# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1858_S268
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

268 The Church of Norway.

does not appear in the dreadful shape it takes, for example, among our
German atheists and materialists, it may yet secretly be the ruling and
driving principle in many a heart. There is no lack of mockery of the
"Läsare [Readers] and Saints," even in the newspaper press, nor of talk of
hypocrisy, fanaticism, and madhouse-candidates. The literature cited above is
of course not used by all, since even fairly far up in the north "die Stunden
der Andacht" [Hours of Devotion] and the like are the source of edification.
In Norway too, loose religious wares are sometimes written. Many withdraw
from the Word, and in many places the church pews, especially those of the
higher classes and officials, stand empty. In general the female sex attends
church more diligently — at least so I found it in the towns, and so it was
confirmed to me as well.

If we ask about the spiritual character of that narrower circle, a glance at
the literature named shows that various tendencies are to be found within
it. There are the confessional, that is, those who with full consciousness
wish to be Lutheran and who, even through what they take up that is
foreign, do not wish to compromise their Lutheranism. A translator, for
example, of Krummacher's Passion sermons left out, in confessional
faithfulness, his sermon on the Lord's Supper. Some read with discrimination
and testing, for which even plain people often develop no small gift.
Others again, to whose consciousness the confessional distinction lies more
remote, wish nevertheless to be nothing other than Lutheran, and I often
heard, as the first question when I was introduced to people: "Is he
Lutheran too?" Others again pay homage, consciously and deliberately, to a
Christian indifferentism, both clergy and laity. Among the former, however,
several are very strict with regard to the doctrines directly connected with
the order of salvation — repentance, faith, sanctification, etc. — and they
would have to hear, along with the "Neo-Lutherans," the reproach of
hierarchical fanaticism before the forum of the Protestant church newspaper.

A fairly general trait among the awakened is a certain harshness and
severity. Hauge in his time came forward as a preacher of repentance to a
generation lying in the sleep of death, as a clergyman recently expressed it
at a gathering, more with a voice of John [the Baptist] than with the
Gospel, more with the Law than with the Gospel; only toward the end of his
work is he said to have become milder. He, to be sure, had a right, over
against the lip-faith that not infrequently confronted him, to press for
living, real conversion, for a consciousness of the passing from darkness to
light, for spiritual experience. He had equally a right when he demanded a
proof of faith in sanctification. But experience has indeed often shown that
a one-sided emphasis, disturbing the Christian balance, on the subjective
moment, with the setting-back of the objective, becomes the ruling
character. This is in part the case in Norway. By many an excessive weight
is laid on their own work of conversion, on the striving after experiences
of grace and a subjective feeling of peace, more,