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364 VIIL THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
The Church was naturally stimulated to oppose such
excesses and to supply something better in the way of
religious zeal and fervour. The two university cities of
Lund and Upsala were, in this period, as in many others,
centres of healthy reaction in the persons of the two con
temporaries, Henrik Schartau (1757 1825) and Samuel
Odman (1750 1829). The latter was a professor of
theology and an eminent naturalist, a pupil of the cele
brated Linnaeus. He wrote much, but he exercised an
even greater influence by the bright example of his patient
teaching from his sick bed, on which he lay for about
forty years. He lectured in his little bedroom to genera
tion after generation of students. Schartau,
2
though he
wrote unceasingly, published nothing during his life, and
he, too, exercised an immense personal influence, but over
a much wider circle than Odman. He was a pastor whose
chief work was at Lund, not a university professor. The
great merit of his teaching was that it was strong and
spiritual, and without the defects of Moravian or Pietistic
sentimentality. Unlike the preachers of these schools, he
held his head high, and looked you well in the face. He
had a strong instinct of command, which he found it diffi
cult to check. To personal humility he added a deep sense
of the dignity of his vocation and of the importance of
asserting it in his great business of guiding souls. His
thought was clear and definite, and when he gave advice
he expected it to be obeyed. He was as powerful in his
own study, where he spent long hours in ministering to
the anxious and the penitent, as he was in the pulpit or the
choir, preaching or catechizing. The latter was one of his
strongest points. He impressed at once learned professors
and simple country folk, who thronged the cathedral from
all the district round Lund. Many of his spiritual
letters have been preserved and published since his death.
2
Besides Nielsen, I have made use of an interesting and life
like sketch of Schartau, by Dr. N. Soderblom, in Ord och Bild,
pp. 514-27, 1907. See also Edv. Rodhe : H. Schartau sdsoni
predikant, Lund., 1909.
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