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WESTIN, JiREV FRÅN C. O. ROSENIUS
321
were assembled to hear the Word of God, and I had so hard a work
with publicly preaching it, and privately speaking to souls, concerned
for their salvation, that I considered it as a wonder that my health was
not injured. This is a grace of God, which I must praise and admire
even here in Stockholm. But all is the work of the Lord. He does
all things.
The religious movement is continually increasing, if it even has
in some places decreased and grown fainter, we have to thank God that
the fire has kindled up so much the more in other places. During the
last six months this has been the case in the provinces situated at the
west, and also at certain points of the middle of Sweden.
Of the extent of the religious movement and the activity displayed
here, you may judge when I state that in our country, with a population
only amounting to three millions, eighty laymen have an authorized call
to work for the proclaiming of the Gospel, the spread of Bibles and
Tracts. Fifty of these are colporteurs in the service of the " Evangelical
Fatherland Institution," and thirty in that of the Baptist Church.
Besides these there are many who work in the same way, on their own
impulse, and the call of neighbors, their sphere of activity being more
limited to the villages and parishes surrounding their homes. Those
who work in a more free and independent way, together with awakened,
true and faithful clergymen, outnumber the so-called colporteurs. This
can give you an idea of the religious movement in our country.
As to the six women banished on account of their joining the
Roman Catholic Church, we know no more than that they would have
been permitted to remain in the country if they had asked it of the
grace of the king. But when they were urged to do so they decidcdly
refused to make such an address, being influenced, of course, by the
Roman Catholic leaders, whose main design or only wish was to stir
up the minds of the people against and to find fault with our laws and
institutions, by means of this sentence of banishment so contrary to the
more free minded spirit of the times.
I have seen the American Minister to-day. Your petition reached
the King’s hand. It was delivered to him by the Baron Manderström. The
Minister did not judge it sufficient merely to relate this to me, but he
also read to me from his documents, not only his own writing, in which
he recommended to the Baron M. the petition as coming from
respectable men of different denominations in the Protestant Church, but also
the letter which he had received from the Baron on the subject. This
answer was in substance that though the King and the Government
entertained the same high and .free or liberal principles as were
expressed in the petition, and were striving to introduce and carry out
such principles in the administration of justice, nevertheless, the still
existing laws did hinder it, when the case was to be treated according
to the laws, and the banished women were not willing to seek the King’s
21 — 30573. Kyrkohist. Årsskrift ig30.
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