My Saviour Jesus raised;
My goal is fixed, one thing I ask,
Whate’er the cost may be,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
Soon to arrive in thee.
Carolina Vilhelmina (Sandell) Berg (1832-1903).
THE FANNY CROSBY OF SWEDEN AND THE PIETISTS
As will be noted in a subsequent chapter, the Nineteenth century witnessed the phenomenon of gifted Christian women assuming a place of primary importance among the foremost hymn-writers of the Church. Just as England had its Charlotte Elliott and Frances Havergal, and America had its Fanny Crosby, so Sweden had its Lina Sandell.
The rise of women hymn-writers came simultaneously with the great spiritual revival which swept over America and evangelical Europe in successive tidal waves from 1800 to 1875. In Sweden the religious renaissance received its first impulse, no doubt, from Lutheran Germany. However, the Wesleyan movement in England and America also began to make its influence felt in wider circles, and the coming to Stockholm of such a man as George Scott, an English Methodist, gave added impetus to the evangelical movement which was already under way. Carl Olof Rosenius, Sweden’s greatest lay preacher and the most prominent leader in the Pietistic movement in that country, was one of Scott’s disciples, although he remained faithful to the Lutheran doctrine and a member of the Established Church to the close of his life.
It was in the midst of the Rosenius movement that Lina Sandell became known to her countrymen as a great song-writer. She was born October 3, 1832, at Fröderyd, her father being the parish pastor at that place. She was a frail child who preferred to spend her hours in her father’s study rather than join her comrades in play. When she was twenty-six years old, she accompanied him on a journey to Gothenburg, but they never reached their destination. At Hästholmen the vessel on which they sailed gave a sudden lurch and the father fell overboard, drowning before the eyes of his devoted daughter.