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328 VIL TIME OF FREEDOM AND NEOLOGY.
to hear them trolled from the lips of a postillion or hummed
by any youngster in the streets.
16
Linnseus touches Church life more closely, as he was the
son of a country curate and never forgot his home and its
teaching. He was first a student at Lund, and then for
many years a teacher at Upsala, where his influence was
most wholesome and inspiring, especially to his pupils.
His whole life was, as it were, a song in praise of the beauty
of nature and of the wisdom of the Creator. The opening
sentences of his great book, the Systema Naturcc, reveal
at once his simple and reverent character:
"
I saw the back of the infinite, all-wise and all-mighty God
as He went from me and I was appalled. I traced out His
footsteps over the field of nature, and I remarked at every ex
tremity of it an infinite wisdom and power. I saw there how
all animals are nourished by plants, plants by the earth, how
the earth-ball is turned night and day round the sun, which
gave it life, how the sun with the planets and the fixed stars
are held up in their empty nothing by the motive and director
of universal existence, of all causation, this world s Lord and
Master. If one should call Him Fate, one is not wrong, for all
things hang on His finger. If one should call Him Nature, one
is not wrong, for from Him all things have come. If one
should call Him Providence, one speaks rightly too, for all
things are done according to His will and pleasure."
Over the door of his bedroom was written in his own
hand :
"
Live without reproach ! God sees thee !"
17
There were no very great men in the Church in this
period, but there was no lack of good ones. The Pietistic
and Moravian movements, and others of more local origin,
stimulated the energies of the Church within, and a
remarkable succession of bishops and clergy adorned
the Swedish Church in the middle of the eighteenth cen
tury. We may mention first Sven Baiter, Provost of
Vexio (1713 1760), a great and attractive preacher, whose
book on "
Church ceremonies amongst the first Christians
and in the kingdom of Sweden "
is indispensable for our
16
C. Grimberg :
Sveriges Historia, p. 394, Stkh., 1908.
17
See Grimberg: I.e., p. 405.
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