# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1864_S143
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Grundtvig. 143

—fatherland's church, has made all things German hateful to him, hence his implacable struggle against everything foreign. All his hope is set upon Denmark; it is to become the stronghold of free Protestant Christianity, the "Palestine of history." Instead of walking, in his struggle against unbelief, a path together with all who love the Lord in every people and land — instead of acknowledging the great solidarity of all (rightly-believing) churches, the commonality of their diseased conditions and the identity of the remedies for all of them — he wishes to win salvation on Danish national ground alone, and for that purpose does not disdain the help of those who are separated from him at the deepest ground of their lives, without doubt using them merely as instruments, and in the hope of eventually either winning them over as well or breaking their influence. This, in the long run, has estranged from him many who had at first agreed with him joyfully. Just as Jung-Stilling greeted his first bold appearance with approval, so too was Rudelbach closely bound up with him for a long time, but later had to separate from him; and although even now the eighty-year-old man and his tightly closed party, with the help of the liberal estates of the realm, exercise the most far-reaching influence upon ecclesiastical legislation, we nevertheless see his efforts decidedly disapproved of by the majority of the Danish clergy, at whose head stands the honorable Bishop Martensen.

Of Grundtvig's outward course of life we are able to say little. What personal influences, what experiences may have helped to shape his development, not much of that has become known. Even Hansen gives only isolated facts. Until 1810 he devoted himself chiefly to Nordic history and literature; in that year, as a mature man, he confronted the church in his dismissal (examination) sermon with the complaint and question: "How has the Lord's Word disappeared from his own house?" This very first public utterance of his is already a battle cry against rationalism. Through this, and even more through his dispute with Prof. Clausen, he became an unpopular figure, was repeatedly entangled in libel suits, and was kept away from the pastoral office. Only after an eight-year wait was he now and then entrusted with a curacy, and again and again soon put on unassigned status, during which time he gathered around himself, in conventicle-like circles, an ever-growing number of followers; only in 1832, that is, as a man of almost fifty years, did he receive permission to preach in the Frederikskirke as a free preacher before free hearers — though without the right to administer other ecclesiastical acts. From that point his party takes on larger dimensions; his ideas spread and are further developed especially by Lindberg and Kirkegaard; from 1840 they gain influence in the Rigsdag, of which he has since been an uninterrupted member; the revolution of 1848, and the struggle against Germany, which he powerfully promoted with his speeches and songs, made him the most popular man in the country, and how highly he is regarded in the highest circles is proven by his elevation to the episcopal dignity in the year 1861.