The clergy, as a profession, are not materially better off than the physicians. Their pay comes from the state, but their salaries are very small, and, with only here and there an exception, they have very little influence, social or political. They are not men of learning, and perhaps they are as influential as they could be expected to be. The established religion is Lutheran, with one archbishopric, eleven bishoprics, with 3,500 clergymen. They are said to be “highly educated,” but I was assured that there is a great lack of education among the clergy, and the very small salaries which even the dignitaries receive would confirm the statement that the church does not retain the aid of learned and able men.
The press is free, and when a man is called to account for the abuse of this freedom, the case goes to a jury, whose action is final, and there is no appeal from it.
Only one in a thousand of the population is ignorant of letters; they can read, and nearly all can write.
A common laborer gets about twenty-seven cents of our money for a day’s work, and a mechanic at his trade earns a little more. The cost of living must be very little, where the working classes can support themselves and families on incomes so small as these!
Yet they do live comfortably, and if it were not for drinking intoxicating liquors, they would be well off.
They are, as a people, as little given to other vices as in any country of Europe, perhaps I might say, in the world. The statistical tables show that many, very many, children are born into the world whose parents are not lawfully married, and it is therefore set down to the discredit of Sweden and Norway that they are very lax in their social morals. There is this, however, to be said on this delicate subject, the law forbids the marriage of any parties who have not taken the Lord’s Supper, and many do not wish to become communicants in the church, who are also quite willing to be married. But the church will not sanction their union, and they live together in the marital relation, true to each other, but without the blessing of the church. Their children are returned in the census to the discredit of the morals of Sweden! Here is an interesting point for moralists to study. The practice is wrong, and so is the law that has made the practice so common.
The mysterious words, Riddarholm kyrkan, provided always your education has not extended into the language of Sweden, are used to define a kyrkan or kirk, the Riders’ or Horsemen’s or Knights’ Church in Stockholm, decidedly the most peculiar and interesting of all I have seen in the north of Europe.
Divine service is celebrated within its walls but once a year. It is not a house for the living to pray in, but for the dead to lie in. It is not for the dead of common clay, but for the dust of kings only,—a royal mausoleum. It is a structure of nameless architecture, once Gothic doubtless, but worked over until small trace of its original design appears. A spire once almost reached the clouds, and when the lightnings played too fiercely on it, it was replaced by one of cast iron, which tapers finely to a lofty height, and defies the thunders.
It is a symbol, the whole church is, of a rude age and land. The doors were opened at noon of a bright summer day, and yet as we entered, a sense of gloom, of ruin, of vast antiquity, and the utter emptiness of this poor life of ours, came over me like a thick cloud. Every stone of uneven, broken pavement was a tomb, and the inscriptions long since were worn away by the feet of strangers. In dumb silence, for centuries the royal remains of successive dynasties have been resting here, and their names are forgotten, rubbed out, and unwritten elsewhere. The flags, spears, drums, swords, guns, and implements of war unused in modern times, are hung around the walls, as if this were an arsenal and not a sepulchre. In front of the high altar, with recumbent effigies of ancient kings, and in the midst of inscriptions hard to read and some still harder to understand, was one epitaph in these words:—
Justitiæ Splendor