Read Ebook: A Nation in the Loom: The Scandinavian Fibre in Our Social Fabric An Address by Rev. R. A. Jernberg by Jernberg R A Reinert August Simmons Henry Clay Contributor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 86 lines and 9136 words, and 2 pages

Perguntei-lhe que povo era aquelle.

--Alpedrinha--disse ella.

Ora, Alpedrinha distava duas leguas e meia de minha casa. Era necessario pernoitar alli. Perguntei ? dita velha onde morava o parocho. Mostrou-me a casa. Pedi gasalhado ao reverendo, que n'esse momento voltava da igreja. Disse-me que subisse. Quiz saber quem eu era, e tratou-me delicadamente, quando lhe citei um medico, pessoa de minha familia.

O snr. padre Joaquim era um padre admiravel. Tinha maneiras da c?rte. Vestia com muita limpeza. Fallava com prodigiosa correc??o, e offerecia aos seus hospedes aguardente e biscoutos, tudo do melhor, e servido em bons crystaes e polida salva de prata.

Momentos depois que eu cheg?ra, apeou ? porta do meu sympathico sacerdote um cavalleiro, ainda mo?o, muito pallido e magro, com chap?o hespanhol, faxa vermelha, e botas d'agua.

Era um estudante de Coimbra, que voltava doente para sua casa, e costumava pernoitar em Alpedrinha, com aquella familia.

A primeira pergunta do academico foi esta:

--Como est? a snr.^a D. Amelia?

--O mesmo...--respondeu padre Joaquim.

--E seu mano? Tem vindo a casa?

Padre Joaquim contou ao academico as minhas aventuras de ca?ador; disse-lhe que me tinha achado muito fino , e fez a apologia dos meus olhos, que, naturalmente, revelavam uma extraordinaria esperteza, espiritualisados pelo espirito de vinho, que o sacerdote me injectou nas veias marasmadas pelo frio.

Conversei com o academico. Perguntei-lhe muitas cousas de Coimbra: quantos canell?es soffria um calouro; o calculo aproximado dos pux?es de orelhas; a solemnidade indecente de certo vaso na cabe?a.... &c. &c.

O academico respondia-me com muito agrado, e offerecia-se para meu protector em Coimbra, no anno seguinte, que devia ser o da minha partida.

--Snr. Valladares--disse o padre ao estudante--minha cunhada ergueu-se da cama para vir comprimental-o...

--? uma grande considera??o, que eu lhe n?o mere?o; mas a delicadeza da snr.^a D. Amelia ? sempre um severo preceito que ella se imp?e.

Fallou bem.

N'isto, entrou uma senhora, com um ar de tanta nobreza, que me pareceu uma cousa nova. Eu n?o conhecia assim nenhuma. Era alta, muito magra no rosto, mas muito bella nos olhos, nos labios, nos cabellos, em tudo se via tanta formosura, tanto donaire, um senhoril t?o estreme do vulgo, que eu, crean?a e poeta, senti-me t?o acanhado como o mais bo?al dos pastores de cabras d'aquella freguezia.

--Como passou, snr. Valladares?--perguntou ella com voz tremula, tossindo a cada palavra, e aconchegland was represented in the great Puritan exodus, the East Anglian counties contributed to it far more than all the rest. Perhaps it would not be far out of the way to say, that two-thirds of the American people who can trace their ancestry to New England, might follow it back to the East Anglian shires of the mother country." So far John Fiske. But having done that, it might be possible for these same excellent people, if the record could only be found, to trace their descent back from the East Anglian counties to the mountains and plains of the Scandinavian peninsulas.

We may observe then that the difference of race is not so great as we sometimes think. What wonder is it that the Scandinavian immigrant assimilates so readily with the native population in this country as he does. Has he not come to his kith and kin, to share with them in the fruitage of the early sowing and careful planting of his fathers, which has found its fullest and freest development in the United States? Not that the seed has died or been destroyed over there in its native soil. The Scandinavian who comes here does not pose as the victim of oppression and persecution at home. Unlike most of the immigrants of his class, he is used to having a voice in the affairs of his country. He usually elects his own representative to the legislature, he manages the affairs of his district, town or city with a liberty almost as great as our own. Gladstone calls the constitution of Norway the most liberal in all the world. The burdens of public responsibility which come to the Scandinavian on his arrival to America are not new therefore, and to his honor be it said that he appreciates their importance quite as much as many of those who are born here. He soon learns to think of this country as his own. In the hour of peril when this nation called upon its sons to save its life, the Norsemen who had made their homes here responded as freely to the call as those who knew no other land, and gave their lives for their adopted country as cheerfully as these.

In speaking of the development of the Scandinavians in the United States, it must be evident, therefore, that the premises from which we start are very different from those in the case of almost any other foreigners among us; for the development of the qualities which many of them bring from their native lands would mean anything but the peace, prosperity or happiness of this. But the Scandinavian, however crude or untutored he may appear, is recognized even by those who love him least as having in him the elements that are the terror of evil doers. When the anarchists of Haymarket fame were on trial for their lives in this city, their counsel requested that no Scandinavian should be accepted on the jury, saying, that he would challenge every talesman of Norse blood on the ground of his nationality. The Scandinavians everywhere felt complimented by the challenge, and the lawyer was certainly correct in his estimate of them.

The foreign settlements in the country districts are, if possible, still more unaffected by the influence of their larger environment than the foreign colonies in the cities. In many portions of our land it is possible to travel for miles through a foreign country, as far as population is concerned, and not seldom is the second generation as thoroughly foreign as their parents, so that an American may need an interpreter at every house if he intends to transact business there. Under such conditions it is very evident that the moral, intellectual, or religious development of these communities would be the work of ages, if dependent upon the forces within themselves. The cultivating power must come from without and be shot through and through them, so that the individuals and the families in them may somehow come under the influence of that larger environment lying outside of their immediate colony, or the years will only perpetuate the conditions which in our day have become not only interesting but very serious social problems for Americans to solve.

Such an outside penetrating power is the American public school. Here is an institution which, whatever else it does not do, certainly fosters a spirit of patriotism and of loyalty to the flag that floats above it. No other land can be as dear to the children educated here as this land; no language will be more thoroughly theirs than the language of their books and teachers; and thus it will be found that in any foreign community where the children attend the public schools, American ideas and standards of life are permeating it with a power which must eventually change it into an American community.

So well is this understood by those who are the guides and teachers of certain foreign nationalities among us, and who would, if they could, keep them forever intact from the influence of American life, that they spare no pains to shield them from it, and withdraw their children and youth from the teaching of the public school, putting them into schools of their own where their foreign ideas and their foreign tongues may be perpetuated in the next generation. This is the meaning of Protestant parochial schools, no matter what other explanation of them is offered.

The Scandinavians do not fall under censure in this matter. They have not as a rule set up their own schools in competition with the public school, but they have schools of a higher grade. Most of these were first established to furnish ministers for their own churches. Gradually, however, they have come to feel the pressure of their larger environment, so that their curriculum is now usually arranged with a view to giving all the inhabitants of the entire community the benefit of their instruction. Thus in the Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., representatives of seven different nationalities were in attendance last year; while the Swedish college in Rock Island, Ill., had fifty-one Americans, fifteen Germans, two Persians and two Hebrews among their five hundred students. The Luther College in Decorah, Ia, claims to send more young men to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for postgraduate study than any other western college. Several of these Scandinavian schools have come to see that they must adapt themselves more and more to the demands upon them from the entire community, and open the doors to all applicants for an education without regard to nationality. The principal of one of these schools writes: "Our school is not a Scandinavian, but an American institution of learning in the fullest sense of that word." Perhaps in no other sphere is the development of the Scandinavians into Americans better illustrated than in this evolution of their higher schools, for this tendency is not sporadic, but general; and when we remember that there are fifty-one such institutions in the Northwest, with five thousand young men and women studying in them, we begin to realize their importance, with their tendency towards a universal and liberal education, as factors in the development of the Scandinavians in this country.

It has already been intimated that this evolution of the Scandinavian schools has been compelled by their environment in American communities more than by any inherent desire of their own. One of these influences has been the attractions which American schools and colleges in the Northwest have especially offered to the Scandinavian young people. The University of Minnesota for example, offers an attractive course in Scandinavian literature under a very capable teacher in that department, and some effort in the same direction is made by the Chicago University. Carleton College has taken a still more decided step by establishing a complete Scandinavian department for the benefit of the young people of that race who may prefer to attend a purely American institution.

Studying a little closer the influences exerted by the Scandinavian newspapers, we find that they are naturally published in the centers of that population. Twenty-four of them are published in Chicago with a circulation of 307,675, and twenty-six in the twin cities of Minnesota with a circulation of 222,050. About half of the Scandinavian newspapers, therefore, are published in the three cities of St. Paul, Minneapolis and Chicago, and the readers of these papers, certainly not less than 1,000,000 people, must come to feel the throb of life in these great American cities. We have seen that it is possible to find communities in the city as foreign in life and thought as those beyond the sea, and if the influences that are scattered from the centers of our population receive their inspiration from such surroundings, then the newspapers cannot, from an American point of view, be a very helpful factor in our problem; but the inspiration of the newspapers does not come from that source. Their editors, with very rare exceptions, are men in hearty sympathy with American institutions, and in fullest touch with nearly every phase of American life.

The papers among the Scandinavians, to a far greater extent than among the Americans, are the guides and teachers of their constituency in nearly all concerns of life. In matters political, social and financial, they receive their inspiration largely from their better American contemporaries, thus bringing their readers under the best influences of the American press. In religious matters, however, this is not so, for here the spirit of the Church holds sway. This is, of course, to be expected in the religious journals of the Lutheran Church, in which the impression is generally made, that the borders of the Kingdom of God upon the earth do not extend much beyond the lines of Lutheran faith for any man, and certainly not for a Scandinavian. But the secular papers also feel the power of the Church, and are practically controlled by her spirit. Her schools and seminaries find generous space and frequent mention in their columns, while those outside of her domain are quietly ignored. The health and movements of her ministers and laymen are supposed to be items of general interest to their readers, while those who have ventured to formally leave the communion of the Church have thereby sold their birthright and forfeited all further recognition. To their excuse it may be said that in these respects the newspapers only reflect the sentiments of the great majority of their readers, and for doing this newspapers usually have no apologies to make in any tongue.

The situation as here described may serve to show the importance of an independent press, a journalism completely free from the least suspicion of spiritual tyranny. There are such journals among the Scandinavians. One or two of them are towers of strength, but the greater number are feebly supported by a few dissenters sprinkled over this entire land. And yet their influence is not unimportant. In the minds of their readers they open windows that have grown dim by the dust of ages; from the musty chambers they clear the cobwebs that no breath of air has disturbed before. They give new visions of a life much richer than that of the Fathers, and in this work they join from a Christian standpoint the stream of thought and aspiration in Scandinavian literature, which for the last century has broken away from the narrow bounds which hitherto held it; but mostly in channels realistic, un-Christian and often infidel.

The work which these papers are doing should be encouraged more than it is, for it means the emancipation of a race, and a larger life for our republic.

It remains to speak of another factor in the process of weaving the Scandinavian fibre into our social fabric. That is the Church. The only Church which until recently has had the moulding and determining influence on the Scandinavian people is the Lutheran. For three hundred and fifty years or more she has held undisputed sway over their spiritual and intellectual life. The result fills one with sadness. In England and America men have generally come to believe the Church of Christ the most potent power for the help and uplift of every man who comes under its influence. In Scandinavia they have come to think that before a man can be lifted out of his narrow, selfish and often stupid views of life, he must come out from the Church, for it is her influence that is crushing all higher life out of the people. This explains the exodus from the Church, on the one hand, of the men who are the intellectual leaders of the North to-day, the writers of its literature, and who go into infidelity; on the other hand of those who still believe that in Christ alone is life, but failing to find it in the forms and ceremonies of a lifeless church come out from it, and are like sheep having no shepherd, though looking for the true fold of Christ. The first class, the literati, have frankly and almost unanimously bidden Christianity farewell. Thinking the whole of it as hollow and emasculated as the only representative of it familiar to them, they have no use for it themselves, and only warnings against it for others. Apart from this hostility to the Church their endeavors seem to be on the side of good. In books and lectures they labor enthusiastically for the social and intellectual elevation of the people. The second class, those who for conscience sake have separated themselves, the dissenters, have naturally no sympathy with this intellectual movement. They look with distrust upon an education with Christ left out of it. While, therefore, they have broken with the Church because of her lack of life, they are no less suspicious of the schools, for learning to them means only the hindrance and death of spiritual life. They do not want their preachers to be taught by men, but only by the Holy Spirit. All other learning is vain and puffeth up. This prejudice against an educated ministry is greatly hindering the growth of the free church work in Denmark and Norway, and among these nationalities here. In Sweden, however, this feeling is rapidly disappearing before the influence of educated leaders and excellent free church seminaries.

It has seemed necessary to point out these two very opposite results of the rule of the Lutheran Church in Scandinavia in order to understand how much she may be relied on as a factor in the development of the Scandinavians in this country, for as she is there so she is here, only modified by the irresistible influence of her environment.

The bane of the spiritual power of the Lutheran Church is this: She exists for herself and not for the people, she is not the means to an end, but is herself the end. She bears testimony to this in her attitude of opposition to every effort made by other Christian Churches to elevate and convert the Scandinavian people. One of her ministers, writing some years ago, and deploring the spiritual condition of his Norwegian countrymen here in Chicago, said, that of the 40,000 of them in the city then, all baptized and by law made members of the Church, not more than 5,000 could be found in her places of worship. Yet he branded every attempt by Christians of other denominations to draw some of the remaining 35,000 away from the saloons, beer gardens and Sunday picnics, where he said large numbers of them were to be found, as base and un-Christian efforts to proselyte, and steal them away from their spiritual mother. This is the spirit of the whole Church. In the first meeting of her united factions in America in 1890, the Norwegian United Church passed some resolutions, especially aimed at our Congregational work, condemning and vigorously protesting against all missionary efforts of other denominations among the Scandinavians.

Lutheran preachers never miss an opportunity to tell us that the education and spiritual training of the foreigners, is their business and not ours. But, in view of the results of that training in their old home, it seems a question quite fair to ask, if we want them to continue that work here. When our lamented brother, Rev. M. W. Montgomery, turned the search-light of his book "A Wind From the Holy Spirit in Sweden and Norway," upon the religious conditions in the Church of those countries, and showed to the world what it really was, it caused a commotion in that Church on both sides of the sea, which he hardly had expected. When the light shines in upon a darkness that has not been broken for three hundred years, it wakes to activity many drowsy creatures who vociferously protest against the intrusion. The development of the Scandinavians in this country towards the ideas of our American life have been in spite of the influence of their mother Church, and not because of its help. Serious as this charge may be, it is amply proven by the words and works of their teachers and preachers.

In view of these facts, what is to be the attitude of American Christians towards these people? Must we ask permission from the Lutheran Church, who claims to own them, before we try to save those who are yet in their sins? Shall they perish because they find not the way to God through the portals of this particular church? Need we fear the charge of proselyting, when we labor simply to win men from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light? Our Master's command was: "Go teach all nations," and, lest we forget to go, he graciously brings the opportunity right to our doors. Again, it seems as if the great shepherd of the sheep had especially committed to our care that large number of earnest Scandinavian Christians who for conscience sake have separated themselves from the Church of their fathers, and who have no other affiliation. They stand nearest to us in their conceptions of faith and church polity. They themselves have recognized this kinship of spirit by repeated expressions of confidence in us. Our Seminary is the only one in all the world to whom the Danes and Norwegians of these independent churches on both sides of the sea can go for an educated ministry. The influence of our work for them has long been recognized both by friends and foes as making for a Christianity in closest sympathy with Congregational methods, and for a citizenship in touch with American institutions.

We are not deceived by our desires or our hopes; we have no thought that our labors will overturn nations in a day, nor that on us is laid the task of setting all things right. But having come into the fellowship of the great needs of these people, having seen the possibilities for their development along all the lines of a better and higher life, we rejoice that to us it is given into each of these factors of the school, of the press and of the Church of Christ, to throw the influence of an institution like this not only, but the moral force of the churches behind it as well. Perhaps our share in the shaping and moulding of the people for whom we work may not be large, nor greatly esteemed. But we have the satisfaction of giving expression both in word and deed to the conviction of our hearts, that no other power on earth can lift a people into the fullest and richest experiences of life, political, intellectual, social or spiritual, like the Gospel of Jesus Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation unto everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And He when He is lifted up shall draw all men unto Him.

For additional contact information:

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet