Chapter Three Kingo’s Childhood and Youth

Thomas Kingo, the first of the great Danish hymnwriters, grew forth as a root out of dry ground. There was nothing in the religious and secular life of the times to foreshadow the appearance of one of the great hymnwriters, not only of Denmark but of the world.

The latter part of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries mark a rather barren period in the religious and cultural life of Denmark. The spiritual ferment of the Reformation had subsided into a staid and uniform Lutheran orthodoxy. Jesper Brochman, a bishop of Sjælland and the most famous theologian of that age, praised king Christian IV for “the zeal with which from the beginning of his reign he had exerted himself to make all his subjects think and talk alike about divine things”. That the foremost leader of the church thus should recommend an effort to impose uniformity upon the church by governmental action proves to what extent church life had become stagnant. Nor did such secular culture as there was present a better picture. The Reformation had uprooted much of the cultural life that had grown up during the long period of Catholic supremacy, but had produced no adequate substitute. Even the once refreshing springs of the folk-sings had dried up. Writers were laboriously endeavoring to master the newer and more artistic forms of poetry introduced from other countries, but when the forms had been achieved the spirit had often fled, leaving only an empty shell. Of all that was written during these years only one song of any consequence, “Denmark’s Lovely Fields and Meadows”, has survived.

Against this bleak background the work of Kingo stands out as an amazing achievement. Leaping all the impediments of an undeveloped language and an equally undeveloped form, Danish poetry by one miraculous sweep attained a perfection which later ages have scarcely surpassed.

Thomas Kingo

Of this accomplishment, Grundtvig wrote two hundred years later: “Kingo’s hymns represent not only the greatest miracle of the 17th century but such an exceptional phenomenon in the realm of poetry that it is explainable only by the fates who in their wisdom preserved the seed of an Easter Lily for a thousand years, and then returned it across the sea that it might flower in its original soil”. Kingo’s family on the paternal side had immigrated to Denmark from that part of Scotland which once had been settled by the poetic Northern sea rovers, and Grundtvig thus conceives the poetic genius of Kingo to be a revival of an ancestral gift, brought about by the return of his family to its original home and a new infusion of pure Northern blood. The conception, like so much that Grundtvig wrote is at least ingenious, and it is recommended by the fact that Kingo’s poetry does convey a spirit of robust realism that is far more characteristic of the age of the Vikings than of his own.

Thomas Kingo, the grandfather of the poet, immigrated from Crail, Scotland, to Denmark about 1590, and settled at Helsingør, Sjælland, where he worked as a tapestry weaver. He seems to have attained a position of some prominence, and it is related that King James IV of Scotland, during a visit to Helsingør, lodged at his home. His son, Hans Thomeson Kingo, who was about two years old when the family arrived in Denmark, does not appear to have prospered as well as his father. He learned the trade of linen and damask weaving, and established a modest business of his own at Slangerup, a town in the northern part of Sjælland and close to the famous royal castle of Frederiksborg. At the age of thirty-eight he married a young peasant girl, Karen Sørendatter, and built a modest but eminently respectable home. In this home, Thomas Kingo, the future hymnwriter, was born December 15, 1634.

It was an unusually cold and unfriendly world that greeted the advent of the coming poet. The winter of his birth was long remembered as one of the hardest ever experienced in Denmark. The country’s unsuccessful participation in the Thirty Year’s War had brought on a depression that threatened its very existence as a nation; and a terrible pestilence followed by new wars increased and prolonged the general misery, making the years of Kingo’s childhood and youth one of the darkest periods in Danish history.

But although these conditions brought sorrow and ruin to thousands, even among the wealthy, the humble home of the Kingos somehow managed to survive. Beneath its roof industry and frugality worked hand in hand with piety and mutual love to brave the storms that wrecked so many and apparently far stronger establishments. Kingo always speaks with the greatest respect and gratitude of his “poor but honest parents”. In a poetic description of his childhood years he vividly recalls their indulgent kindness to him.

Kingo was only forty-two years old when he assumed his new position. His quick elevation from an obscure parish to one of the highest offices within the church might well have strained the abilities of an older and more experienced man. But there can be no doubt that he filled his high position with signal ability. He was both able and earnest, both practical and spiritual. His diocese prospered under his care and his work as a bishop, aside from his renown as a poet, was outstanding enough to give him an enviable reputation in his own generation.

But since his permanent fame and importance rest upon his achievement as a hymnwriter, his appointment as bishop probably must be counted as a loss, both to himself and to the church. His new responsibilities and the multifarious duties of his high office naturally left him less time for other pursuits. He traveled, visited and preached almost continuously throughout his large charge, and it appears like a miracle that under these circumstances, he still found time to write hymns. But in 1684, only two years after his consecration as bishop, he published the second part of Spiritual Song-Choir.

This book bears a dedication to the queen, Charlotte Amalia. She was German by birth and a pious, able and distinguished woman in her own right. Kingo praises her especially for her effort to learn and speak the Danish language. In this respect, he declares, “Her Majesty put many to shame who have eaten the king’s bread for thirty years without learning to speak thirty words of Danish, because they hold it to be a homespun language, too coarse for their silky tongues”.

Spiritual Song-Choir, Part II contains twenty hymns and seventeen “sighs”, thus outwardly following the arrangement of Part I. But the content is very different. The hymns are songs of penitence, repentance and faith. They show mastery of form, a wealth of imagery, a facility for concentrated expression and a range of sentiment from stark despair to the most confident trust that is, perhaps, unequalled in Danish poetry. It is an embattled soul that speaks through these hymns, a soul that has faced the abyss and clung heroically, but not always successfully, to the pinnacle of faith. One feels that the man who penned the following lines has not merely imagined the nearness of the pit but felt himself standing on the very brink of it.

Of an even darker mood is the great hymn: “Sorrow and Unhappiness”, with the searching verse:

The poet answers his questions in the following stanzas by assuring himself that the Sun of God’s grace can and will pierce even his “cloud of despair”, and that he must wait therefore in quietness and trust:

The uncertainty of life and its fortunes furnished a favored theme for many of his hymns, as for instance in the splendid—

which is, poetically at least, one of his finest compositions. The poet’s own career so far had been one of continuous and rather swift advancement. But there was, if not in his own outward fortune, then in the fortunes of other notables of his day, enough to remind him of the inconstancy of worldly honor and glory. Only a few months before the publication of his hymns, Leonora Christine Ulfeldt, the once beautiful, admired and talented daughter of Christian IV, had been released from twenty-two years of imprisonment in a bare and almost lightless prison-cell; Peder Griffenfeldt, a man who from humble antecedents swiftly had risen to become the most powerful man in the kingdom, had been stript even more swiftly of all his honors and thrown into a dismal prison on a rocky isle by the coast of Norway; and there were other and well known instances of swift changes in the fortunes of men in those days when they were subject not only to the ordinary vicissitudes of human existence but to the fickle humor of an absolute monarch. It is, therefore, as though Kingo at the height of his own fortune would remind himself of the quickness with which it might vanish, of the evanescense and vanity of all worldly glory. That idea is strikingly emphasized in the following famous hymn:

This is an eloquent farewell, clothed in all the expressive wealth of language and imagery of which Kingo was such a master. One cannot repress the feeling, however, that it presents a challenge rather than a farewell. A man that so passionately avows his repudiation of the world must have felt its attraction, its power to tempt and enthrall. He fights against it; the spirit contends with the flesh, but the fight is not easy. And it is in part this very human trait in Kingo that endears his song to us. What Christian does not recognize some of his own experiences in the following characteristic song:

Some statements in this hymn have frequently been criticized as contradictory, for how can one be “always” full of care and “always” full of praise and prayer? The terms cancel each other. But are not such contradictions expressive of life itself? Few—if any—are wholly one thing or wholly another. People are complex. Their joys struggle with their sorrows, their most earnest faith with their doubts and fears. It brings Kingo nearer to us to know that he shared that struggle. His songs have appealed to millions because they are both so spiritual and so human. How expressive of human need and Christian trust are not the following brief lines:

Chapter Six Kingo’s Church Hymns

Kingo’s church hymns naturally differ from his spiritual songs. They are more objective in form and less fiery in spirit. Most of them follow their themes quite closely, reproducing in many instances even the words of their text. Kingo is too vital, however, to confine himself wholly to an objective presentation. Usually the last stanzas of his hymns are devoted to a brief and often striking application of their text. He possessed to a singular degree the ability to express a thought tersely, as for instance in the following stanza, the last of a hymn on the baptism of the Lord:

The hymns may be classed under four headings: Festival Hymns, Sacramental Hymns, Historical Hymns and Hymns on the Gospels and Epistles.

With the exception of his Easter anthem, his festival hymns cannot compare with those of later authors. Some of his Pentecost hymns, such as the hymns given below, are, however, still favorites.

Kingo frequently is referred to as “the Easter Singer of Denmark”. His claim to this title rests mainly on one song. Easter with its story of triumphant victory appealed especially to him; and he wrote several excellent hymns on the theme, but they are all overshadowed by the splendid anthem presented below.

In this rugged hymn Kingo is at his best—fiery, vital, a master of imagery and graphic expression.

His hymns on the sacraments faithfully reflect the doctrines of the Lutheran Church. Here he most clearly shows his ability to present objective truths in a devotional spirit. We meet in these a Christian who humbly and prayerfully accepts the whole mystery of God. For centuries these rugged songs have served to express the sentiments of millions as they met at the baptismal font or knelt before the altar. The following is one of the most favored baptismal hymns both in the Danish and Norwegian churches:

Kingo’s communion hymns have to a large extent been superseded by later hymns of Grundtvig and others. But some of them are still in common use. The following characteristic hymn is frequently used before the communion.

The short hymn given below is a favorite after the communion in numerous Danish and Norwegian churches.

Kingo’s historical hymns, that is, his hymns on the stories of the Gospels, usually are not counted among the best. Yet there are many fine hymns among them, such as the annunciation hymn, “There Came a Message from the Sky”; the hymn about the wedding at Cana, “How Blessed Was that Wedding Feast”; and the splendid hymn on the transfiguration of the Lord, “I Lift My Eyes and Spirit Up unto the Hallowed Mountain Top Where Jesus Once Ascended”. Best known among this group of hymns is, however, his great sequence of songs on our Lord’s passion. In these inspired hymns we meet again the Kingo that we know from his spiritual songs, fiery, eloquent, imaginative, seeking to picture every detail and mood of the Savior’s suffering from the garden to the cross. Though it is difficult to choose among hymns so universally fine, the one given below is, at least, fairly representative of the group.

Chapter Seven Kingo’s Later Years

Kingo’s work with the hymnal had brought him much disappointment and some loss of popularity. He felt not without justification that he had been ill treated. He did not sulk in his tent, however, but pursued his work with unabated zeal. His diocese was large, comprising not only Fyn but a large number of smaller islands besides. The work of making periodical visits to all parishes within such a far-flung charge was, considering the then available means of transportation, not only strenuous but hazardous. Roads were bad and vessels weak and slow. Hardships and danger beset his almost continuous voyages and journeys. A number of poems relating the adventures of the traveler are reminiscenses of his own experiences.

But his work of visiting the churches constituted, of course, only a part of his duties. He had to preach in the cathedral at Odense at least every Wednesday in Lent and on all festival Sundays; examine the work and conduct of all pastors within the diocese; act as an arbiter in disputes between them and their parishioners; make sure that the financial affairs of the church and its institutions were honestly conducted; attend to the collection of church taxes; and superintend all schools, hospitals and institutions of charity. The efficient accomplishment of all these tasks might well test the strength and ability of any man.

His manifold duties also engendered numerous occasions for friction, especially with the civil authorities, whose rights and duties often overlapped his own. And he did not escape the danger of such bickerings with their resultant ill-feeling. There is nothing to indicate that he was contentious by nature. But he was no doubt zealous in defending the prerogatives of his office. His temper was quick and somewhat martial. “One could very well,” one of his biographers declares, “envision him as a knight in full armor leading a troop in the charge.” With the exception of his active enemies, most of his contemporaries agree, however, that he was commonly more than patient in his dealings with others.

Chapter Eight Brorson’s Childhood and Youth

Hans Adolph Brorson came from Schleswig, the border province between Denmark and Germany which for centuries has constituted a battleground between the two countries and cost the Danes so much in blood and tears. His family was old in the district and presented an unbroken line of substantial farmers until his grandfather, Broder Pedersen, broke it by studying for the ministry and becoming pastor at Randrup, a small country parish on the west coast of the province.

Broder Pedersen remained at Randrup till his death in 1646, and was then succeeded by his son, Broder Brodersen, a young man only twenty-three years old, who shortly before his installation had married Catherine Margaret Clausen, a daughter of the manager of Trojborg manor, the estate to which the church at Randrup belonged. Catherine Clausen bore her husband three sons, Nicolaj Brodersen, born July 23, 1690, Broder Brodersen, born September 12, 1692, and Hans Adolph Brodersen—or Brorson—as his name was later written—born June 20, 1694.

Broder Brodersen was a quiet, serious-minded man, anxious to give his boys the best possible training for life. Although his income was small, he managed somehow to provide private tutors for them. Both he and his wife were earnest Christians, and the fine example of their own lives was no doubt of greater value to their boys than the formal instruction they received from hired teachers. Thus an early biographer of the Brorsons writes: “Their good parents earnestly instructed their boys in all that was good, but especially in the fear and knowledge of God. Knowing that a good example is more productive of good than the best precept, they were not content with merely teaching them what is good, but strove earnestly to live so that their own daily lives might present a worthy pattern for their sons to follow.”

Broder Brodersen was not granted the privilege of seeing his sons attain their honored manhood. He died in 1704, when the eldest of them was fourteen and the youngest only ten years old. Upon realizing that he must leave them, he is said to have comforted himself with the words of Kingo:

Nor was the faith of the dying pastor put to shame. A year after his death, his widow married his successor in the pastorate, Pastor Ole Holbeck, who proved himself a most excellent stepfather to his adopted sons.

Reverend Holbeck personally taught the boys until Nicolaj, and a year later, Broder and Hans Adolph were prepared to enter the Latin school at Ribe. This old and once famous school was then in a state of decay. The town itself had declined from a proud city, a favored residence of kings and nobles, to an insignificant village of about fifteen hundred inhabitants. Of its former glory only a few old buildings and, especially, the beautiful cathedral still remained. And the Latin school had shared the fate of the city. Its once fine buildings were decaying; its faculty, which in former times included some of the best known savants of the country, was poorly paid and poorly equipped; and the number of its students had shrunk from about 1200 to less than a score. Only the course of study remained unchanged from the Middle Ages. Latin and religion were still the main subjects of instruction. It mattered little if the student could neither speak nor write Danish correctly, but he must be able to define the finest points in a Latin grammar of more than 1200 pages. Attendance at religious services was compulsory; but the services were cold and spiritless, offering little attraction to an adolescent youth.

The boys completed their course at Ribe and entered the university of Copenhagen, Nicolaj in the fall of 1710 and the younger brothers a year later. But the change offered them little improvement. The whole country suffered from a severe spiritual decline. Signs of an awakening were here and there, but not at the university where Lutheran orthodoxy still maintained its undisputed reign of more than a hundred years, though it had now become more dry and spiritless than ever.

The brothers all intended to prepare for the ministry. But after two years Nicolaj for various reasons left the University of Copenhagen to complete his course at the University of Kiel. Broder remained at Copenhagen, completing his course there in the spring of 1715. Hans Adolph studied for three years more and, even then, failed to complete his course.

Hans Adolph Brorson

It was a period of transition and spiritual unrest. The spiritual revival now clearly discernible throughout the country had at last reached the university. For the first time in many years the prevailing orthodoxy with its settled answers to every question of faith and conduct was meeting an effective challenge. Many turned definitely away from religion, seeking in other fields such as history, philosophy and especially the natural sciences for a more adequate answer to their problems than religion appeared to offer. Others searched for a solution of their difficulty in new approaches to the old faith. The result was a spiritual confusion such as often precedes the dawn of a new awakening. And Brorson appears to have been caught in it. His failure to complete his course was by no means caused by indolence. He had, on the contrary, broadened his studies to include a number of subjects foreign to his course, and he had worked so hard that he had seriously impaired his health. But he had lost his direction, and also, for the time being, all interest in theology.

It was, therefore, as a somewhat spiritually confused and physically broken young man that he gave up his studies and returned to his home at Randrup. His brothers were already well started upon their conspicuously successful careers, while he was still drifting, confused and uncertain, a failure, as some no doubt would call him. His good stepfather, nevertheless, received him with the utmost kindness. If he harbored any disappointment in him, he does not appear to have shown it. His stepson remained with him for about a year, assisting him with whatever he could, and had then so far recovered that he was able to accept a position as tutor in the family of his maternal uncle, Nicolaj Clausen, at Løgum Kloster.

Løgum Kloster had once been a large and powerful institution and a center of great historic events. The magnificent building of the cloister itself had been turned into a county courthouse, at which Nicolaj Clausen served as county president, but the splendid old church of the cloister still remained, serving as the parish church. In these interesting surroundings and in the quiet family circle of his uncle, Brorson made further progress toward normal health. But his full recovery came only after a sincere spiritual awakening in 1720.

The strong revival movement that was sweeping the country and displacing the old orthodoxy, was engendered by the German Pietist movement, entering Denmark through Slesvig. The two conceptions of Christianity differed, it has been said, only in their emphasis. Orthodoxy emphasized doctrine and Pietism, life. Both conceptions were one-sided. If orthodoxy had resulted in a lifeless formalism, Pietism soon lost its effectiveness in a sentimental subjectivism. Its neglect of sound doctrine eventually gave birth to Rationalism. But for the moment Pietism appeared to supply what orthodoxy lacked: an urgent call to Christians to live what they professed to believe.

A number of the early leaders of the movement in Denmark lived in the neighborhood of Løgum Kloster, and were personally known to Brorson. But whether or not any of these leaders was instrumental in his awakening is now unknown. One of his contemporaries simply states that “Brorson at this time sought to employ his solitude in a closer walk with God in Christ and, in so doing, received a perfect assurance of the Lord’s faithfulness to those that trust in Him.” Thus whatever influence neighboring Pietists may have contributed to the great change in his life, the change itself seems to have been brought about through his own Jacob-like struggle with God. And it was a complete change. If he had formerly been troubled by many things, he henceforth evinced but one desire to know Christ and to be known by Him.

A first fruit of his awakening was an eager desire to enter the ministry. He was offered a position as rector of a Latin school, but his stepfather’s death, just as he was considering the offer, caused him to refuse the appointment and instead to apply for the pastorate at Randrup. His application granted, he at once hastened back to the university to finish his formerly uncompleted course and obtain his degree. Having accomplished this in the fall of the same year, on April 6, 1722, he was ordained to the ministry together with his brother, Broder Brorson, who had resigned a position as rector of a Latin school to become pastor at Mjolden, a parish adjoining Randrup. As his brother, Nicolaj Brorson, shortly before had accepted the pastorate of another adjoining parish, the three brothers thus enjoyed the unusual privilege of living and working together in the same neighborhood.

The eight years that Brorson spent at Randrup where his father and grandfather had worked before him were probably the happiest in his life. The parish is located in a low, treeless plain bordering the North Sea. Its climate, except for a few months of summer, is raw and blustery. In stormy weather the sea frequently floods its lower fields, causing severe losses in crops, stocks and even in human life. Thus Brorson’s stepfather died from a cold caught during a flight from a flood that threatened the parsonage. The severe climate and constant threat of the sea, however, fosters a hardy race. From this region the Jutes together with their neighbors, the Angles and Saxons, once set out to conquer and settle the British Isles. And the hardihood of the old sea-rovers was not wholly lost in their descendants when Brorson settled among them, although it had long been directed into other and more peaceful channels.

The parsonage in which the Brorsons lived stood on a low ridge, rising gently above its surroundings and affording a splendid view over far reaches of fields, meadows and the ever changing sea. The view was especially beautiful in early summer when wild flowers carpeted the meadows in a profusion of colors, countless birds soared and sang above the meadows and shoals of fish played in the reed bordered streams. It was without doubt this scene that inspired the splendid hymn “Arise, All Things that God Hath Made.”

Brorson was happy to return to Randrup. The parish was just then the center of all that was dearest to him in this world. His beloved mother still lived there, his brothers were close neighbors, and he brought with him his young wife, Catherine Clausen, whom he had married a few days before his installation.

Nicolaj and Broder Brorson had, like him, joined the Pietist movement, and the three brothers, therefore, could work together in complete harmony for the spiritual revival of their parishes. And they did not spare themselves. Both separately and cooperatively, they labored zealously to increase church attendance, revive family devotions, encourage Bible reading and hymn singing, and minimize the many worldly and doubtful amusements that, then as now, caused many Christians to fall. They also began to hold private assemblies in the homes, a work for which they were bitterly condemned by many and severely reprimanded by the authorities. It could not be expected, of course, that a work so devoted to the furtherance of a new conception of the Christian life would be tolerated without opposition. But their work, nevertheless, was blest with abundant fruit, both in their own parishes and throughout neighboring districts. Churches were refilled with worshippers, family altars rebuilt, and a new song was born in thousands of homes. People expressed their love for the three brothers by naming them “The Rare Three-Leafed Clover from Randrup.” It is said that the revival inspired by the Brorsons even now, more than two hundred years later, is plainly evident in the spiritual life of the district.

Thus the years passed fruitfully for the young pastor at Randrup. He rejoiced in his home, his work and the warm devotion of his people. It came, therefore, as a signal disappointment to all that he was the first to break the happy circle by accepting a call as assistant pastor at Christ church in Tønder, a small city a few miles south of Randrup.

Chapter Nine The Singer of Pietism

The city of Tønder, when Brorson located there, had about two thousand inhabitants. At one time it had belonged to the German Dukes of Gottorp, and it was still largely German speaking. Its splendid church had three pastors, two of whom preached in German and the third, Brorson, in Danish.

The parish Pastor, Johan Herman Schraeder, was an outstanding and highly respected man. Born at Hamburg in 1684, he had in his younger days served as a tutor for the children of King Frederick IV, Princess Charlotte Amalia and Prince Christian, now reigning as King Christian VI.

Pastor Schraeder was a zealous Pietist and a leader of the Pietist movement in Tønder and its neighboring territory. Like the Brorsons he sought to encourage family devotions, Bible reading and, especially, hymn singing. People are said to have become so interested in the latter that they brought their hymnals with them to work so that they might sing from them during lunch hours. He himself was a noted hymnwriter and hymn collector, who, shortly after Brorson became his assistant, published a German hymnal, containing no less than 1157 hymns.

Schraeder, we are told, had been personally active in inducing Brorson to leave his beloved Randrup and accept the call to Tønder. As Brorson was known as an ardent Pietist, Schraeder’s interest in bringing him to Tønder may have originated in a natural wish to secure a congenial co-worker, but it may also have sprung from an acquaintance with his work as a hymnwriter. For although there is no direct evidence that any of Brorson’s hymns were written at Randrup, a number of circumstances make it highly probable that some of them were composed there and that Schraeder was acquainted with them. Such a mutual interest also helps to explain why Brorson should leave his fruitful work at Randrup for an inferior position in a new field. It is certain that the change brought him no outward advantages, and his position as a Danish pastor in a largely German speaking community must have presented certain unavoidable difficulties.

In Denmark the king is officially the head of the church. At the time of Brorson all church appointments belonged to him, and King Christian VI, if he had so wanted, could thus have filled all vacancies with adherents of the movement in which he sincerely believed. He was, however, no fanatic. Earnestly concerned, as he no doubt was, to further the spiritual welfare of his subjects, his only desire was to supply all church positions at his disposal with good and able men. And as such the Brorsons were recommended to him by his old tutor and adviser in church affairs, John Herman Schraeder. On this recommendation, he successively invited the brothers to preach at court. Their impression upon him was so favorable that within a few years he appointed Nicolaj to become pastor of Nicolaj church in Copenhagen, one of the largest churches in the capital, Broder to become Provost of the cathedral at Ribe and, two years later, Bishop of Aalborg, and Hans Adolph to succeed his brother at Ribe and, four years later, to become bishop of that large and historically famous bishopric. Thus the brothers in a few years had been elevated from obscurity to leading positions within their church.

Contemporaries express highly different estimates of Brorson as a bishop. While praised by some, he is severely criticized by others as unfit both by ability and temperament for the high office he occupied. This last estimate now is generally held to be unjust and, to some extent at least, inspired by jealousy of his quick rise to fame and by antagonism to his pietistic views. A close examination of church records and his official correspondence proves him to have been both efficient in the administration of his office and moderate in his dealings with others. He was by all accounts an eloquent and effective speaker. Although Ribe was a small city, its large cathedral was usually crowded whenever it was known that Brorson would conduct the service. People came from far away to hear him. And his preaching at home and on his frequent visits to all parts of his large bishopric bore fruit in a signal quickening of the Christian life in many of the parishes under his charge. He was, we are told, as happy as a child when he found pastors and their people working faithfully together for the upbuilding of the kingdom. But his own zeal caused him to look for the same earnestness in others. And he was usually stern and, at times, implacable, in his judgment of neglect and slothfulness, especially in the pastors.

His private life was by all accounts exceptionally pure and simple, a true expression of his sincere faith and earnest piety. A domestic, who for many years served in his home has furnished us with a most interesting account of his home life. Brorson, she testifies, was an exceptionally kind and friendly man, always gentle and considerate in his dealing with others except when they had provoked him by some gross neglect or inattention to right and duty. He was generous to a fault toward others, but very frugal, even parsimonious in his home and in his personal habits. Only at Christmas or on other special occasion would he urge his household to spare nothing. He was a ceaseless and industrious worker, giving close personal attention to the multiple duties of his important position and office. His daily life bore eloquent witness of his sincere piety. When at home, no matter how busy, he always gathered his whole household for daily devotions. Music constituted his sole diversion. He enjoyed an evening spent in playing and singing with his family and servants. If he chanced to hear a popular song with a pleasing tune, he often adopted it to his own words, and sang it in the family circle. Many of the hymns in his Swan-Song are said to have been composed and sung in that way.

His life was rich in trials and suffering. His first wife died just as he was preparing to go to Copenhagen for his consecration as a bishop, and the loss affected him so deeply that only the pleading of his friends prevented him from resigning the office. He later married a most excellent woman, Johanne Riese, but could never forget the wife of his youth. Several of his children preceded him in death, some of them while still in their infancy, and others in the prime of their youth. His own health was always delicate and he passed through several severe illnesses from which his recovery was considered miraculous. His heaviest cross was, perhaps, the hopeless insanity of his first-born son, who throughout his life had to be confined to a locked and barred room as a hopeless and dangerous lunatic. A visitor in the bishop’s palace, it is related, once remarked: “You speak so often about sorrows and trials, Bishop Brorson, but you have your ample income and live comfortably in this fine mansion, so how can you know about these things?” Without answering, Brorson beckoned his visitor to follow him to the graveyard where he showed him the grave of his wife and several of his children, and into the palace where he showed him the sad spectacle of his insane son. Then the visitor understood that position and material comfort are no guaranty against sorrow.

Chapter Eleven Grundtvig’s Early Years

The latter part of the eighteenth and the earlier part of the nineteenth century produced a number of great changes in the spiritual, intellectual and economic life of Denmark. The strong Pietist movement at the time of Brorson, as we have seen, lost much of its momentum with the death of King Christian VI, and within a few years was overwhelmed by a wave of the intellectual and religious Rationalism then engulfing a large part of Europe. Religion, it was claimed, should be divested of its mysteries and reason made supreme. Whatever could not justify itself before the bar of the human intellect should be discarded as outworn conceptions of a less enlightened age. The movement, however, comprised all shades of opinions from pure agnosticism to an idealistic belief in God, virtue and immortality.

Although firmly opposed by some of the most influential Danish leaders of that day, such as the valiant bishop of Sjælland, Johan Edinger Balle, Rationalism swept the country with irresistible force. Invested in the attractive robe of human enlightenment and appealing to man’s natural intellectual vanity, the movement attracted the majority of the upper classes and a large proportion of the clergy. Its adherents studied Rousseau and Voltaire, talked resoundingly of human enlightenment, organized endless numbers of clubs, and—in some instances—worked zealously for the social and economic uplift of the depressed classes.

In this latter endeavor many pastors assumed a commendable part. Having lost the old Gospel, the men of the cloth became eager exponents of the “social gospel” of that day. While we may not approve their Christmas sermons “on improved methods of stable feeding,” or their Easter sermons “on the profitable cultivation of buckwheat,” we cannot but recognize their devoted labor for the educational and economic uplift, especially of the hard-pressed peasants.

Their well-meant efforts, however, bore little fruit. The great majority of the people had sunk into a slough of spiritual apathy from which neither the work of the Rationalists nor the stirring events of the time could arouse them.

The nineteenth century began threateningly for Denmark, heaping calamity after calamity upon her. England attacked her in 1801 and 1807, robbing her of her fine fleet and forcing her to enter the European war on the side of Napoleon. The war wrecked her trade, bankrupted her finances and ended with the severance of her long union with Norway in 1814. But through it all Holger Danske slept peacefully, apparently unaware that the very existence of the nation was threatened.

It is against this background of spiritual and national indifference that the towering figure of Grundtvig must be seen. For it was he, more than any other, who awakened his people from their lethargic indifference and started them upon the road toward a happier day spiritually and nationally.

Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, like so many of Denmark’s greatest men, was the son of a parson. He was born September 8, 1783, at Udby, a country parish in the south-eastern part of Sjælland. His father, Johan Ottesen Grundtvig, was a pastor of the old school, an upright, earnest and staunch supporter of the Evangelical Lutheran faith. His mother, Catherine Marie Bang, was a high-minded, finely educated woman with an ardent love for her country, its history, traditions and culture. Her son claimed that he had inherited his love of “song and saga” from her.

The Grundtvigs on both sides of the family were descendants of a long line of distinguished forebears, the most famous of whom was Archbishop Absalon, the founder of Copenhagen and one of the most powerful figures in 13th Century Denmark. And they still had relatives in high places. Thus Johan Edinger Balle, the formerly mentioned bishop of Sjælland, was a brother-in-law of Johan Grundtvig; Cathrine Grundtvig’s brother, Dr. Johan Frederik Bang, was a well-known professor of medicine and the stepfather of Jacob Peter Mynster; and her younger sister, Susanna Kristine Steffens, was the mother of Henrik Steffens, a professor at the universities of Halle and Breslau, a friend of Goethe and Schiller, and a leader of the early Romantic movement, both in Germany and Denmark.

Cathrine Grundtvig bore her husband five children, of whom Nicolaj was the youngest. But even with such a large household to manage, she found time to supervise the early schooling of her youngest son. She taught him to read, told him the sagas of his people and gave him his first lessons in the history and literature, both of his own and of other nations.

It was a period of stirring events. Wars and revolutions raged in many parts of Europe. And these events were eagerly followed and discussed in the parsonage. Listening to his elders, Grundtvig saw, as it were, history in its making and acquired an interest in the subject that produced rich fruits in later years. The wholesome Christian life of his home and the devotional spirit of the services in his father’s church also made a deep impression upon him, an impression that even the scepticism of his youth could not eradicate.

But his happy childhood years ended all too quickly. At the age of nine he left his home to continue his studies under a former tutor, Pastor L. Feld of Thyregod, a country parish in Jylland. There he spent six lonely but quite fruitful years, receiving among other things a solid training in the classical languages. In 1798, he completed his studies with Rev. Feld and enrolled in the Latin school at Aarhus, the principal city of Jylland. But the change proved most unfortunate for young Grundtvig. Under the wise and kindly guidance of Rev. Feld he had preserved the wholesome, eager spirit of his childhood, but the lifeless teaching, the compulsory religious exercises and the whole spiritless atmosphere of his new school soon changed him into an indifferent, sophisticated and self-satisfied cynic with little interest in his studies, and none at all in religion.

At the completion of his course, however, this attitude did not deter him from enrolling at the University of Copenhagen with the intention of studying for the ministry. A university education was then considered almost indispensable to a man of his social position, and his parents earnestly wished him to enter the church. Nor was his attitude toward Christianity greatly different from that of his fellow students or even from that of many pastors already preaching the emasculated gospel of God, Virtue, and Immortality which the Rationalists held to be the true essence of the Christian religion. Believing the important part of the Gospel to be its ethical precepts, Grundtvig, furthermore, prided himself upon the correctness of his own moral conduct and his ability to control all unworthy passions. “I was at that time,” he later complained, “nothing but an insufferably vain and narrow-minded Pharisee.”

From this spirit of superior self-sufficiency, only two things momentarily aroused him during his university years—the English attacks upon Copenhagen; and a series of lectures by his cousin, Henrik Steffens.

Steffens, as a student at Jena, had met and become an enthusiastic disciple of Schelling, the father of natural philosophy, a pantheistic colored conception of life, opposed to the narrowly materialistic views of most Rationalists. Lecturing at the university during the years 1802-1803, Steffens aroused a tremendous enthusiasm, both among the students and some of the older intellectuals. “He was a fiery speaker,” Grundtvig remarks later, “and his lectures both shocked and inspired us although I often laughed at him afterward.”

Despite his attempt to laugh away the impression of the fiery speaker, Grundtvig, nevertheless, retained at least two lasting memories from the lectures—the power of the spoken word, a power that even against his will could arouse him from his cynical indifference, and the reverence with which Steffens spoke of Christ as “the center of history.” The human race, he contended, had sunk progressively lower and lower from the fall of man until the time of Nero, when the process had been reversed and man had begun the slow upward climb that was still continuing. And of this progress the speaker in glowing terms pictured Christ as the living center.

Grundtvig was graduated from the university in the spring of 1803. He wished to remain in Copenhagen but could find no employment and was forced, therefore, to return to his home. Here he remained for about a year, after which he succeeded in obtaining a position as tutor for the son of Lieutenant Steensen Leth of Egelykke, a large estate on the island of Langeland.

Except for the fact that Egelykke was far from Copenhagen, Grundtvig soon became quite satisfied with his new position. Both the manor and its surroundings were extremely beautiful, and his work was congenial. His employer, a former naval officer, proved to be a rough, hard-drinking worldling; but his hostess, Constance Leth, was a charming, well-educated woman whose cultural interests made the manor a favored gathering place for a group of like-minded ladies from the neighborhood. And with these cultured women, Grundtvig soon felt himself much more at home than with his rough-spoken employer and hard-drinking companions.

But if Grundtvig unexpectedly was beginning to enjoy his stay at Egelykke, this enjoyment vanished like a dream when he suddenly discovered that he was falling passionately in love with his attractive hostess. It availed him nothing that others as he well knew might have accepted such a situation with complacence; to him it appeared an unpardonable reproach both to his intelligence and his honor. Having proudly asserted the ability of any intelligent man to master his passions, he was both horrified and humiliated to discover that he could not control his own.

Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig

Grundtvig never consciously revealed his true sentiment to Constance Leth. At the cost of an intense struggle, he managed outwardly to maintain his code of honorable conduct. But he still felt humbled and shaken by his inability to suppress his inner and as he saw it guilty passion. And under this blow to his proud self-sufficiency, he felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, the need for a power greater than his own. “To win in this struggle,” he wrote in his diary, “lies beyond my own power. I must look for help from above or sink as the stone sinks while the lightly floating leaves mock it and wonder why it cannot float as they do.”

The struggle against his passion engendered a need for work. “In order to quiet the storm within me,” he writes, “I forced my mind to occupy itself with the most difficult labor.” Although he had paid small attention to the suggestion at the time, he now remembered and began to read some of the authors Steffens had recommended in his lectures: Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, Fichte, Shakespeare and others. He also studied the work of newer Danish writers, such as Prof. Jens Møller, a writer on Northern mythology, and Adam Oehlenschlaeger, a young man who, inspired by Steffens, was becoming the foremost dramatic poet of Denmark. He even renewed the study of his long neglected Bible. The motive of his extensive reading was, no doubt, ethical rather than esthetic, a search for that outside power of which the battle within him revealed his urgent need. Thus he wrote:

My spirit opened its eyes, Saw itself on the brink of the abyss, Searched with trembling and fear Everywhere for a power to save, And found God in all things, Found Him in the songs of the poets, Found Him in the work of the sages, Found Him in the myths of the North, Found Him in the records of history, But clearest of all it still Found Him in the Book of Books.

The fate that appears to crush a man may also exalt him. And so it was with Grundtvig. His suffering crushed the stony shell of cynical indifference in which he had long enclosed his naturally warm and impetuous spirit and released the great latent forces within him. In the midst of his struggle, new ideas germinated springlike in his mind. He read, thought and wrote, especially on the subject that was always near to his heart, the mythology and early traditions of the Northern peoples. And after three years of struggle, he was at last ready to break away from Egelykke. If he had not yet conquered his passion, he had so far mastered it that he could aspire to other things.

Thus ended what a modern Danish writer, Skovgaard-Petersen, calls “the finest love story in Danish history.” The event had caused Grundtvig much pain, but it left no festering wounds. His firm refusal to permit his passion to sully himself or degrade the woman he loved had, on the contrary, made it one of the greatest incitations to good in his whole life.

On his return to Copenhagen Grundtvig almost at once obtained a position as teacher in history at Borch’s Collegium for boys. His new position satisfied him eminently by affording him a chance to work with his favorite subject and to expand his other intellectual interests. He soon made friends with a number of promising young intellectuals who, in turn, introduced him to some of the outstanding intellectual and literary lights of the country, and within a short while the list of his acquaintances read like a Blue Book of the city’s intelligentsia.

Although Grundtvig was still quite unknown except for a few articles in a current magazine, there was something about him, an originality of view, an arresting way of phrasing his thoughts, a quiet sense of humor, that commanded attention. His young friends willingly acknowledged his leadership, and the older watched him with expectation. Nor were they disappointed. His Northern Mythology appeared in 1808, and Episodes from the Decay of Northern Heroism only a year later. And these strikingly original and finely written works immediately established his reputation as one of the foremost writers of Denmark. There were even those who in their enthusiasm compared him with the revered Oehlenschlaeger. A satirical poem, “The Masquerade Ball of Denmark,” inspired by the frivolous indifference with which many people had reacted to the English bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, showed his power of burning scorn and biting satire.

In the midst of this success and the preparation of plans for new and more ambitious works, Grundtvig received a request from his old father to come home and assist him with his parish work. The request was not at all pleasing to him. His personal attitude toward Christianity was still uncertain, and his removal from the capital would interfere with his literary career. But as the wish of his good parents could not be ignored, he reluctantly applied for ordination and began to prepare his probation sermon.

This now famous sermon was delivered before the proper officials March 17, 1810. Knowing that few besides the censors would be present to hear him and feeling that an ordinary sermon would be out of place before such an audience, Grundtvig prepared his sermon as an historical survey of the present state of the church rather than as an Evangelical discourse.

His study of history had convinced him of the mighty influence Christianity had once exerted upon the nations, and he, therefore, posed the question why this influence was now in decline. “Are the glad tidings,” he asked, “which through seventeen hundred years passed from confessing lips to listening ears still not preached?” And the answer is “no”. Even the very name of Jesus is now without significance and worth to most people of the younger generation, “for the Word of God has departed from His house and that which is preached there is not the Word of God, but the earth-bound speculations of men. The holy men of old believed in the message they were called to preach, but the human spirit has now become so proud that it feels itself capable of discovering the truth without the light of the Gospel, and so faith has died. My Brethren!” he exclaims, “Let us not, if we share this blindness and contempt for the heavenly light, be false and shameless enough to desecrate the Holy Place by appearing there as preachers of a Christianity in which we ourselves do not believe!”

The sermon was delivered with much force and eloquence. Grundtvig felt himself stirred by the strength of his own argument; and a comparison of the warm devotional spirit of a church service, as he remembered it from his childhood, with the cold indifference of later days moved him to sentimental tears, the first pious tears that he had shed for many years, he said later. Even the censors were so impressed that they unanimously awarded him the mark of excellent, a generosity they bitterly regretted a few weeks later. For Grundtvig, contrary to his promise—as the censors asserted but Grundtvig denied—published his sermon. And it was warmly received by the Evangelicals as the first manna that had fallen in a desert for many years. But the Rationalists violently condemned it and presented the Committee on Church Affairs with an indignant protest against its author “for having grossly insulted the Danish clergy.”

Considering the enthusiastic approval the sermon had received in various quarters, the committee would gladly have squashed the complaint. But the complainers, comprising many of the most influential pastors in the city, were too powerful to be ignored. And so Grundtvig was found guilty “of having willfully insulted the Danish clergy, both individually and as a body,” and sentenced to receive a reprimand by the dean of the theological faculty.

When Grundtvig on January 11, 1811, presented himself before the dean to receive his reprimand, he looked so pale and shaken that even the worthy official took compassion upon him and advised him privately that he must not take his sentence too seriously. It was not, however, the stern reprimand of the dean but an experience of far greater consequence that so visibly blanched the cheeks of the defendant.

The prospect of entering the active ministry caused Grundtvig to examine seriously his own attitude toward Christianity. And although the bishop vetoed his assignment to Udby and thus released him from the immediate prospect of entering the pulpit, this did not stop the trend of his thoughts. He had lost his former indifference toward religion and discovered the historical significance of Christianity, but just what did the Christian faith mean to him personally?

He was still pondering this question, when in the fall of 1810, he commenced a study of the Crusades, “the heroic age of Christianity,” as one historian called the period. The phrase appealed to him. He had lately wandered through the mystic halls of Northern gods and heroes and deplored the decay of their heroic spirit. He admired the heroic, and his heart still wavered between the mighty Wodin and the meek and lowly Christ. But the heroic age of Christianity—was it possible then that Christianity too could rise to the heroic?

In the course of his study he read The Early History of Prussia by A. von Kotzebue in which the author, after ridiculing “the missionary zeal that, like a fire on the steppes, caught the kings of Poland and Scandinavia and moved them to frantic efforts for the conversion of neighboring peoples,” proudly stated, “But while her neighbors all accepted Christianity and the withered cross drew steadily nearer to the green oak, Prussia remained faithful to her ancient gods.”

“The withered Cross!” The words stung Grundtvig to the quick. He hurled the book away, sprang up and stormed about the room, vowing that he would henceforth dedicate his life to the cause of the spurned emblem.

A few weeks of restless exaltation followed. He read his Bible, studied Luther’s catechism and pondered the ways and means of accomplishing a reform of his church, especially a reform inspired by pen and ink. But his New Year’s Night, a small book published during this period, shows his still troublesome uncertainty, his constant wavering between the old gods and the Christ of the Gospels, between various degrees of Rationalism and a full acceptance of the mystery of the cross. In a mighty hymn of praise to the suffering Savior, he wrote many years later: “Yes, my heart believes the wonder of Thy cross, which ages ponder”—but he had yet to pass through the depths before he could say that. Even so, he now exultingly wrote: “On the rim of the bottomless abyss toward which our age is blindly hastening, I will stand and confront it with a picture, illumined by two shining lights, the Word of God, and the testimony of history. As long as God gives me strength to lift up my voice, I will call and admonish my people in His name.”

But from this pinnacle of proud exultation, he was suddenly hurled into the abyss when, like a bolt of lightning, the thought struck him: But are you yourself a Christian, have you received the forgiveness of your sin?

“It struck me like a hammer, crashing the rock,” he said later, “what the Lord tells the ungodly: ‘What hast thou to declare my statutes or that thou shouldest take my covenant into thy mouth, seeing that thou hatest my instruction and castest my word behind thee!’” Gone like a dream were now all his proud fancies. Only one thought filled his whole being—to obtain the forgiveness of his sin and the assurance of God’s grace. But so violent became his struggle that his mind at times reeled on the brink of insanity. His young friends stood loyally by him, comforting and guarding him as far as they could. And when it became clear that he must be removed from the noise of the city, one of them, F. Sibbern, volunteered to take him home. There his old parents received him with understanding, even rejoicing that anxiety for his soul and not other things had so disturbed his mind.

The peace of the quiet countryside, the understanding care of his parents and the soothing influence of their firm Evangelical faith acted as a balm to Grundtvig’s struggling spirit. He loved to enter the old church of his childhood, to hear his father preach, or sit alone before the altar in meditation and prayer. And there before the altar of the church in which he had been baptized and confirmed, he at last found peace, the true peace of God that passeth all understanding.

After the great change in his life, Grundtvig now wished most heartily to become his father’s assistant. The elder Grundtvig had already forwarded his resignation from the pastorate but was more than happy to apply for its return and for the appointment of his son as his assistant. And so, Grundtvig was ordained at Copenhagen, May 11, 1811, and installed at Udby a few days later. He was back again in the old church of his childhood.

Chapter Twelve The Lonely Defender of the Bible

Grundtvig began his work at Udby with all the zeal of a new convert. He ministered to young and old, spent himself in work for the sick and the poor, and preached the Gospel with a fervor that was new, not only to the people of Udby, but to most people of that generation. If other things had not intervened, like his father, he might have spent his life as a successful country pastor. But his father died January 5, 1813. The authorities refused to confirm Grundtvig in the vacant charge, and he and his mother, shortly afterward, were compelled to leave the parsonage that had been their home for more than forty years. His mother settled in Prastø, a small city a few miles from Udby, and Grundtvig returned to Copenhagen to search for a new position, a task that this time proved both long and painful.

Among available positions, Grundtvig especially coveted a professorship in history at the newly founded university of Oslo, Norway, at which three of his friends, S. B. Hersleb, Niels Trechow and George Sverdrup, had already obtained employment. But although these friends worked zealously for his appointment, even after the separation of Norway from Denmark, their efforts were fruitless. Grundtvig was not destined to leave his native land. Nor were his attempts to secure other work successful. In spite of the fact that he applied for almost every vacancy in the church, even the smallest, his powerful enemies among the Rationalists were influential enough to prevent his appointment to any of them.

Meanwhile he was by no means idle. Following his conversion, he felt for a time like a man suddenly emerging from darkness into the brightness of a new day. Old things had passed away, but the brilliance of the new light confused him. What could he do? How many of his former interests were reconcilable with his new views? Could he, for instance, continue his writings? “When my eyes were opened,” he writes, “I considered all things not directly concerned with God a hindrance to the blessed knowledge of my Lord, Jesus Christ.” After a time he saw, however, that his ability to write might be accepted as a gift from God to be used in His service. “The poet when inspired,” he says, “may proclaim a message from above to the world below,” and so, “after dedicating it to Himself, the Lord again handed me the harp that I had placed upon His altar.”

During his brief stay at Udby, Grundtvig published three larger works: Episodes from the Battle between Ases and Norns, Saga and A New Year’s Gift for 1812.The printed text is corrupt here. Saga: A New Year’s Gift for 1812 is one work. Possibly the third work referenced is World Chronicles, the first part of which was published in 1812. The first of these was nearly completed before his conversion, and as he now reread the manuscript, its content almost shocked him. Was it possible that he had felt and written thus only a few months ago! He thought of destroying the work but decided to recast it in conformity with his present views and to express these clearly in a preface. With the completion of this task, however, he took a long leave from the “ice-cold giants of the North” that had so long engrossed his attention.

After his brief visit with the heroes of the past, Grundtvig again turned his attention to their descendants in the present. And the contrast was almost startling. The war still was dragging on and the country sinking deeper and deeper into the morass of political, commercial and economic difficulties. But the majority of the people seemed completely indifferent to her plight. “They talked of nothing,” Grundtvig says, “but of what they had eaten, worn and amused themselves with yesterday, or what they would eat, wear and amuse themselves with tomorrow.” Was it possible that these people could be descendants of the giants whose valor and aggressive spirit had once challenged the greater part of Europe?

Grundtvig was convinced that the spiritual apathy of his people resulted from the failure of their spiritual leaders to uphold the Evangelical faith, and that the salvation of the nation depended on a true revival of Evangelical Christianity. For this reason he now exerted every means at his command to induce the people and, especially, their leaders to return to the old paths. In numerous works, both in verse and in prose, he urged the people to renew the faith of their fathers and challenged their leaders to take a definite stand for Biblical Christianity. He became the lonely defender of the Bible.

Among outstanding personalities of that day, there were especially two that attracted widespread attention: J. P. Mynster, assistant pastor at the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, and Adam Gottlieb Oehlenschlaeger, the dramatic poet, then at the height of his fame. With their influence these men, as Grundtvig saw it, might give a strong impetus to the much needed awakening; and, he therefore, approached them personally.

Rev. Mynster, a stepson of Grundtvig’s maternal uncle, after a period of rationalism, had experienced a quiet conversion to Evangelical faith and won a respected name as a faithful and gifted preacher of the Gospel, a name which he retained throughout his conspicuous career as pastor of the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen and, later, as Bishop of Sjælland. He and Grundtvig, working to the same purpose, ought to have united with another, but they were both too individualistic in temperament and views to join forces. Mynster was coldly logical, calm and reserved, a lover of form and orderly progress. Grundtvig was impetuous, and volcanic, in constant ferment, always in search of spiritual reality and wholly indifferent to outward appearances. His own experience had led him to believe that a return to Evangelical Christianity could be effected only through a clean break with Rationalism, and he could not understand Mynster’s apparent attempt to temporize and bring about a gradual transition from one to the other. There should be no compromise between truth and falsehood. All believers in the Gospel should stand up and proclaim it fearlessly, no matter what the consequences.

And so Grundtvig wrote to Mynster: “Dear Rev. Mynster, I owe you an apology for asking a question that in our days may appear inexcusable: What is your real belief regarding the Bible and the faith of Jesus Christ? If you humbly believe in God’s Word, I shall rejoice with you even if you differ with me in all other things. Dear Rev. Mynster—for you are that to me—if my question appears unseemly, you must not let it hurt you, for I have written only as my heart dictates.” But Mynster did feel offended and answered Grundtvig very coldly that his questions implied an unwarranted and offensive doubt of his sincerity that must make future intercourse between them difficult—if not impossible.

Nor was Grundtvig more successful with a letter of similar purport to Oehlenschlaeger whose later writings he found lacked the spiritual sincerity of his earlier work. “My concern about this,” he wrote, “is increased by the thought that this lessening of spirituality must be expressive of a change in your own spiritual outlook, your inner relationship with God whom all spiritual workers should serve, counting it a greater achievement to inspire their fellow men with a true adoration of our Lord than to win the acclaim of the world.” But like Mynster the highly feted poet accepted this frank questioning of his inner motive as an unwarranted impertinence, the stupid intrusion of an intolerable fanatic with whom no friend of true enlightenment could have anything to do. Grundtvig was fast finding out what it means to be counted a fool for Christ’s sake—or for what he thought was Christ’s sake.

In the midst of these troubles Grundtvig again turned his attention to history, his favorite subject from childhood days. His retreat from the present to the past implied no abolition, however, of his resolve to dedicate himself to a spiritual revival of his people. Through his historical work he wished to show the influence of Christianity upon the people of Europe. “That the life of every people,” he writes, “is and must be a fruit of faith should be clear to all. For who can dispute that every human action—irrespective of how little considered it may have been—is expressive of its doer’s attitude, of his way of feeling and thinking. But what determines a man’s way of thinking except his essential thoughts concerning the relationship between God and the world, the visible and the invisible? Every serious thinker, therefore, must recognize the importance of faith in the furtherance of science, the progress of nations and the life of the state. It is a fearful delusion that man can be immoral, an unbeliever, even an enemy of the cross of Christ, and yet a furtherer of morality and science, a good neighbor and a benefactor to his country.”

A Brief Survey of the World’s History, which Grundtvig published in 1812, is thus the opposite of an objective presentation of historical events. It is a Christian philosophy of history, an attempt to prove the truth of the Gospel by its effect upon the nations. With the Bible before him Grundtvig weighs and evaluates people and events upon the scale of the revealed word. And his judgment is often relentless, stripping both persons and events of the glorified robes in which history and traditions invested them. In answer to countless protests against such a method of reading history, Grundtvig contends that the Christian historian must accept the consequences of his faith. He cannot profess the truth of Christianity and ignore its implication in the life of the world. If the Gospel be true, history must be measured by its relation to its truth.

Grundtvig’s history caused a sensation, especially on account of its frank appraisal of many well-known persons. Nearly all praised its lucid style; a few, such as George Sverdrup, spoke highly of its strikingly original estimate and correlation of events; but the intelligentsia condemned it as the work of an impossible fanatic. With this work, they claimed, Grundtvig had clearly removed himself from the pale of intelligent men.

But while his enemies raged, Grundtvig was already busy with another work: A Brief Account of God’s Way with the Danish and Norwegian Peoples. This history which, written in verse and later published under the title of Roskilde Rhymes, was first read at a diocesan convention in Roskilde Cathedral, the Westminster Abbey of Denmark. Although the poem contained many urgent calls to the assembled pastors to awake and return to the way of the fathers, whose bones rested within the walls of the historic sanctuary, its reading caused no immediate resentment. Most of the reverend listeners are reported, in fact, to have been peacefully asleep when late in the evening Grundtvig finished the reading of his lengthy manuscript. But a paper on “Polemics and Tolerance” which he read at another convention two years later kept his listeners wide awake.

“Our day has inherited two shibboleths from the eighteenth century: enlightenment and tolerance. By the last of these words most people understand an attitude of superior neutrality toward the opinions of others, even when these opinions concern the highest spiritual welfare of man. Such an attitude has for its premise that good and evil, truth and falsehood are not separate and irreconcilable realities but only different phases of the same question. But every Christian, thoroughly convinced of the antagonism and irreconcilability of truth with falsehood, must inevitably hate and reject such a supposition. If Christianity be true, tolerance toward opinions and teachings denying its truth is nothing but a craven betrayal of both God and man. It is written, ‘Judge and condemn no one’ but not ‘Judge and condemn nothing.’ For every Christian must surely both judge and condemn evil.

“There are times when to fight for Christianity may not be an urgent necessity; but that cannot be so in our days when every one of its divine truths is mocked and assailed.

“You call me a self-seeking fanatic, but if I be that, why are you yourself silent? If I be misleading those who follow me, why are you, the true watchmen of Zion, not exerting yourself to lead them aright? I stand here the humblest of Danish pastors, a minister without a pulpit, a man reviled by the world, shorn of my reputation as a writer, and held to be devoid of all intelligence and truth. Even so I solemnly declare that the religion now preached in our Danish church is not Christianity, is nothing but a tissue of deception and falsehood, and that unless Danish pastors bestir themselves and fight for the restoration of God’s word and the Christian faith there will soon be no Christian church in Denmark.”

The immediate effect of this bold challenge was a stern reprimand from Bishop Frederik Munter, accompanied by a solemn warning that if he ever again ventured to voice a similar judgment upon his fellow pastors, sterner measures would at once be taken against him. Besides this, his enemies raved, some of his few remaining friends broke with him, and H. C. Ørsted, the famous discoverer of electro-magnetism, continued an attack upon him that for bitterness has no counterpart in Danish letters. In the midst of this storm Grundtvig remained self-possessed, answering his critic quite calmly and even with a touch of humor. Although relentless in a fight for principles, he was never vindictive toward his personal enemies. In 1815, he published a collection of poems, Kvaedlinger, in which he asks, “Who knoweth of peace who never has fought, whoso has been saved and suffered naught?” And these lines no doubt express his personal attitude toward the battles of life.

Being without a pulpit of his own, Grundtvig, after his return to Copenhagen, frequently accepted invitations to preach for other pastors. But as the opposition against him grew, these invitations decreased and, after the Roskilde affair, only one church, the church of Frederiksberg, was still open to him. Grundtvig felt his exclusion very keenly, but he knew that even friendly pastors hesitated to invite him for fear of incurring the disapproval of superiors or the displeasure of influential parishioners. And so, at the close of a Christmas service in the Frederiksberg church in 1815, he solemnly announced that he would not enter a pulpit again until he had been duly appointed to do so by the proper authorities.

Grundtvig’s withdrawal from the church, though pleasing to his active enemies, was a great disappointment to his friends. His services had always been well attended, and his earnest message had brought comfort to many, especially among the distressed Evangelicals. But others, too, felt the power of his word. Thus a man in Copenhagen, after attending one of his services, wrote to a friend, “that he had laughed at the beginning of the sermon and wept at its conclusion” and that “it was the only earnest testimony he had ever heard from a pulpit.” And a reporter writing to a Copenhagen newspaper about his last service said, “Our famous Grundtvig preached yesterday at Frederiksberg church to such a crowd of people that the church was much too small to accommodate them. Here were people from all walks of life, and the speaker, we are convinced, stirred them to the bottom of their souls. Here was a Mynster’s clarity, a Fallesen’s earnestness, and a Balle’s appeal united with a Nordahl Brun’s manliness and admirable language.” And this about a man for whom his church had no room!

Thus Grundtvig instead of the friendly co-operation he had hoped for especially from the spiritual and intellectual leaders of the people found himself virtually shut out from the circle to which he naturally belonged, and from the church he loved, perhaps better than any man of his generation.

But if his hope of enlisting the leaders in a campaign to revive the spiritual life of the common people had been disappointed, his own determination to devote his life to that purpose remained unshaken. If he could look for no help from the recognized leaders of his nation, he must somehow gain a hearing from the common people themselves. His personal contact with these, however, was rather slight. Except for his brief work as a pastor, he had so far spent the greater part of his life in intellectual pursuits quite removed from the interest of the common man. And the question was then how he, a man without any special position and influence, could reach the ears of his countrymen.

In searching for an answer to this question, he remembered the two things that most profoundly had influenced his own spiritual outlook, his study of the traditions and history of his people, and his religious awakening in 1810. Was it not possible then that a like change might be engendered in others by presenting them with a picture of their own glorious past or, as his friend Ingemann later expressed it, by calling forth the generations that died to testify against the generation that lived? In presenting such a picture he would not have to rely on his own inventiveness but could use material already existing, foremost among which were the famous Sagas of Norwegian Kings by Snorra Sturlason, and Denmark’s Chronicle by Saxo Grammaticus, the former written in Icelandic, and the latter in Latin.

When Grundtvig presented this plan to his remaining friends, they received it at once with enthusiasm and began the organization of societies both in Denmark and Norway for the purpose of sponsoring its execution, in itself a most herculean task.

The two books contain together about fifteen hundred large and closely printed pages and present a circumstantial account of the early mythological and factual history of the two nations. Even a merely literal translation of them might well consume years of labor. But Grundtvig’s plan went much farther than mere literal translation. Wishing to appeal to the common people, he purposed to popularize the books and to transcribe them in a purer and more idiomatic Danish than the accepted literary language of the day, a Danish to be based on the dialects of the common people, the folk-songs, popular proverbs, and the old hymns. It was a bold undertaking, comparable to the work of Luther in modelling the language of the German Bible after the speech of the man in the street and the mother at the cradle, or to the great effort of Norway in our days to supplant the Danish-Norwegian tongue with a language from the various dialects of her people. Nor can it be said that Grundtvig was immediately successful in his attempt. His version of the sagas sounds somewhat stilted and artificial, and it never became popular among the common people for whom it was especially intended. Eventually, however, he did develop his new style into a plain, forceful mode of expression that has greatly enriched the Danish language of today.

For seven years Grundtvig buried himself in “the giant’s mount,” emerging only occasionally for the pursuit of various studies in connection with his work or to voice his views on certain issues that particularly interested him. He discovered a number of errors in the Icelandic version of Beowulf and made a new Danish translation of that important work; he engaged in a bitter literary battle with Paul Mueller, a leader among the younger academicians, in defence of the celebrated lyric poet, Jens Baggesen, who had aroused the wrath of the students by criticising their revered dramatist, Oehlenschlaeger; and he fought a furious contest with the greatly admired song and comedy writer, John L. Heiberg, in defence of his good friend, Bernhard Severin Ingemann, whose excellent but overly sentimental lyrics had invited the barbed wit of the humorist. But although Grundtvig’s contributions to these disputes were both able and pointed, their main effect was to widen the breach between him and the already antagonistic intellectuals.

In 1817 Grundtvig published the second part of World Chronicles, and a few issues of a short-lived periodical entitled “Dannevirke” which among other excellent contributions presented his splendid poem, “The Easter Lily,” a poetic dramatization of our Lord’s resurrection, about which the poet, Baggesen, said that “it outweighed all Oehlenschlaeger’s tragedies and that he himself had moments when he would rather have been the author of this incomparably beautiful poem than of everything he himself had written.”

Grundtvig began his translation of the sagas on a wave of high enthusiasm. But as the years multiplied, the interest of his supporters waned and he himself wearied of the task. He began, besides, to doubt his ability to resurrect the heroic dead in such a manner that they could revive the dropping spirit of the living.

In a welcome to Ingemann, on his return from a tour abroad, he expresses the hope that the poet will now devote his gifts to a reincarnation of his country’s old heroes. He himself has tried to do this. “He has made armor, shields and swords for them of saga’s steel, and borrowed horses for them from the ancient bards, but he has no cloth fit for the coats of such elegant knights nor feathers beautiful enough to adorn their helmets. He can sound a challenge but has no voice for singing; he can ring a bell but can not play the lute.” In other words, he can depict the thoughts and ideals of the old heroes but lacks the poetical ability to recreate them as living personalities—a remarkably true estimate of his own limitations.

The discovery that his translation of the sagas was not accomplishing its intended purpose, and a growing apprehension that the written word was, perhaps, impotent to revive the spiritual life of his people, engendered in him an increasing wish to leave “the mount of the dead” and re-enter the world of the living. His economic circumstances also necessitated a change. In 1818 he had married Elizabeth Blicher, the daughter of a brother pastor, and he found it well nigh impossible to support his wife and growing family on the meager returns from his writings and a small pension which the government allowed him for his work with the sagas.

Spurred by these reasons, he applied for almost every vacancy in the church, even the smallest, and, in 1821, succeeded in obtaining an appointment to the pastorate at Prastø, a small city on the south-eastern shores of Sjælland.

Grundtvig was well satisfied with his new charge. He was kindly received by his congregation; the city was quite close to his beloved Udby, and his mother still lived there. “In the loveliest surroundings my eyes have ever seen and among a friendly people,” he writes, “my strength soon revived so that I could continue my literary work and even complete my wearisome translation of the sagas.”

An incident is related from his work at Prastø which throws a somewhat revealing light upon his ability as a pastor. At his only confirmation service there, the confirmants, we are told, wept so that he had to pause several times in his address to them in order to let them regain their composure. Since he was always quite objective in his preaching and heartily disbelieved in the usual revival methods, the incident illustrates his rare ability to profoundly stir even the less mature of his hearers by his objective presentation of the Gospel. Even his bitterest enemies could not deny the evident effectiveness of his ministry in every charge he served.

His work at Prastø was, however, of brief duration. In 1822, less than two years after his installation, he received and accepted a call as assistant pastor at Our Savior’s Church in Copenhagen, thus attaining his long deferred wish for a pulpit in the capital.

Chapter Fourteen The Hymnwriter

This lovely, childlike hymn, the first to appear from Grundtvig’s pen, was written in the fall of 1810 when its author was still battling with despair and his mind faltering on the brink of insanity. Against this background the hymn appears like a ray of sunlight breaking through a clouded sky. And as such it must undoubtedly have come to its author. As an indication of Grundtvig’s simple trust in God, it is noteworthy that another of his most childlike hymns, “God’s Child, Do Now Rest Thee,” was likewise composed during a similar period of distress that beset him many years later.

For a number of years Grundtvig’s hymn of the Wise Men represented his sole contribution to hymnody. Other interests engaged his attention and absorbed his energy. During his years of intense work with the sagas he only occasionally broke his “engagement” with the dead to strike the lyre for the living. In 1815 he translated “In Death’s Strong Bonds Our Savior Lay” from Luther, and “Christ Is Risen from the Dead” from the Latin. The three hundredth anniversary of the Reformation brought his adaptation of Kingo’s “Like the Golden Sun Ascending” and translations of Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “The Bells Ring in the Christmastide.” In 1820 he published his now popular “A Babe Is Born at Bethlehem” from an old Latin-Danish text, and 1824 saw his splendid rendering of “The Old Day Song,” “With Gladness We Hail the Blessed Day,” and his original “On Its Rock the Church of Jesus Stood Mongst Us a Thousand Years.”

These songs constitute his whole contribution to hymnody from 1810 to 1825. But the latter year brought a signal increase. In the midst of his fierce battle with the Rationalists he published the first of his really great hymns, a song of comfort to the daughters of Zion, sitting disconsolately at the sickbed of their mother, the church. Her present state may appear so hopeless that her children fear to remember her former glory:

Her condition is not hopeless, however, if her children will gather about her.

Another of his great hymns dates from the same year. Grundtvig was in the habit of remaining up all night when he had to speak on the following day. The Christmas of 1825 was particularly trying to him. He had apparently forfeited his last vestige of honor by publishing his Reply of the Church; the suit started against him by Professor Clausen still dragged its laborious way through the court; and his anxiety over the present state of the church was greatly increased by the weight of his personal troubles. He felt very much like the shepherds watching their flocks at night, except that no angels appeared to help him with the message his people would expect him to deliver in the morning. Perhaps he was unworthy of such a favor. He rose, as was his custom, and made a round into the bedrooms to watch his children. How innocently they slept! If the angels could not come to him, they ought at least to visit the children. If they heard the message, their elders might perchance catch it through them.

Some such thought must have passed through the mind of the lonely pastor as he sat musing upon his sermon throughout the night, for he appeared unusually cheerful as he ascended his pulpit Christmas morning, preached a joyful sermon, and said, at its conclusion, that he had that night begotten a song which he wished to read to them. That song has since become one of the most beloved Christmas songs in the Danish language. To give an adequate reproduction of its simple, childlike spirit in another language is perhaps impossible, but it is hoped that the translation given below will convey at least an impression of its cheerful welcome to the Christmas angels.

In 1826 Grundtvig, as already related, published his hymns for the thousand years’ festival of his church. But a few months later he again buried himself in his study, putting aside the lyre, which for a little while he had played so beautifully. Many had already noticed his hymns, however, and continued to plead with him for more. The new Evangelical revival, which he had largely inspired, intensified the general dissatisfaction with the rationalistic Evangelical Christian Hymnal, and called for hymns embodying the spirit of the new movement. And who could better furnish these than Grundtvig? Of those who pleaded with him for new hymns, none was more persistent than his friend, Pastor Gunni Busck. When Grundtvig wrote to him in 1832 that his Northern Mythology was nearing completion, Busck at once answered: “Do not forget your more important work; do not forget our old hymns! I know no one else with your ability to brush the dust off our old songs.” But Grundtvig was still too busy with other things to comply with the wish of his most faithful and helpful friend.

During the ensuing years, however, a few hymns occasionally appeared from his pen. A theological student, L. C. Hagen, secured a few adapted and original hymns from him for a small collection of Historical Hymns and Rhymes for Children, which was published in 1832. But the adaptations were not successful. Despite the good opinion of Gunni Busck, Grundtvig was too independent a spirit to adjust himself to the style and mode of others. His originals were much more successful. Among these we find such gems as “Mongst His Brothers Called the Little,” “Move the Signs of Grief and Mourning from the Garden of the Dead,” and “O Land of Our King,” hymns that rank with the finest he has written.

In 1835 Grundtvig at last wrote to Gunni Busck that he was now ready to commence the long deferred attempt to renew the hymnody of his church. Busck received the information joyfully and at once sent him a thousand dollars to support him during his work. Others contributed their mite, making Grundtvig richer financially than he had been for many years. He rented a small home on the shores of the Sound and began to prepare himself for the work before him by an extensive study of Christian hymnody, both ancient and modern.

“The old hymns sound beautiful to me out here under the sunny sky and with the blue water of the Sound before me,” he wrote to Busck. He did not spend his days day-dreaming, however, but worked with such intensity that only a year later he was able to invite subscriptions on the first part of his work. The complete collection was published in 1837 under the title: Songs of the Danish Church. It contains in all 401 hymns and songs composed of originals, translations and adaptations from Greek, Latin, German, Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, English and Scandinavian sources. The material is of very unequal merit, ranging from the superior to the commonplace. As originally composed, the collection could not be used as a hymnal. But many of the finest hymns now used in the Danish church have been selected or adapted from it.

Although Songs for the Danish Church is now counted among the great books in Danish, its appearance attracted little attention outside the circle of Grundtvig’s friends. It was not even reviewed in the press. The literati, both inside and outside the church, still publicly ignored Grundtvig. But privately a few of them expressed their opinion about the work. Thus a Pastor P. Hjort wrote to Bishop Mynster, “Have you read Grundtvig’s Songs of the Danish Church? It is a typical Grundtvigian book, wordy, ingenious, mystical, poetical and full of half digested ideas. His language is rich and wonderfully expressive. But he is not humble enough to write hymns.”

Meanwhile the demand for a new hymnal or at least for a supplement to the old had become so insistent that something had to be done. J. P. Mynster who, shortly before, had been appointed Bishop of Sjælland, favored a supplement and obtained an authorization from the king for the appointment of a committee to prepare it. The only logical man to head such a committee was, of course, Grundtvig. But Mynster’s dislike of his volcanic relative was so deep-rooted that he was incapable of giving any recognition to him. And so in order to avoid a too obvious slight to his country’s best known hymnwriter, he assigned the work to an already existing committee on liturgy, of which he himself was president. Thus Grundtvig was forced to sit idly by while the work naturally belonging to him was being executed by a man with no special ability for the task. The supplement appeared in 1843. It contained thirty-six hymns of which six were written by Kingo, seven by Brorson, and one by Grundtvig, the latter being, as Grundtvig humorously remarked, set to the tune of the hymn, “Lord, I Have Done Wrong.”

Mynster’s influence was great enough to secure the supplement a wide circulation. The collection, nevertheless, failed to satisfy the need of the church. Dissatisfaction with it was so general that the pastors’ conference of Copenhagen appointed a committee consisting of Grundtvig, Prof. Martensen, Mynster’s own son-in-law, Rev. Pauli, his successor as Provost of the Church of Our Lady, and two other pastors to prepare and present a proposal for a new hymnal. It was an able committee from which a meritorious work might reasonably be expected.

Grundtvig was assigned to the important work of selecting and revising the old hymns to be included in the collection. He was an inspiring but at times difficult co-worker. Martensen recalls how Grundtvig at times aroused the committee to enthusiasm by an impromptu talk on hymnody or a recitation of one of the old hymns, which he loved so well. But he also recalls how he sometimes flared up and stormed out of the committee room in anger over some proposed change or correction of his work. When his anger subsided, however, he always conscientiously attempted to effect whatever changes the committee agreed on proposing. Yet excellent as much of his own work was, he possessed no particular gift for mending the work of others, and his corrections of one defect often resulted in another.

The committee submitted its work to the judgment of the conference in January 1845. The proposal included 109 hymns of which nineteen were by Kingo, seven by Brorson, ten by Ingemann, twenty-five by Grundtvig and the remainder by various other writers, old and new. It appeared to be a well balanced collection, giving due recognition to such newer writers as Boye, Ingemann, Grundtvig and others. But the conference voted to reject it. Admitting its poetical excellence and its sound Evangelical tenor, some of the pastors complained that it contained too many new and too few old hymns; others held that it bore too clearly the imprint of one man, a complaint which no doubt expressed the sentiment of Mynster and his friends. A petition to allow such churches as should by a majority vote indicate their wish to use the collection was likewise rejected by the Bishop.

Grundtvig was naturally disappointed by the rejection of a work upon which he had spent so much time and energy. The rejection furthermore showed him that he still could expect no consideration from the authorities with Mynster in control. He was soon able, however, to comfort himself with the fact that his hymns were becoming popular in private assemblies throughout the country, and that even a number of churches were beginning to use them at their regular services in defiance of official edicts. The demand for granting more liberty to the laymen in their church life, a demand Grundtvig long had advocated, was in fact becoming so strong that the authorities at times found it advisable to overlook minor infractions of official rulings. Noting this new policy, Grundtvig himself ventured to introduce some of the new hymns into his church. In the fall of 1845, he published a small collection of Christmas hymns to be used at the impending Christmas festival. When the innovation passed without objections, a similar collection of Easter hymns was introduced at the Easter services, after which other collections for the various seasons of the church year appeared quite regularly until all special prints were collected into one volume and used as “the hymnal of Vartov.”

The work of preparing a new authorized hymnal was finally given to Grundtvig’s closest friend, Ingemann. This hymnal appeared in 1855, under the title, Roskilde Convent’s Psalmbook. This book served as the authorized hymnal of the Danish church until 1899, when it was replaced by Hymnal for Church and Home, the hymnal now used in nearly all Danish churches both at home and abroad. It contains in all 675 hymns of which 96 are by Kingo, 107 by Brorson, 29 by Ingemann and 173 by Grundtvig, showing that the latter at last had been recognized as the foremost hymnwriter of the Danish church.

Chapter Fifteen Grundtvig’s Hymns

Grundtvig wrote most of his hymns when he was past middle age, a man of extensive learning, proved poetical ability and mature judgment, especially in spiritual things. Years of hard struggles and unjust neglect had sobered and mellowed but not aged or embittered him.

His long study of hymnology together with his exceptional poetical gift enabled him to adopt material from all ages and branches of Christian song, and to wield it into a homogenous hymnody for his own church. His treatment of the material is usually very free, so free that it is often difficult to discover any relationship between his translations and their supposed originals. Instead of endeavoring to transfer the metre, phrasing and sentiment of the original text, he frequently adopts only a single thought or a general idea from its content, and expresses this in his own language and form.

His original hymns likewise bear the imprint of his ripe knowledge and spiritual understanding. They are for the most part objective in content and sentiment, depicting the great themes of Biblical history, doctrine and life rather than the personal feeling and experiences of the individual. A large number of his hymns are, in fact, faithful but often striking adaptations of Bible stories and texts. For though he was frequently accused of belittling the Book of Books, his hymns to a larger extent than those of any other Danish hymnwriter are directly inspired by the language of the Bible. He possessed an exceptional ability to absorb the essential implications of a text and to present it with the terseness and force of an adage.

Although Grundtvig’s hymns at times attain the height of pure poetry, their poetic merit is incidental rather than sought. In the pride of his youth he had striven, as he once complained, to win the laurel wreath, but had found it to be an empty honor. His style is more often forceful than lyrical. When the mood was upon him he could play the lyre with entrancing beauty and gentleness, but he preferred the organ with all stops out.

The last remark, perhaps, refers to a complaint by his friends that he had become so absorbed in his wife that he neglected other things. If this had been the case, he now made amends by throwing himself into a whirl of activity that would have taxed the strength of a much younger man. During the following years, he wrote part of his formerly mentioned books on the church and Christian education, delivered a large number of lectures, resumed his seat in the Riksdag and, of course, attended to his growing work as a pastor. As he was also very neglectful of his own comfort in other ways, it was evident to all that such a strenuous life must soon exhaust his strength unless someone could be constantly about him and minister to his need. For this reason a high-minded young widow, the Baroness Asta Tugendreich Reetz, entered into marriage with him that she might help to conserve the strength of the man whom she considered one of the greatest assets her country possessed.

Grundtvig once said of his marriages that the first was an idyl, the second a romance and the third a fairy-tale. Others said harsher things. But Asta Grundtvig paid no attention to the scandal mongers. A very earnest Christian woman herself, she devoted all her energy to create a real Christian home for her husband and family. As Grundtvig had always lived much by himself, she wished especially to make their home a ready gathering place for all his friends and co-workers. In this she succeeded so well that their modest dwelling was frequently crowded with visitors from far and near, many of whom later counted their visit with Grundtvig among the richest experiences of their life.

Grundtvig’s fiftieth anniversary as a pastor was celebrated with impressive festivities on May 29, 1861. The celebration was attended by representatives from all departments of government and the church as well as by a host of people from all parts of Scandinavia; and the celebrant was showered with gifts and honors. The king conferred upon him the title of bishop; the former queen, Carolina Amalia, presented him with a seven armed candlestick of gold from women in Norway, Sweden and Denmark; his friend, Pastor P. A. Fenger, handed him a gift of three thousand dollars from friends in Denmark and Norway to finance a popular edition of his Hymns and Songs for the Danish Church; and another friend, Gunni Busck, presented him with a plaque of gold engraved with his likeness and a line from his hymns, a gift from the congregation of Vartov.