The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

and a large part of this glory is due to that Church which so faithfully
exhibits and nurtures the genuine Germanic life.
The Scandinavian Lutherans. Swedes. Danes.
And not unworthy of a place with this noble element is the other
great family of Lutheran nations, which next to the Germans, are adding to
the greatest treasure of this New World, thousands of Christian men. The
name of Scandinavians recalls great Lutheran nationalities which have
deserved well of the world. With it is connected the name of Gustavus
Vasa, King of Sweden, who pleaded for the Reformation with tears, who
laid down his sceptre and refused to take it again until the love of his
people for him made them willing to receive the Reformation, and who
founded, among the poor Laplanders, one of the first Protestant Missions.
It recalls the name of the martyr-hero, Gustavus Adolphus, whose name
should be dearer to Protestants, and most of all to Lutherans, who justly
claim to be the most Protestant of Protestants, dearer than the name of
Washington to Americans, for a part of the price he paid for the rescue of
the religious liberty of Europe was his own blood. But for him, our
Protestantism might have been borne down, and swept away from the
world in a torrent of blood and fire. He, too, was zealous in the cause of
missions. It was a Scandinavian king, Frederick IV. of Denmark, who
established at Tranquebar, the East India Mission, which was blest with the
labors of Ziegenbalg, and of the greatest of missionaries of all time,
Christian Frederic Schwartz. It was a Scandinavian Lutheran preacher,
Hans Egede, of Norway, who, amid toil, peril, and suffering, planted a pure
Christianity among the Greenlanders.
"In the eighteenth century," says Wiggers, "Denmark shone in the
eyes of Evangelical Europe as a fireside and home of missions." “In
Sweden," says the same distinguished writer, "the Lutheran Church won a
noble and pure people, full of a vigorous and steadfast faith, a people
marked by clearness and brightness of intellect, by pure and simple morals,
and the soul of chivalry; a people always ready fearlessly to wage warfare
for the Gospel with the sword of the spirit, and if necessity urged, with the
temporal sword. United with the state by