Notwithstanding the common Scandinavian-national and Lutheran-ecclesiastical basis on which the civil and religious life is developed, it assumed in the three Scandinavian countries a completely diversified course. While in Denmark the civil life bore manifold traces of democratic tendencies and thereby the relations between church and state were loosened, Sweden, with a tenacity almost unparalleled in Protestant countries, has for a long period held fast in exclusive attachment to the idea of a state church. On the other hand Denmark was far more open to influences from without hostile to the church, on the one side those of rationalism, on the other, those of the anti-ecclesiastical sects, especially of the Baptists and Mormons, than Sweden, which in its certainly barren, if not altogether dead orthodoxy till after the middle of the century was almost hermetically sealed against all heterogeneous influences, but yet could not altogether over-master the pietistically or methodistically coloured movements of religious yearning that arose among her own people. Norway, again, although politically united with Sweden, has, both in national character and in religious development, shown its more intimate relationship with Denmark.

§ 201.1. Denmark.—From the close of last century rationalism has had a home in Denmark. In 1825 Professor Clausen, a moderate adherent of the neological school, published a learned work on the opposition of “Catholicism and Protestantism,” identifying the latter with rationalism. First of all in that same year Pastor Grundtvig (died 1872), “a man of poetic genius, and skilled in the ancient history of the land,” inspired with equal enthusiasm for the old Lutheranism of his fathers and for patriotic Danism, entered the lists and replied with powerful eloquence, lamenting the decay of Christianity and the church. He was condemned by the court of justice as injurious, after he had during the process resigned his pastoral office. A like fate befell the orientalist Lindberg, who charged Clausen with the breach of his ordination vow. The adherents of Grundtvig met for mutual edification in conventicles, until at last in 1832 he obtained permission again to hold public services. Not less influential was the work of Sören Kierkegaard (died 1855), who, largely in sympathy with Grundtvig, without ecclesiastical office, in his writings earnestly pled for a living subjective piety and unweariedly maintained an uncompromising struggle against the official Christianity of the secularized clergy. The wild, unmeasured Danomania of 1848-1849, during the military conflict with Germany, drew opponents together and made them friends. Grundtvig declaimed against everything German, and of the two factors, which he had formerly regarded as the pivots on which universal history turned, Danism and Lutheranism, he now let go Lutheranism as of German origin. He therefore proposed the abrogation of the distinctive German-Lutheran confessions, placed the Apostles’ Creed before and above the Bible and, pressing in a one-sided manner the doctrine of baptismal grace, demanded a “joyous Christianity,” denied the necessity of continued preaching and exercise of repentance, and wished especially to introduce into the schools the Norse mythology as introductory to the study of Christianity. His adherents wrought with the anti-church party for the abolition of the union of church and state. The Danish constitutional law of 1849 abolished the confessional churches of the state church, and Catholics, Reformed, Moravians, and Jews were granted equal civil rights with the Lutherans. Since then the Catholic church has made slow but steady progress in the country, and the increasing Baptist movement was also favoured by a law of the Volkthing of 1857, which abolished compulsory baptism, and only required the enrolment of all children in the church books of their respective districts within the period of one year. Civil marriage had also been granted to dissenters in 1851, and in 1868 the peculiar institution of “electing communities” was founded, by means of which twenty families from one or more parishes which declare themselves dissatisfied with the pastors appointed them, may, without leaving the national church, form an independent congregation under pastors chosen by themselves and maintained at their own cost. The Schleswig-Holstein revolution in 1848, occasioned enormous confusion and disturbance in the ecclesiastical conditions of the district. Over a hundred German pastors were expelled and forty-six Schleswig parishes deprived of the use of the German language in church and school. In 1864 both provinces were at last by the Austrian and Prussian alliance rent from the Danish government, and in consequence of the German war of 1866 were incorporated with Prussia.

§ 201.2. Sweden.—In Sweden there was formed in 1803, in opposition to the barren orthodoxy of the state church, a religious association which, if not altogether free of pietistic narrowness, was yet without any heretical doctrinal tendency, and exercised a quiet and wholesome influence. From the diligent reading of Scripture and the works of Luther that prevailed among its members it obtained the name of Läsare. The state proceeded against its members with fines and imprisonment, according to the old conventicle law of 1726, and the mob treated them with insults and violence. But in 1842 a fanatical tendency began to show itself under the leadership of a peasant, Erich Jansen, who induced many “Readers” to quit the church and to cast into the fire even Luther’s Postils and Catechism as quite superfluous alongside of Holy Scripture. They mostly emigrated to America in 1846. The law of the land since 1686 threatened every Swede who seceded from the Lutheran state church with imprisonment and exile, loss of civil privileges and the right of inheritance. As might therefore be supposed the French Marshal Bernadotte, who in 1818, under the name of Charles XIV., ascended the throne of Sweden, had been previously in 1810 obliged to repudiate the Catholic confession. Even in 1857 the Reichstag rejected a royal proposal to set aside the Secession as well as the Conventicle Act. But in the very next year, the holding of conventicles under clerical supervision, and in 1860, the secession to other ecclesiastical denominations, were allowed by law. The constitution of 1865 still indeed made adherence to the Lutheran confession a condition of qualification for a seat in either of the chambers. The Reichstag of 1870 at last sanctioned the admission of all Christian dissenters and also of Jews to all offices of state as well as to the membership of the Reichstag. On behalf of dissenters, especially of the numerous Baptists and Methodists, the right of civil marriage was granted in 1879. In 1877, Waldenström, head-master of the Latin school at Gefle, without ecclesiastical ordination, began zealously and successfully by speech and writings (to secure the widest possible circulation of which a joint stock company with large capital was formed) to work for the revival of the Christian life in the Lutheran national church. He vigorously contended against the church doctrine of atonement and justification, repudiating the idea of vicarious penal suffering, and broke through all church order by allowing the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to be dispensed by laymen.He thus put himself, with his numerous following, directed by lay preachers in their own prayer meetings and mission halls, into direct opposition to the church, but by the wise forbearance of the ecclesiastical authorities he has not yet been formally ejected.[555]

§ 201.3. Norway.—In Norway, toward the end of last century, rationalism was dominant in almost all the pulpits, and only a few remnants of Moravian revivalism raised a voice against it. But in 1796, a simple unlearned peasant Hans Nielsen Hauge, then in his twenty-fifth year, made his appearance as a revival preacher, creating a mighty spiritual movement that spread among the masses throughout the whole land. He had obtained his own religious knowledge from the study of old Lutheran practical theology, and arising at a period of extraordinary spiritual excitement, “his call,” as Hase says, “to be a prophet was like that of the herdsman of Tekoa.” From 1799 he continued itinerating for five years, persecuted, reproached, and calumniated by the rationalistic clergy, ten times cast into prison, under a law of 1741, which forbad laymen to preach, and then set free, until he had gone over all Norway even to its farthest and remotest corners, preaching unweariedly everywhere in houses and in the open air often three or four times a day, and nourishing besides the flame which he had kindled by voluminous writings and an extensive correspondence. He directed his preaching not only against the rationalism of the state clergy, but also against the antinomian religion of feeling, of “Blood and Wounds” theology introduced in earlier days by the Moravians, with a one-sided emphasis and exaggeration indeed, but still in all essentials maintaining the basis and keeping within the lines of Lutheran orthodoxy. In 1804 he was charged with tendencies dangerous to church and state, obtaining money from peasants on false pretences, inciting the people against the clergy, etc., and again cast into prison. The trial this time was carried on for ten years, until at last in 1814 the supreme court sentenced him on account of his invectives against the clergy to pay a fine, but pronounced him not guilty on the other charges. Broken down in spirit and body by his long imprisonment, he could not think of engaging again in his former work. He died in 1824. Numerous peasant preachers, however, issuing from his school were ready to go forth in his footsteps, and till this day the salutary effects of his and their activity are seen in wide circles. The law of 1741 which had been made to tell against them was at last abrogated by the Storthing in 1842. In 1845 the right of forming Christian sects was recognised, and in 1851 even the Jews were allowed the right of settlement previously refused them, and the security of all civil privileges. Since that time even in Norway the Catholic church has made considerable progress; in June, 1878, it had eleven churches and fourteen priests.

§ 202. Great Britain and Ireland.

During the course of the century a breach from without was made upon the stronghold of the Anglican established church and its legal standing throughout the United Kingdom. The strong coherence of the Anglican episcopal church had already been weakened internally by the rise within its own bosom of High, Low, and Broad tendencies. The advance of the first-named party to tractarianism and ritualism opened the door to Romish sympathies, while in the last-named school German rationalism and criticism found favour, and the low church party was not ashamed to go hand-in-hand with the evangelical pietistic and methodistic tendencies of the dissenters. There followed numerous conversions to Rome, especially from the aristocratic ranks of the upper ten thousand. The Emancipation Act of 1829 opened the door to both Houses of Parliament to the Catholics, and in 1858 the same privileges were extended to the Jews. Also the bulwarks which the state church had in the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge were undermined, and in 1871 were completely overthrown by the legal abolition of all confessional tests. Down to 1869 the hierarchy of the episcopal state church, though clearly alien to the country, maintained its legal position in Catholic Ireland, till at last the Irish Church Bill brought it there to an end.Repeatedly have bills been introduced in the House of Commons, though hitherto without success, by members of the incessantly agitating Liberation Society, to disestablish the churches of England, Scotland, and Wales.[556]

§ 202.1. The Episcopal State Church.—The two opposing parties of the state church corresponded to the two political parties of Tories and Whigs. The high church party, which has its most powerful representatives in the aristocracy, holds aloof from the dissenters, seeks to maintain the closest connexion between church and state, and eagerly contends for the retention of all old ecclesiastical forms and ordinances in constitution, worship, and doctrine. On the other hand the evangelical or low church party, which is more or less methodistically inclined, holds free intercourse with dissenters, associating with them in home and foreign mission work, etc., and with various shades of differences advocates the claims of progress against those of immobility, the independence of the church against its identification with the state, the evangelical freedom and general priesthood of believers against orthodoxy and hierarchism. From their midst arose a movement in 1871, occasioned by the Oxford “Essays and Reviews” and the works of Bishop Colenso, which resulted in the publication, under the authority of the bishops, of the “Speaker’s Commentary,” so-called because suggested by Denison, who had long been speaker of the House of Commons. It is a learned, thoroughly conservative commentary on the whole Bible by the ablest theologians of England. On the revision of the English translation of the Bible see § [181, 4]. Besides these two parties, however, there has arisen a third, the broad church party. It originated with the distinguished poet and philosopher, Coleridge (died 1834), and includes many of the most excellent and scholarly of the clergy, especially those most eminent for their acquaintance with German theology and philosophy.They do not form an organized ecclesiastical party like the evangelicals and high church men, but endeavour not only to overcome the narrowness and severity of the former, but also to secure a broader basis and a wider horizon for theology as well as for the church.[557]—The struggle for the legalizing of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister has been energetically pressed since 1850, but though the House of Commons has repeatedly passed the bill, it has been hitherto by small majorities, under the influence of the bishops, rejected by the House of Lords.—A non-official Pan-Anglican Council of English bishops from all parts of the world, excluding the laity and inferior clergy, with pre-eminently anti-Romish and anti-ritualistic tendencies, was held in London in 1867 (cf. § [175, 5]). When it met the second time in 1878, it was attended by nearly one hundred bishops, one of them a negro. Of the three weeks’ debates and their results, however, no detailed account has been published.

§ 202.2. The Tractarians and Ritualists.—The activity of the dissenters and the episcopal evangelical party’s attachment to them stirred up the adherents of the high church party to vigorous guarding of their interests, and drove them into a one-sided exaggerated accentuation of the Catholic element. The centre of this movement since 1833 was the university of Oxford. Its leaders were Professors Pusey and Newman, its literary organ the Tracts for the Times, from which the party received the name of Tractarians. This was a series of ninety treatises, published 1833-1841, on the basis of Anglo-Catholicism, which sought, while holding by the Thirty-nine Articles, to affirm with equal decidedness the genuine Protestantism over against the Roman papacy, and, in the importance which it attached to the apostolical succession of the episcopate and priesthood and the apostolical tradition for the interpretation of Scripture, the genuine Catholicism over against every form of ultra-Protestantism. In this way, too, their dogmatics in all the several doctrines, as far as the Thirty-nine Articles would by any means allow, was approximated to the Roman Catholic doctrine, and indeed by-and-by passed over entirely to that type of doctrine. Newman’s Tract 90 caused most offence, in which, with thoroughly jesuitical sophistry, it was argued that the Thirty-nine Articles were capable of an explanation on the basis of which they might be subscribed even by one who occupied in regard to the church doctrine and practice an essentially Roman Catholic standpoint. The university authorities now felt obliged to declare publicly that the tracts were by no means sanctioned by them, and that especially the application of the principles of Tract 90 to the conduct of students in the matter of subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles is not allowable. Bishop Bagot of Oxford, hitherto favourable to the tractarians, refused to permit the continued issue of the tracts. The other bishops also for the most part spoke against them in their pastorals, and a flood of controversial pamphlets roused the wrath of the non-Catholic populace. But on the other hand tractarianism still found favour among the higher clergy and the aristocracy. In 1845 Newman went over to the Catholic church, and has since led a retired life devoted to theological study. Pius IX. paid him no attention, but in 1879 Leo XIII. acknowledged and rewarded his services to the Catholic church by elevating him to the rank of cardinal. The majority of the tractarians disapproved of Newman’s step and remained in the Anglican church. Thus acted Pusey (died 1882), the recognised leader of the party, after whom they were now called Puseyites.Many, however, followed Newman’s example, so that by the end of 1846 no less than one hundred and fifty clergymen and prominent laymen were received into the widely opened door of the Catholic church.[558]—The following twelve years, 1846-1858, were occupied by two dogmatico-ecclesiastical conflicts vitally affecting the interests of the tractarians.

  1. The Gorham Case. The Thirty-nine Articles took essentially Lutheran ground in treating of baptism, recognising it as a vehicle of regeneration and divine sonship, and the tractarians laid uncommonly great stress upon this article. So also the Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Philpotts, refused to institute the Rev. Cornelius Gorham because of his views on this subject. Gorham accused him before the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the Court of Arches decided in favour of the bishop. The Court of Appeal, however, the judicial committee of the Privy Council, annulled the episcopal judgment, and ordered that Gorham should be installed in his office. In vain did Philpotts, by a protest before the Court of Queen’s Bench, and then before the Court of Common Pleas, against the jurisdiction of the Privy Council in this case, in vain, too, did Blomfield, Bishop of London, insist upon the revival of Convocation, which for one and a half centuries had been inoperative as a spiritual parliament with upper and lower houses, and in vain did a tractarian assembly of more than 1,500 distinguished clergymen and laymen lodge a solemn protest. The judgment of the Privy Council stood, and Gorham was inducted to his office in 1850. Many of the protesters now went over to the Catholic church, and about 600 others, like the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers 230 years before (§ [143, 4]), under ecclesiastical oppression, emigrated to New Zealand.
  2. The Denison Eucharist Case.—The Puseyite Archdeacon Denison of Taunton, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, had in 1851 in open defiance of the Thirty-nine Articles, which represent Calvin’s views of the Lord’s Supper, affirmed in preaching and writing that unbelievers as well as believers eat and drink the body and blood of the Lord. Over this he was involved in a sharp discussion with a neighbouring clergyman called Ditcher. In 1854 Ditcher accused Denison before his bishop, who, after vain efforts to reconcile the parties, referred the matter to the Court of Arches, which sought, but in vain, to end the strife by compromise. Ditcher now in 1856 brought his complaint before the Queen’s Bench, which obliged the archbishop to take up the matter again. A commission appointed by him declared that the complaint was quite justifiable, and threatened Denison, when he refused any sort of retraction, with deposition. But the Court of Appeal in 1858 stayed the judgment on the ground of a technical error in procedure, and Denison remained in office.

§ 202.3. From the middle of 1850 the tractarians, who had hitherto confined themselves to the development of the Romanizing system of doctrine, began to apply its consequences to the church ritual and the Christian life, and so won for themselves the name of Ritualists, which has driven out their earlier designation. Wherever possible they showed their Catholic zeal by introducing images, crucifixes, candles, holy water, mass dresses, mass bells, and boy choristers, urged the restoration of the seven sacraments, especially of extreme unction, auricular confession, the sacrificial theory and Corpus Christi day, of prayers for the dead and masses for souls, invocation of saints and the blessed Virgin; they also praised celibacy and monasticism, etc. Ritualism has from the first shown singular skill in party organization. The English Church Union, founded in 1860, has now nearly 200,000 members, of these about 3,000 clergymen and 50 bishops, and it embraces 300 branches over the whole domain of the Anglican church. Numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods, guilds and orders, organized after the style of Roman Catholic monasticism, promote the interests of ritualism, and zealously prosecute home and foreign mission work. The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament originated in 1862, was able in 1882 to celebrate Corpus Christi day in 250 churches along with the Romish church, dispensing only with the procession. The Society of the Holy Cross, founded in 1873 consists only of priests, and forms a kind of directory for all branches of the ritualistic propaganda. The English Order of St. Augustine has a threefold division, into spiritual brothers who are preparing for priests’ orders, lay brothers who are being qualified as lay preachers, both under the strictest vows, and a sort of tertiaries, who are free from vows. Among the sisterhoods which already supply nurses to all the great hospitals of the capital, the most important is that called “by the name of Jesus.” They take, like the Beguines of the middle ages, the three vows, but not as binding for life. By the ultra high church party the genuine apostolic succession of the ordination of the first Protestant archbishop, Matthew Parker, and so the genuineness of all subsequent ordinations going back to him, were doubted; three Anglican bishops are said to have had episcopal consecration anew conferred on them by a Greek Catholic bishop. The reckless and wilful procedure of the ritualists in imitating the Roman Catholic ritual in public worship called forth frequent violent disturbances at their services, and noisy crowds flocked to their churches. Most frequent and violent were the riots in 1859 and 1860 in the parish of St. George’s, London, where scarcely any service was held without disgraceful scenes of hissing, whistling, stamping, and cries of “No popery.” The offscouring of all London flocked to the Sunday services as to a public entertainment. Instead of hymns, street songs were sung, instead of responses blasphemous cries were shouted forth, while cushions and prayer-books were hurled at the altar decorations, etc. These unseemly proceedings were caused by the ritualistic rector, Bryan King, who had introduced the objectionable ceremonial, and obstinately continued it in spite of the decided opposition and protests of his colleague, Mr. Allen. King’s removal in 1860 first put an end to these disturbances, which police interference proved utterly unable to check. The ritualistic Church Union, called into existence by these proceedings, was opposed by an anti-ritualistic Church Association, and from both multitudes of complaints and appeals were brought before the ecclesiastical and civil tribunals. The first case they brought up was that of Rev. A. H. MacConochie, of Holborn, who, having been admonished by the ecclesiastical courts on account of his ritualistic practices in 1867, appealed to the Privy Council. And although this court decided in 1869 that all ceremonies not authorized by the prayer-book are to be regarded as forbidden, he and his followers continued to act on the principle that whatever is not there expressly prohibited ought to be permitted. The Public Worship Regulation Bill, introduced by Archbishop Tait, and passed by Parliament, which legislatively determined the procedure in ritualistic cases, did not prevent the constant advance of this movement. The Court of Arches now issued a suspension against the accused, and condemned them to prison when they continued to officiate, until they declared themselves ready to obey or to demit their office. Tooth of Hatcham, Dale of London, Enraght of Bordesdale, and Green of Miles Platting were actually sent to prison in 1880. But the first three were soon liberated by the Court of Appeal finding some technical flaw in the proceedings against them, while Green, in whose case no such flaw appeared, lay in confinement for twenty months. The ritualists still persistently continued their practice, and their opponents renewed their prosecutions; these were followed by appeals to the higher courts, presenting of petitions to both the Houses of Parliament, addresses with vast numbers of signatures for and against to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to Convocation which had meanwhile been restored, to the Cabinet, to the Queen, etc. The result was that many cases were abandoned, some obnoxious parties transferred elsewhere, and a very few deposed.