CHAPTER XIII.
THE CHURCH.
“Mighty stands the cross of God,
Smiling homeward to the soul.”
Almquist.
One reason why the fishermen were so anxious to reach Soberud was, that the next day was Sunday, and they wanted a day of rest, and a church to go to; and that was not to be met with, on the Torjedahl, nearer than Christiansand itself. Hitherto their church had been a remarkably tall fir-tree, which had, somehow or other, been overlooked by the wood-cutters, and stood some little way within the forest. It had been chosen on account of its fancied resemblance to a church spire, as it towered above the rest of the foliage; and the lower branches having been cut away, and the space round its trunk enclosed and decorated with green boughs—as all Swedish churches used to be decorated on high days before a royal ordinance was passed which forbade it,—and the ground strewed with fresh juniper and marsh-marigolds—as church floors are to this day,—it did make a very fair forest church for fine weather; and as all the party could sing, more or less, the service was performed a good deal more ecclesiastically than it is in some of our English cathedrals.
Norway is not in communion with England; indeed, strictly speaking, neither Norway nor Denmark are churches at all,—they are merely establishments. Sweden may, by some stretch of imagination and a little implicit faith in its history, be considered a church, and is so considered by the Bishop of London, who has authorised the Bishop of Gothenborg to confirm for him. But though neither the Englishmen, nor even the Swedes, considered themselves at liberty to communicate in the church of Soberud, there was no reason whatever against their joining in either the ottesång or the aftensång (morning or evening service), or even against their being present at the högmässe, or communion itself. The men, who had no very accurate ideas of theology, had joined in the English service very readily, and, indeed, had taken a good deal of pains in decorating the forest church, for both Tom and Torkel could read English as well as they could speak it; and Jacob pretended to do so. They were, however, all of them, extremely pleased at having the opportunity of going to a consecrated church.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable features of the country is the respect and reverence which all classes pay to their churches, combined with the very little effect which religion has on their conduct. Norwegians will face all sorts of weather, in order to be present at the högmässe of Sunday. Large sums of money—that is to say, large in comparison with the wealth of the parishes—are spent upon their churches, which are always in perfect repair, and always most carefully swept, and trimmed with rushes or green sprigs. A man would lose his character at once, and would be shunned by his acquaintance as a hopeless reprobate, if he neglected confirmation, or the Lord’s supper. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to see, as an advertisement—“Wanted, a confirmed cook or housemaid;” which advertisement in no ways relates to the capacities of the servant, but simply to her age, it being taken for granted that a person of a certain age must have been confirmed. Indeed, the legislature interferes with this: few offices can be held by unconfirmed people, or by those who are not communicants; and the legislature is only the interpreter of public opinion. No man is at present molested for any religious opinions he may please to hold; he simply loses his civil rights by seceding from the national religion. In fact, Norway is the most complete illustration of the establishment principle which exists in the world.
At the same time, education, as it is popularly called—that is to say, secular instruction—is almost universal. No one ever meets with a Norwegian unable to read and write. It may fairly be said that there is no country in the world in which the standard of popular education is so high, and the standard of popular morality so low,—where the respect for religion is so very great, and the ignorance of religion so very profound,—as it is in Norway. Sweden may be second in this paradox, but Norway is by far the first.
It is not difficult to account for both these phenomena. Few countries suffered more extensive church spoliation in the good old Reformation times than Norway and Sweden; and when, after that convulsion, men began to gather up the fragments, they had to choose between an ill-paid clergy whose social position would be inferior to that of almost all their parishioners, and a sufficiently paid clergy with enormous and unmanageable parishes. They chose the latter, perhaps wisely, as more likely to preserve the character and influence of the church till better times should come. They, therefore, grouped the parishes into districts, few of which were under ten or twelve miles long, and wide in proportion, some very much larger, and one more than a hundred miles in length. These districts are a collected group of parishes, whose churches are still kept up under the name of Annexkyrker, and service is occasionally performed in them, as a sort of protest of their right.