the Storthing; while, in Sweden, they form an integral
estate of the realm, and possess their own independent house of
parliament.
In a country where there is so much ceremonial, so much that speaks
to the understanding of the uneducated by speaking to their eye, it is
impossible but that the externals of religion should be respected—the
position of its ministers being such as is calculated to add to that
respect, and not, as is too frequently the case in Roman Catholic
countries, such as to diminish from it.
But, from the enormous size of the parishes, the externals are all that
can possibly come to the majority of the people. The Scandinavian Church,
learned as its individual ministers may be, is not the teacher of the
people, nor can it be—no man can teach over fifty miles of country.
Education, on the other hand, there is plenty of, such as it is; for,
not only do the frost-bound winters give plenty of opportunity, but the
Church is the establishment, and the laws of the land are such as to make
reading and writing necessary to all. At the same time, this education is
absolutely secular, it has nothing to do with the doctrines of religion,
and, consequently, nothing with the morals of the people, except to
increase their power of doing anything. Knowledge with them, as with all
others, is power: but, disjoined from religion, this is generally the
power of doing wrong. Whether this be, or be not, a correct solution
of the paradox, at all events, the fact remains, and it has never been
accounted for: Norway is pre-eminent in the education of its people, and
is also pre-eminent in the statistics of crime.
But this is not the external view of the case: the mere visitor in Norway
would speak of the very religious habits of the people. They certainly
are a people of religious habits, and will continue to be so as long
as the externals of religion are preserved with a magnificence and
ceremonial sufficient to keep up their reverence. But they are, merely, a
people of religious _habits_—they are not a people of religious feelings.
The marriage between faith and works with them has been “dissolved by Act
of Parliament, and neither their faith nor their works are the better for
it.”
Nothing of this, however, was visible on that Sunday morning, as the
Parson, when the hospitable and substantial breakfast of the farm-house
had at last come to an end, walked quietly and musingly along the broad
natural terrace which led to the church, and commanded a beautiful view
over the wide valley and its quiet lake.
The church was a good-sized building, with nave, and aisles, and
transepts, and chancel. It was handsome and striking, but very quaint
and singular; every part of it was of wood—not planks, but great solid
beams of absolute timber; centuries had passed over them, and there was
no perceptible decay,—they were merely weather-stained, and harmonised
in their colouring; and the whole edifice looked as if the day of
judgment would find it as firm and as eternal as the Church it was
built to represent. The whole was a confused collection of acute gables
and high-pointed roofs, covered with diamond-shaped pine shingles. The
windows were small, square-headed, and few in number, barely enough,
indeed, to give light to the interior, and in no way contributing to the
architectural beauty of the church. No Norwegian ever breathes more fresh
air than he can help, or thinks of opening his church windows; it is not
very often that he opens even the windows of his house.[31]
The sharp roofs, which are almost universal in the Norwegian churches,
though extremely ornamental, especially where, as in the present case,
they are shingled, are erected not for ornament but for use. It is
absolutely necessary, in a land where snow falls so abundantly, to have
such a slope that will not permit it to lodge in any quantities in a
building which is not inhabited and constantly cleared. Were the roof no
steeper than those of most of our English churches, the weight of lodged
snow would soon become sufficient to bear down any strength of timbers
they could put into it.
Although there was but little of ornament about the windows and
doors—those more ordinary objects of ecclesiastical decoration—this
evidently did not arise from want of respect or care for their church;
for every gable—and there were thirty or forty of them, great and
small—was decorated with elaborately-carved barge-boards, the ridge
timber of every one of them projected three or four feet beyond the
face of the building, and terminated in the head of some nondescript
animal, particularly ugly, but still the record and evidence of infinite
pains and labour. The chancel, the nave, and the belfry, constituted
three separate pyramids, rising one above the other, consisting of from
three to five stages each, and terminating in round towers, roofed with
short shingled spires, like so many extinguishers. Each of these carried
its huge cross, for neither Norwegian nor Swede is afraid of that holy
emblem; and high on the top of all was the typical cock—and if it did
not warn all sinners to repent, it certainly was not for want of being
seen, for its size was colossal, and in its new gilding it glittered in
the air for miles on every side. At the entrance of the churchyard, on
the side facing the lake, was a lych-gate, also of solid timber, with a
roof broad enough to shelter a whole funeral. The gate itself, which,
when shut, formed a stile, was shod with iron spikes, to prevent the pigs
from burrowing under. By the side of it was that satire upon Norway, the
evidence of Karl Johann’s fruitless attempts to stem the tide of national
habits—the stocks—of course unemployed—at least, so far as their legal
purpose went;—they formed, however, a very comfortable seat, upon which
Birger was balancing himself backwards and forwards, and trying to cross
one foot over the other. The other fishermen, as decent as they could
make themselves up for Sunday—which was rather dingy, after all, compared
with the bright colours of the peasants’ dresses—lounged about, watching
the assembling congregation.
It wanted some time to service, but there were scattered here and there
about the churchyard several parties, who had already been for some time
on the ground. Sunday as it was, they had brought with them their garden
tools, and their waterpots, and their baskets of plants, or papers of
seeds, and had tucked up their smart embroidered petticoats, or turned
back their shirt-sleeves, according to their sex, and were busily
employed about the graves.
These were not oblong mounds of turf, like the graves in our English
churchyards, but raised borders with iron edging, and were, for the most
part, pictures of neat and tidy gardening; wild flowers very often were
all that grew there, little blue gentianellas, or lilies of the valley,
such as might be met with anywhere in the open fjeld; more often than
all, that innocent little white trailer, the anthemis cotula, which they
call Balder’s eyebrow, and to which they attach a peculiar sanctity;
but, even if they were wild, they always bore the traces of care and
cultivation. Now and then a rose would be woven into the semblance of a
cradle, or an edging of convolvolus major, twining round its supports,
would form a pyramid or a canopy, with its fragile blue flowers already
fading, though so early in the day, perhaps an apt type of those who lay
below them.
In no place does the Norwegian appear to so great advantage as when
busied about the graves of his family; these are cared for by all who
cherish the memory of the dead, as their occupants would be were they
still on earth. Appointments are often made among distant members of
a family, and little parties are arranged to meet at the grave of a
common relative; the first object of all these is invariably to trim its
flowers. These are not sad or solemn meetings; they are rather joyful
reunions, much as if the families were visiting the house of their
relation, instead of his grave. They are not even dressed in mourning,
for their meetings are continued long after the time of mourning is
passed: it is a sort of sober festivity. Much of the good that exists in
the Norwegian character—their family affection, their patriotism, their
attachment to their native country throughout all their wanderings,—may
be traced to their graves.
Suddenly, the bells struck up, and every man removed his hat, bowing to
the church as if returning its salutation. Other people, besides the
funeral parties, now began to collect from different quarters; here and
there a stray cariole rattled up to the churchyard gate, and an old
grandmother or two was brought along in one of the queer-looking little
carts of the country; but the people of Norway are anything but vehicular
in their habits; indeed, except the main roads—and these are very few
indeed—the country is in no ways calculated for wheeled carriages.
Boats were a much more fashionable mode of progression; several of these
were already seen approaching from different quarters of the lake,
pulled by two or four oars, and containing a cargo of many-coloured
petticoats, which looked, in the distance, like bunches of variegated
tulips. Every Norwegian, man or woman, learns to row almost as soon as he
learns to walk, and every Norwegian knows something of the principles of
boat-building; and very elegant little craft, of the whale-boat build,
they frequently turn out.
“Hallo!” said Birger; “we are in luck. I knew it was Communion Sunday,
but we are to have a lot of christenings besides. Look at the little
white bundles in their chrism-cloths, and the elegant white satin bows.
I do believe they would none of them consider their children baptized
without those white bows.”
“Have you Christening Sundays, then?” said the Parson.
“Not always: in many places the clergy set their faces against them. But
the Norwegian is a gregarious animal: he dearly loves a set feast, and
hospitably considers the more the merrier. In these country-places you
will often find not only Communion Sundays, but Christening Sundays, and
Wedding Sundays, and—”
“And funeral Sundays?” suggested the Captain.
“And funeral Sundays—you need not laugh, I mean what I say; in the winter
we have a little frost here, hot as it is now,—and frost, compared to
which your English frost is but a summer’s day. They cannot very well
bury their dead in the winter, so they very frequently freeze them, and
keep them till the frost breaks up. Whenever that happens it is of course
necessary to bury immediately all that have died since the beginning
of the winter, and thus—though I suspect you asked that question in
pure joke—it really does happen, that besides gregarious communions,
christenings, and weddings, they have gregarious funerals also.”
The bells now began to “ring in,” and that portion of the congregation
who were not related to any of the little white bundles in satin bows, or
were not destined to be godfathers or godmothers to them, came stumbling
into the church, and arranging themselves as best they could on the
benches.
To those coming in from the blaze of day outside, the interior appeared
perfectly dark, so that the people were actually feeling for their
places. The little square windows looked like dots of light against the
black walls, but as the eye accustomed itself to the darkness, the scene
came out by degrees: the tracery of the chancel screen—the great crucifix
seen over it—the altar beyond, heavy with carving and gilding—the font
just within the screen—the pulpit just without it—then the congregation
themselves became visible—the men on one side of the nave, the women
on the other. It was high mass; for though the Scandinavian Church be
reformed, she still retains the ancient expressions.
The short hymn which begins the service had closed, and the priest in his
wide-sleeved surplice—mäss skjorta—was standing by the altar, while the
Candidatus marshalled in the porch a little procession of the christening
parties. When all was ready they entered the church, the congregation
singing, as they advanced towards the chancel, one of the numerous hymns
from the Bede Psalmer—to which little book, unpretending as it is, the
people owe nearly all the very small acquaintance with the doctrines of
their Church, which they possess.
In our service we recognise but two parties, the priest and the
people—the English choir being, theoretically, at all events, merely
the leaders of the people’s responses; whereas, in Scandinavia there
are three distinct divisions of the service—the prayers of the priest,
the responses of the choir, and the hymns of the people; which last are
collected and arranged for seasons and occasions, in their Bede Psalmer,
a book which, as they all sing more or less, most of them have at their
fingers’ ends.
While this was proceeding, the Candidatus threw open the richly-carved
doors of the chancel screen and admitted the christening party into the
choir, arranging them round the font which stood at its entrance. The
whole service was very like our own, except that, after the exhortation,
the priest proclaimed his own commission to baptize, in the words of the
three last verses in St. Matthew’s gospel, before reading the gospel from
St. Mark which is used in the English Church; and afterwards announced
the value of the Sacrament itself in the words of St. John—(chap. 3. v.
5, 6). Before the act of baptism, the priest laid his hand on the head
of each child, severally, and blessed it; then, after sprinkling it three
several times as he pronounced the name of each of the three Persons in
the Trinity, he stepped forward to the doors of the choir, and presented
the new Christian to the congregation, saying, “In the name of the Holy
Trinity, this child is now, through holy baptism, received as a member
of the Christian Church, and hath right given him to all the privileges
joined therewith: God give His grace, that he, all the days of his life,
may fulfil this his baptismal covenant.”
After a general thanksgiving for the new birth of the children, and a
general exhortation to the sponsors on the subject of their duties, the
congregation struck up another hymn from the Bede Psalmer, while the
children were carried round the altar, which does not stand, as in our
churches, close to the well, but has a passage left behind it, possibly
for this purpose, the sponsors depositing on it their offerings as they
passed.
In the meanwhile the priest, kneeling on the altar steps, was invested
by the Candidatus and Kyrke Sånger (precentor) with the mässe hacke,
a crimson velvet chasuble, embroidered in front with a gold glory
surrounding the Holy Name, and behind with a gold floriated cross. He
remained kneeling, while the Candidatus, paper in hand, went down the
nave, noting those who intended to present themselves at the communion,
in order to be certain that none should partake of it who had not
previously given their names to the priest for approbation, and attended
the early service of confession—called communions-skrift. This was not
so very difficult to do, though none of the congregation had left the
church; for each intended communicant wore something black or grey about
him, in memory of the Lord’s death. When this survey had been completed,
the priest rose, and facing the people, intoned the general thanksgiving,
and then turning again to the altar, made his confession alone, in the
name of his flock, the congregation itself being silent, though the
choir, at the occasional pauses, chanted the Kyrie Eleeson. He then
placed on the altar the “Oblaten Schalten,” or wafer basket, the silver
flagon, and lastly the chalice and patin, which were brought to him with
great ceremony, the Candidatus and Kyrke Sånger, who carried them, being
attended by the whole choir.
The outer doors of the church were then shut, and the Candidatus in his
black gown and cassock having taken his place on the lower step, the
priest chanted the Gloria in Excelsis, the choir taking it up after the
first sentence.
After the consecration, the communicants were arranged in four divisions;
the married men, and the married women, the single men and the single
women; these knelt in the centre, while the non-communicants stood
round them chanting softly the Agnus Dei, and bowing their heads as
the elements were administered to each communicant, which was done
individually, as with us.
There was then a general thanksgiving and a Hallelujah by the choir;
after which the priest dismissed the congregation with his benediction,
making the sign of the cross towards them in the air. This form, which
was universal throughout three kingdoms scarcely more than a hundred
years ago, has almost entirely disappeared from the Swedish Church,
disused rather than forbidden; but many of the old customs which in
Sweden have become obsolete, in Norway are religiously kept up. And
besides this, politics have something to do with the matter; there is
always a great affectation of Danish peculiarities, such as dressing the
church with green boughs on Whitsuntide, among those who are not over
well affected to Sweden. These and many similar ceremonials retained
in Norwegian churches are punishable by fine or deprivation; but the
people will have it so, and the priests are very willing to indulge
them,—members of Storthing and law-makers as many of them are.
As for theology, the people are profoundly ignorant of that, while the
priests themselves, who, nine out of ten, are learned divines,—thanks to
the severe examination at Christiania which generally weeds out one half
of the candidates every year,—are almost always politicians enough to
borrow their churchmanship from Denmark, are just as much Grundtvigites,
or Mynsterites, according as their bias is high or low, as if they lived
in Copenhagen itself.
After the conclusion of the service the fishermen were lounging
homewards, taking their time, and enjoying the weather, and the views,
and the sunshine, and the Sunday quiet, and upon the whole, though all
of then ardent sportsmen, by no means sorry for a day of regular rest,
when the Pfarrherr himself, accompanied by his Candidatus overtook them.
The Candidatus was a long, tall youth, fresh from college, conceited and
shy at the same time, who looked, as Birger afterwards observed, as if he
smelt of the midnight oil; but the Pfarrherr was a gentleman-like man,
with a broad, good-humoured, fresh-coloured face, looking more like an
English old-fashioned squire than anything else. He had been priest of
Soberud for many years, and being a regular anti-Swede, was very popular.
He had represented the district in several Storthings, and was likely to
do so in many more, though he did belong to the commercial party, which
in Norway, as in America, is aristocratic and tory, in opposition to the
country party, who in those nations are the radicals.
In addition to this, he was the probst, or rural dean, which was a
fortunate circumstance for him—for being an enthusiastic admirer of
Grundtvig, he was a great deal too much of a ritualist and antiquarian
for the continually receding Swedish Church, and, under other
circumstances, could hardly have failed in being brought up before the
Church Committee at Christiania, for his little peculiarities; though
it is a fact that most of the ecclesiastical members of Storthing, who
composed it, thought, felt, and, if they dared, would act, precisely as
he did.
He spoke English readily enough—indeed, English is to the educated
Norwegians what French is to us,—and, as a matter of course, invited the
fishermen to share the hospitalities of the præstgaard. This, however,
would have been a mortal offence to poor Torgenson, who, though he could
not speak to his guests one single word except through an interpreter,
would have been deeply scandalized, and, indeed, would have felt lowered
in the eyes of his countrymen, had they deserted him. The Parson,
however, being a professional man, was an exception, and Pfarrherr
Nordlingen carried him off in triumph, Torkel promising to bring over
his knapsack to the præstgaard.
The præstgaard was not so large and rambling a building as the hall,
but was infinitely more comfortable; highly-polished birchen furniture,
and well-stored bookcases, gave it an air of habitableness. The room
into which they entered was the summer parlour, whose French windows,
shaded by gauze curtains, were wide open, looking on a broad lawn and a
sparkling little stream beyond it; a good sprinkling of juniper twigs
took off, in a great measure, from the bare look of the carpetless floors
which always strikes an English eye. It is a great absurdity, in a
country which is not favourable for sheep, and whose woollen manufactures
seldom go higher than the wadmaal, that the duty upon English woollens
should be so absurdly high. But the fact is, the Storthing is so entirely
in the hands of the democratic, or country party, that anything beyond a
class legislation is hopeless. The idea is not that all the people should
have warm blankets, but that the democratic and agricultural majorities
should work up inferior wool. Weaving by hand is an agriculturist’s
winter work.
The Priestess Nordlingen, as she was called, a smiling, pretty-looking
woman, much younger than her husband, was occupied in laying the cloth
for aftonsmad, assisted by the dowager priestess, who lived now on the
other side of the little stream, but being on excellent terms with her
late husband’s successor, spent a good deal more of her time in her
old home than she did in her new one.[32] Servants they had, both of
them, in plenty, for the præster are among the richest in the land; but
no Norwegian wife is above acting as butler and housekeeper, and no
Norwegian damsel, fröken though she be, is above waiting at table. It
does not seem quite the thing to an English gentleman, to have the ladies
waiting upon him; but certainly in the Norwegian grammar, if they have
one, the masculine is more worthy than the feminine.
Forest life is pleasant, but a contrast is pleasant also, and the Parson,
as he lay back in a peculiarly easy chair, sipping leisurely the dram
which invariably precedes a Norwegian meal, and which, in the present
case, was true cognac of unquestionable genuineness and undeniable
antiquity, considered himself in very great luck indeed; in fact, much
as he admired the rude abundance of the hall, he infinitely preferred
the quiet elegances of the præstgaard. He made some such observation to
Nordlingen.
“Yes,” replied he, “the Reformation has injured the Church cruelly, as an
endowment, and has cut off five-sixths of its clergy; but we individual
præster have not much to complain of as regards ourselves.”
“You must have pretty severe duties, though.”
“Well, they are not severe, because they cannot be done. My parish was
originally six; these have been thrown together under one. If I had
half-a-dozen curates, the parish could not be visited, nor the annex
kyrker properly served; for in former times it supported six priests and
six deacons; so what one cannot do at all, one soon ceases to distress
one’s self about. The work is not done, cannot be done, and no one
expects it to be done. We have work enough—especially those who, like me,
are elevated to the Storthing,—but it is not ecclesiastical work.”
“Do you know,” said the Parson, “I wonder that, under such circumstances,
you have no dissenters in Norway; our Wesleyans arose from precisely the
same cause. The spoliation of our Church having diminished our number
of priests, and very seriously impaired the discipline which might, in
some measure, have kept the remainder to their work, the people in many
districts became heathens, much like your own people, in fact; and when
teachers rose up among them, men followed them not because they were
orthodox, but because they were the only teachers to be had. But you have
some sort of dissenters, too, have you not?”
“O, the Haugerites. Yes—they are not dissenters, either. Hauger held a
good many doctrines of that arch-heretic, Calvin: New Birth, as distinct
from Baptism; Predestination, Election, and so forth; but neither he
nor his followers separated from the Church. In truth, religion is at
too low an ebb among us for dissent; we have no more strength to throw
up dissenters, than an exhausted field has to throw up weeds. Hauger
succeeded, because he was not only a pious, but a practical man; he was
rich, too; he set up saw-mills and iron-works, and advanced the money;—it
is no wonder he set up a religious party. But they are going down now.”
“Ah, I understand—what we call in Ireland, soup Christians; and now
Hauger is dead, the spring has run dry?”
“No not at all—I do not mean to say that the practical turn of his mind
was not a recommendation to his theology; but though he preached and did
good, his good offices were not confined to his own followers; his sect
is subsiding because it has no distinctive tenets, any more than that of
your Wesleyans. You made a great blunder; by turning Wesley out of the
Church, you forced him to set up a Church government of his own; it is
that government, and not his doctrines, which keeps his followers in a
state of antagonism to a Church with which they have no real doctrinal
difference. We were not such fools with Hauger; he met with a little
persecution himself—for we Norwegians are not tolerant,—but we were wise
enough to leave his people alone, so they did not think it worth while to
differ, and in fact never did.”
“I think there may be another reason,” said the Parson: “with you a
sectarian loses his rights of citizenship, by the fact of his being a
sectarian.”
“Well, and why should he not? by leaving the national Church he makes
himself a foreigner; we do not persecute him any more than we persecute
any other foreigners, but we do not allow foreigners to legislate for
us, neither will we let him, or any man choose which of our national
institutions he will adhere to and which he will not—and our Church is
one of our national institutions;—we say to him, and to you alike—you
are strangers, both of you, you are both very welcome to stay here, and
to live under the protection of our laws; moreover, we are very ready to
naturalize either of you, and to receive you as citizens of our country
if you like, but choose for yourselves; you cannot be Norwegians and not
Norwegians at the same time. These are the laws, religious and political,
of Norway, take them or leave them, just as you like, but we cannot let
you divide them. Now where is the injustice of this?”
“I am sure I will not take upon myself to say,” said the Parson,
laughing; “supposing always, the State meddles with Church affairs at
all; and I, as an Englishman, have no right to find fault with you for
that. But what does your Church itself say to all this; you called
Calvin, just now, an arch-heretic, what do you say about his followers?
Besides, it strikes me that there is a little difference of opinion
between your friend Hauger and St. Paul, on the subject of female
preachers, to say nothing of his unordained preachers, which all of his
people were; but that I suppose does not greatly disturb you, as you
attach so little value to Apostolical Succession.”
This was a hard hit upon poor Nordlingen, who was a most patriotic
Norwegian, but yet, as a Grundtvigite, was painfully aware of the want of
divine commission in his Church. It was, however, a random shot of the
Parson’s, who, speaking of the Norwegian Church as it then was, certainly
was not aware that the reforms which Grundtvig and Mynster had effected
in Denmark, had already penetrated to a Church politically divided from
them. He took the opportunity of the bustle, caused by the servants
bringing in the aftonsmad, to turn the conversation to less dangerous
subjects, and occupied the rest of the evening, if not more profitably,
at least more to the amusement of the ladies of the family, in drawing
out the solemn Candidatus, who, fresh from his examinations, was brimful
of theology, which, when once cheated out of his shyness, he was spilling
over on every opportunity, and mixing, most absurdly, with the ordinary
subjects of conversation.
The Church of Norway—if Church it can be called—is in a very
anomalous state. Intensely Erastian, it is dominated over by
the Storthing, and swayed by the political feelings of the
country. These, which are called Norwegian and patriotic, are
really Danish. Norway has never been strong enough, or rich
enough, since the times of barbarism, to form an independent
nation of itself: feeling its weakness, it acquiesced readily
in the dominant position assumed by Denmark, during the Union
of Kalmar, which grated so much against the feeling of the
Swedes only because Sweden was conscious of its own innate
strength and real superiority. When that union was dissolved,
it left very bitter animosities between the two principal
nations, which was participated in by Norway, whose feeling was
with Denmark. These the lapse of time has mitigated, so far as
the Danes and Swedes are concerned. They have been renewed,
however, in Norway, by the forcible annexation of that country
to Sweden, by the Congress of Vienna, in compensation for the
loss of Finland; and thus the Norwegian Church, politically
allied to that of Sweden, is affected by that of Denmark.
The original Reformation in Denmark, which involved that of
Norway also, was exclusively a political movement; that of
Sweden was political also, but grander interests were connected
with it. Sweden was a country shaking off a foreign yoke, and
the Reformation succeeded because the Reformers were patriots
also. If reformation in religion is to be mixed with earthly
motives at all, it could not have had a grander alliance; but
the Reformation of Norway was a mere change of politics. It
was forced on by the Court against the will of both clergy
and people—the king, at that time, being nearly despotic. It
was not resisted; there was too little religion—Romanist, or
anything else—in the country for the people to feel any sort
of excitement in the matter. After the fall of Christiern,
a new religion was thought to be the most effectual mode of
depressing the remains of his party. A certain German, of the
name of Buggenhausen, was constituted the leading reformer;
and, in fact, the Church of Denmark was not reformed, but
destroyed, and Lutheranism imported in its place, and forced
upon the nation by an arbitrary sovereign. The consequences
were precisely similar to those which followed upon many of the
Reformations in Germany. The Church remained in form, but the
vital energy had gone from it. Many godly persons it had from
time to time in its communion, but fewer and fewer as the time
went on, and the traces it has still left of its vitality are
few in number.
“Towards the close of the last century,” says Hamilton, “the
progress of stupor was complete, and vital Christianity seemed
to have departed from the land; formalism was at its height,
and, oddly enough, bigotry appeared to accompany it. An attempt
at revival has been made during the present century, by Dr.
Mynster, now Bishop of Copenhagen, and by Grundtvig, who
may to a certain extent be considered as the leaders of the
high and low Church parties; Mynster taking his stand on the
doctrines connected with the Atonement; Grundtvig, on the faith
once delivered to the saints. There does not appear to be any
opposition between them, any more than there is opposition
in the doctrines upon which they take their respective stand
against Indifferentism and Rationalism; but this is the bent of
their minds and the direction of their teaching.”
Mynster says, in a letter to Oechlenschlager, “I design, God
willing, to open my mouth, and that in divers ways, certainly
first to try what echo will answer my voice; but it shall not
be quite in vain, for I know that I am among the called, and I
muse day and night in watching and praying that I may be also
among the chosen.”
“This object,” says Hamilton (_Sixteen Months in the Danish
Isles_), “he speedily obtained; and from that time till the
present, there has been no cessation of that gentle, but loud
and solemn voice, persuading men everywhere to repent. In
speaking and writing, Christ crucified has been the beginning
and end, the first and the last.”
Grundtvig, who, like our Keble, was a poet before he was a
preacher, and who has taught by his poems, no less than by his
sermons ever since he brought the great powers of his mind to
bear against Rationalism, some few years after Dr. Mynster
began to be celebrated. “It seemed to him a sin,” he said,
“that he should be taken up with Mythology, while the pastors
of God’s flock were neglecting their duty;” so he stepped
forward, asserting the Faith against human might and reason.
His leading text, upon which all his preaching hinges, is the
Faith once delivered to the saints,—pure and complete from the
beginning, and incapable of change. “Every change,” he argues,
“is a corruption, and the office of the Church is simply to
restore, either by supplying or by lopping off what has been
superadded to the original Revelation, and to preserve the
faith in its purity.” His style of teaching, therefore, is
necessarily traditional. Grundtvig, himself a most powerful
preacher, has naturally a somewhat exaggerated idea of the
importance of preaching, as opposed to reading. Preaching, he
calls the living word. There is a curious mixture of truth and
fallacy in his idea of never putting the Bible into the hands
of an unconverted person, because there is no hope that such a
person can understand it. “It was written for the Church,” he
says truly; and he infers from this, that it must be expounded
orally by a Churchman, because “faith cometh by hearing:” and
from this text he argues, that the Spirit of God does not
instruct in the reading of the Word. Grundtvig, from the first,
has been the most uncompromising opponent of Rationalism,
and his line of argument much more telling and difficult
to withstand than that of his fellow-worker, Mynster; and,
accordingly, though now popular, he has not passed through his
course without getting into difficulties of a personal nature,
from the opposition of the Rationalist party. He resigned his
living at one time, and for many years was not a pastor of the
Danish National Church at all.
These great leaders have their followers and their respective
schools; but it is much to be feared that the revival which
they have produced is merely the effect of their own personal
influence and talent, for there is nothing in the system of
the Danish Church which can perpetuate it,—that this Church,
itself severed from the universal Church of Christ, has no
inherent vitality,—and that, as the influence and name of even
Calvin could not prevent even his own Geneva from becoming
Unitarian when other teachers had arisen and his memory had
faded from the recollections of his people, so the teaching of
Grundtvig and Mynster is but a temporary revival of Evangelical
teaching,—the produce of the individual, not of the Church.
The Swedish Church, as distinguished from the Danish and
Norwegian, has far more pretensions to Churchmanship than
either of these, though it may have lost more of the externals
and ceremonial. Its Apostolic Succession has been doubted, and
certainly the question is not entirely clear. At the time of
the Reformation, Matthias, Bishop of Strengnäs, and Vincent,
Bishop of Skara, had been beheaded by Christiern; and on the
other side, Canute, the Archbishop, and Peter, Bishop of
Westeras, had been beheaded by his rival, Gustavus,—so that,
at the final Diet of Westeras, at which the Reformation was
determined upon, Sweden could muster but four bishops, of whom
it is said that Bishop Brask only had been duly consecrated;
two others, Haraldsen and Sommar, were only bishops elect.
The results of that Diet caused Brask to go into voluntary
exile, and as all communion with Rome was thereby broken
off, the question of the Succession hinges on the fact, that
Gustavus had previously sent the fourth Bishop, Magnussen,
elect of Skara, to be consecrated at Rome. This fact, which is
distinctly affirmed by Gejer, has been questioned, though on no
very good grounds.
The weakness of the Swedish Church, however, does not lie
here, but in its peculiar connection with the State, which
is perpetually involving it in secular politics, and as
perpetually taking from its spiritual character. This defect
existed before the Reformation just as it does now, and then,
as now, formed its element of weakness: then, the bishops were
treated with by contending sovereigns as the most influential
barons—now, they are tampered with as the most influential
politicians. Sweden is governed by a king and four houses
of parliament—the Nobles, the Clergy, the Burghers, and the
Peasants; and a bill passing any three of these houses becomes
the law of the land. But, though the houses are of equal
authority, the value of individual votes must vary inversely as
the numbers of which those houses are composed: for instance,
the house of the Nobles contains about 1500 members, and the
house of the Clergy 80; the value of any single ecclesiastic’s
vote is, therefore, eighteen times greater than that of any
nobleman’s vote. The effect of this has been precisely the same
as the more arbitrary nature of the Norwegian Reformation: the
Church of Sweden has become—first political, then worldly,
then Erastian; and, at the same time, the enormous size of
the parishes operates precisely as it does in Norway,—the
majority of the people are estranged from their Church through
sheer ignorance of its doctrines,—the prescribed forms of
Confirmation, Communion, and so forth, being gone through as
essentials rather of civil promotion than of eternal Salvation.
It is not a matter of surprise, therefore, that, year after
year, the Swedish Church is losing some portion of her
Churchmanship, and degenerating more and more every day into a
mere establishment. At this point it would have arrived long
ago, had it not been for Archbishop Wallin, who, not only a
sound divine, which most of the educated clergy are, but by far
the greatest poet modern Sweden has produced, has embodied the
doctrines of the Church in a series of hymns, which now form
part of the Church service, under the name of “Bede Psalmer.”
Sweden is a musical nation, and these hymns are extremely
popular. So far as the author can find out, they are the only
means by which ninety-nine Swedes out of every hundred have any
knowledge whatever of the Christian doctrine, or in any way
differ from their Heathen ancestors—the worshippers of Odin and
the mythology of Asgard.
As a specimen of Wallin’s poetry, we will take his hymn on the
Creation—a paraphrase of the 104th Psalm,—perhaps as fine a
specimen of rhythmic illustration as any that exists. We give
it from Howitt’s translation:—
“Sing, my soul,
The Eternal’s praise,—
Infinite!
Omnipotent!
God of all worlds!
In glorious light, all star-bestrewed,
Thou dost Thy majesty invest,—
The Heaven of heavens is Thine abode,
And worlds revolve at Thy behest.
Infinite!
Omnipotent!
God of all worlds!
Thy chariot on the winds doth go;
The thunder follows Thy career;
Flowers are Thy ministers below,
And storms Thy messengers of fear.
Infinite!
Omnipotent!
O Thou, our God!
“The earth sang not Thy peerless might
Amid the heavenly hosts of old,—
Thou spakest, and from empty night
She issued forth, and on her flight
Of countless ages proudly rolled,—
Darkness wrapped her, and the ocean
Wildly weltering on her lay;
Thou spakest, and, with glad devotion,
Up she rose with queenly motion,
And pursued her radiant way.
“High soared the mountains,
Glittering and steep,—
Forth burst the fountains,
And through the air flashing—
From rock to rock dashing—
’Mid the wild tempest crashing—
Took their dread leap.
“Then opened out the quiet dale,
With all its grass and flowers;
Then gushed the spring, so clear and pale,
Beneath the forest bowers;
Then ran the brooks from moorlands brown,
Along the verdant lea,
And the fleet fowls of heaven shot down
Into a leafy sea;—
’Mid the wild herd’s rejoicing throng,
The nightingales accord—
All nature raised its matin song,
And praised Thee—Nature’s Lord:
O Thou, who wast, and art, and e’er shall be!
Eternal One! all earth adoring stands,
And through the works of Thy Almighty Hands
Feels grace and wisdom infinite in Thee!
“And answer gives the sea,—
The fathomless ocean—
The waste without end—
Where, in ceaseless commotion,
Winds and billows contend;—
Where myriads that live without count, without name—
Crawling or swimming in strange meander—
Fill the deep as it were with a quivering flame;
Where the heavy whale doth wander
Through the dumb night’s hidden reign,
And man unwearied with earth’s wide strife
Still hunts around death’s grim domain—
The over-flood of life.
“To Thee! to Thee! Thou Sire of all,
Our prayers in faith ascend,—
All things that breathe, both great and small,
On Thee alone depend.
Thy bounteous hand Thou dost unclose,
And happiness unstinted flows
In streams that know no end.”