# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1858_S258
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

258 The Church of Norway.

Another counter-movement, arising from the people, through Hans Nielsen Hauge's work- and penitential preaching, is likewise known in church history. He came forward not only against rationalistic unbelief, but also against what he called dead faith, and warned his friends and followers against preachers who preached to them too much and too one-sidedly about faith. His activity was animated by a pietistic spirit; Luther, Francke, and Pontoppidan were his favorite authors, from whose sermons he compiled a book of postils, with the addition of several of his own sermons, which is still widely circulated today and used in devotional gatherings.

How significant his influence has been is shown not only by the repeatedly renewed printing of his writings, but by the way in which his name and his activity are named and discussed among all who have been awakened, by laypeople as by clergy — since even those who do not agree with his direction in everything must nevertheless recognize his appearance as an important factor that helped bring about a turning point in the church of Norway. Even the assembly in Copenhagen could not help but acknowledge Hauge's significance.

When the church chronicle of Matthes remarks that "there are still so-called Haugeans in Norway, but they are of no significance any longer," there is a truth in this insofar as one has in view a closed party. It is natural that the change that has occurred in the wider circle of the church has lessened the need for a narrower coming-together of the awakened for mutual edification. And the "Haugeans" did not wish to form a party or sect alongside the church, but rather an ecclesiola in ecclesia. Even Hauge himself — though caught in various unclarities, as is understandable given the level of his education, falling into various mistaken notions that departed from the straight path, and, in his zeal for subjective Christianity, undervaluing the church with its means of grace in their objective significance — never thought of leading the people out of the church. Just last year a Haugean declared, in his own name and that of others, that they were not minded to withdraw from the state church, and that they acknowledged the Augsburg Confession as the expression of their faith. I myself was asked by a "Haugean," a worthy old man, to dissuade one of his acquaintances from leaving the church, to which the man was said to be inclined. Of any spread of the party there can hardly be talk; rather, a decline is more likely to occur. Within it too, complaints can be heard about a creeping lukewarmness and sluggishness in mutual admonition and edification. Yet there are still many zealous members among them, and indeed such as show nothing properly sectarian, who are nothing more and nothing less than living, earnest Christians, for whom