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NOTES 259
Ridderstad. The author and journalist, Karl Fredrik Ridderstad
(1807-1886), who had published in his newspaper a conciliatory poem
in defense of the Swedish view, to which Bjornson here makes answer.
Page 190.
To MIss1oNaRY SKREFSRUD IN SANTALISTAN. Written in 1879. Lars
Olsen Skrefsrud, born in Gudbrandsdal in 1840, at first a metal worker,
led for a time a wild life, and was committed under a sentence of four
years to a penitentiary, where he remained from February, 1859, to
October, 1861. Here he underwent a complete inner transformation
and resolved to become a Christian missionary. Rejected by the Nor-
wegian missionary institutions, he went in 1862 to Berlin, and entered
a School for Missions there. He supported himself by work as an en-
graver, and by unflagging private study acquired adequate learning
and the knowledge of languages. He went to a German Mission in
India, which he left in January, 1866. In 1867 he began his independ-
ent work in Santalistan. Here his persistence and success attracted
the attention and support of the English, and thus he gradually be-
came known and esteemed in his native land, where a Santalistan
Society was formed to aid his undertakings. In 1882 he was duly or-
dained as clergyman by a bishop of the State Church. In 1873 he
published a grammar and in 1904 a dictionary of the language of San-
talistan.
I do not share your faith. The memorable speech which Bjornson
delivered to the students in Christiania on October 31, 1877, the an-
niversary of Luther’s posting his theses in Wittenberg, revealed that
after a hard inner struggle he had freed himself from the religious
faith of his early life. The theme of this speech, “ Be in the truth!”
showed that for him henceforth the supreme thing was freedom of
thought and fidelity to the truth as expanding development might
manifest it to the individual. Liberal in thought from the beginning,
Bjérnson departed more and more, not least through the influence of
Grundtvig, from the strict dogmatic orthodoxy of the State Church.
The study of Darwin, Spencer, Mill, and Comte led him still farther
on to a position which may be called that of the agnostic theist, that
of Spencer, who does not deny God, but says ignoramus. We may re-
call the late utterance of Bjornson, quoted above: “Grundtvig and
Goethe are my two poles.” It was the dogma of Hell, the teaching of
eternal damnation and punishment, that began Bjérnson’s breach with
the Church. He saw how this doctrine enslaved and dwarfed the souls
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