opened,” he writes, “I considered all things not directly concerned with God a hindrance to the blessed knowledge of my Lord, Jesus Christ.” After a time he
saw, however, that his ability to write might be accepted as a gift from God to be used in His service. “The poet when inspired,” he says, “may proclaim a message from above to the world below,” and so, “after dedicating it to Himself, the Lord again handed me the harp that I had placed upon His altar.”
During his brief stay at Udby, Grundtvig published three larger works: Episodes from the Battle between Ases and Norns, Saga and A New Year’s Gift for 1812. [9] The first of these was nearly completed before his conversion, and as he now reread the manuscript, its content almost shocked him. Was it possible that
he had felt and written thus only a few months ago! He thought of destroying the work but decided to recast it in conformity with his present views and to express these clearly in a preface. With the completion of this task, however, he took a long leave from the “ice-cold giants of the North” that had so long engrossed his attention.
After his brief visit with the heroes of the past, Grundtvig again turned his attention to their descendants in the present. And the contrast was almost startling. The war still was dragging on and the country sinking deeper and deeper into the morass of political, commercial and economic difficulties. But the majority of the people seemed completely indifferent to her plight. “They talked of nothing,” Grundtvig says, “but of what they had eaten, worn and amused themselves with yesterday, or what they would eat, wear and amuse themselves with tomorrow.” Was it possible that these people could be
descendants of the giants whose valor and aggressive spirit had once challenged
the greater part of Europe?
Grundtvig was convinced that the spiritual apathy of his people resulted from the failure of their spiritual leaders to uphold the Evangelical faith, and that the salvation of the nation depended on a true revival of Evangelical Christianity.
For this reason he now exerted every means at his command to induce the people
and, especially, their leaders to return to the old paths. In numerous works, both in verse and in prose, he urged the people to renew the faith of their fathers and challenged their leaders to take a definite stand for Biblical Christianity. He became the lonely defender of the Bible.
Among outstanding personalities of that day, there were especially two that attracted widespread attention: J. P. Mynster, assistant pastor at the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, and Adam Gottlieb Oehlenschlaeger, the dramatic poet, then at the height of his fame. With their influence these men, as Grundtvig saw it, might give a strong impetus to the much needed awakening; and, he therefore, approached them personally.
Rev. Mynster, a stepson of Grundtvig’s maternal uncle, after a period of rationalism, had experienced a quiet conversion to Evangelical faith and won a
respected name as a faithful and gifted preacher of the Gospel, a name which he
retained throughout his conspicuous career as pastor of the Church of Our Lady
in Copenhagen and, later, as Bishop of Sjælland. He and Grundtvig, working to
the same purpose, ought to have united with another, but they were both too individualistic in temperament and views to join forces. Mynster was coldly logical, calm and reserved, a lover of form and orderly progress. Grundtvig was
impetuous, and volcanic, in constant ferment, always in search of spiritual reality and wholly indifferent to outward appearances. His own experience had led him
to believe that a return to Evangelical Christianity could be effected only through a clean break with Rationalism, and he could not understand Mynster’s apparent
attempt to temporize and bring about a gradual transition from one to the other.
There should be no compromise between truth and falsehood. All believers in the Gospel should stand up and proclaim it fearlessly, no matter what the consequences.
And so Grundtvig wrote to Mynster: “Dear Rev. Mynster, I owe you an apology
for asking a question that in our days may appear inexcusable: What is your real belief regarding the Bible and the faith of Jesus Christ? If you humbly believe in God’s Word, I shall rejoice with you even if you differ with me in all other things. Dear Rev. Mynster—for you are that to me—if my question appears unseemly, you must not let it hurt you, for I have written only as my heart dictates.” But Mynster did feel offended and answered Grundtvig very coldly that his questions implied an unwarranted and offensive doubt of his sincerity that must make future intercourse between them difficult—if not impossible.
Nor was Grundtvig more successful with a letter of similar purport to Oehlenschlaeger whose later writings he found lacked the spiritual sincerity of his earlier work. “My concern about this,” he wrote, “is increased by the thought that this lessening of spirituality must be expressive of a change in your own spiritual outlook, your inner relationship with God whom all spiritual workers should serve, counting it a greater achievement to inspire their fellow men with a true adoration of our Lord than to win the acclaim of the world.” But like Mynster the highly feted poet accepted this frank questioning of his inner motive as an unwarranted impertinence, the stupid intrusion of an intolerable fanatic with whom no friend of true enlightenment could have anything to do.
Grundtvig was fast finding out what it means to be counted a fool for Christ’s sake—or for what he thought was Christ’s sake.
In the midst of these troubles Grundtvig again turned his attention to history, his favorite subject from childhood days. His retreat from the present to the past implied no abolition, however, of his resolve to dedicate himself to a spiritual revival of his people. Through his historical work he wished to show the influence of Christianity upon the people of Europe. “That the life of every people,” he writes, “is and must be a fruit of faith should be clear to all. For who can dispute that every human action—irrespective of how little considered it may have been—is expressive of its doer’s attitude, of his way of feeling and thinking. But what determines a man’s way of thinking except his essential thoughts concerning the relationship between God and the world, the visible and
the invisible? Every serious thinker, therefore, must recognize the importance of faith in the furtherance of science, the progress of nations and the life of the state. It is a fearful delusion that man can be immoral, an unbeliever, even an enemy of the cross of Christ, and yet a furtherer of morality and science, a good neighbor and a benefactor to his country.”
A Brief Survey of the World’s History, which Grundtvig published in 1812, is thus the opposite of an objective presentation of historical events. It is a Christian philosophy of history, an attempt to prove the truth of the Gospel by its effect upon the nations. With the Bible before him Grundtvig weighs and evaluates people and events upon the scale of the revealed word. And his judgment is often relentless, stripping both persons and events of the glorified robes in which history and traditions invested them. In answer to countless protests against such a method of reading history, Grundtvig contends that the Christian historian must accept the consequences of his faith. He cannot profess the truth of Christianity and ignore its implication in the life of the world. If the
Gospel be true, history must be measured by its relation to its truth.
Grundtvig’s history caused a sensation, especially on account of its frank appraisal of many well-known persons. Nearly all praised its lucid style; a few, such as George Sverdrup, spoke highly of its strikingly original estimate and correlation of events; but the intelligentsia condemned it as the work of an impossible fanatic. With this work, they claimed, Grundtvig had clearly removed
himself from the pale of intelligent men.
But while his enemies raged, Grundtvig was already busy with another work: A
Brief Account of God’s Way with the Danish and Norwegian Peoples. This history which, written in verse and later published under the title of RoskildeRhymes, was first read at a diocesan convention in Roskilde Cathedral, the Westminster Abbey of Denmark. Although the poem contained many urgent
calls to the assembled pastors to awake and return to the way of the fathers, whose bones rested within the walls of the historic sanctuary, its reading caused no immediate resentment. Most of the reverend listeners are reported, in fact, to have been peacefully asleep when late in the evening Grundtvig finished the reading of his lengthy manuscript. But a paper on “Polemics and Tolerance”
which he read at another convention two years later kept his listeners wide awake.
“Our day has inherited two shibboleths from the eighteenth century:
enlightenment and tolerance. By the last of these words most people understand
an attitude of superior neutrality toward the opinions of others, even when these opinions concern the highest spiritual welfare of man. Such an attitude has for its premise that good and evil, truth and falsehood are not separate and
irreconcilable realities but only different phases of the same question. But every Christian, thoroughly convinced of the antagonism and irreconcilability of truth with falsehood, must inevitably hate and reject such a supposition. If Christianity be true, tolerance toward opinions and teachings denying its truth is nothing but a craven betrayal of both God and man. It is written, ‘Judge and condemn no one’ but not ‘Judge and condemn nothing.’ For every Christian must surely both
judge and condemn evil.
“There are times when to fight for Christianity may not be an urgent necessity;
