usual, preaching an exceptionally warm and inspiring sermon. But the following
morning he passed away quietly while sitting in his easy chair and listening to his son read for him.
He was buried September 11, three days after his 89th birthday, in the presence
of representatives from all departments of the government, one fourth of the Danish clergy and a vast assembly of people from all parts of Scandinavia.
An American writer recently named Grundtvig “The Builder of Modern
Denmark.” And there are few phases of modern Danish life which he has not influenced. His genius was so unique and his work so many-sided that with equal justice one might call him a historian, a poet, an educator, a religious philosopher, a hymnologist and a folk-leader. Yet there is an underlying unity of thought and purpose in all his work which makes each part of it merely a branch
of the whole. This underlying unity is his clear conception of the spiritual and of
man as a spiritual being who can attain his fullest development only through the widest possible realization of the spiritual in all his divine and human relationships. In every part of his work Grundtvig, therefore, invariably seeks to discover the spiritual realities. The mere form of a thing, the form of religion, of knowledge, of education, of government, of all human institutions and endeavors
have no intrinsic value, are only skeletons and dead bones until they become imbued and vivified by the spirit. Thus Professor Martensen, who by no means
belonged to the Grundtvigian party, writes, “But among the many things I owe to
Grundtvig, I cherish above all his conception of the spiritual as the reality besides which all other things are nothing but shadows, and of the spirit inspired word as the mightiest power in human life. And he gave that to me not as a theory but as a living truth, a spiritual reality about which there could be not even a shadow of doubt.”
Grundtvig found the spiritual in many things, in the myth of the North, in history, literature and, in fact, in all things through which man has to express his god-given nature. He had no patience with the Pietists who looked upon all things not directly religious as evils with which a Christian could have nothing to do. Yet he believed above all in the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of spirits,” the true agent of God in the world. The work of the Spirit was indispensable to man’s salvation, and the fruit of that work, the regenerated Christian life, the highest expression of the spiritual. Since he believed furthermore, that the Holy Spirit works especially in the church through the word and sacraments, the church was to him the workshop of the Spirit.
In his famous hymn to the church bell, his symbol for the church, he writes “that among all noble voices none could compare with that of the ringing bell.”
Despite the many fields in which he traced the imprint of the spiritual, the church remained throughout his long life his real spiritual home, a fact which he beautifully expresses in the hymn below.
Hallowed Church Bell, not for worldly centers
Wast thou made, but for the village small
Where thy voice, as home and hearth it enters,
Blends with lullabies at evenfall.
When a child and in the country dwelling,
Christmas morning was my heaven on earth,
And thy chimes, like angel voices swelling,
Told with joy of my Redeemer’s birth.
Louder still thy joyful chimes resounded,
When on wings of early morning borne,
They proclaimed: Awake with joy unbounded,
Christ arose this blessed Easter morn.
Sweeter even were thy tolls when blending
With the calm of summer eventide
And, as though from heaven above descending,
Bid me cast all grief and care aside.
Hence when now the day is softly ending,
Shadows fall and birds ascend their nest,
Like the flowers my head in silence bending,
I am chanting with my soul at rest:
When at last, O Church Bell, thou art tolling
O’er my grave while loved grieve and sigh,
Say to them, their troubled heart consoling,
He is resting with his Lord on high.
[11]The printed text is corrupt, but the correction is not obvious. Norway and Finland might have "about as many" or "about half as many".
Other Danish Hymnwriters
