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376 VIIL THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
continue to pay their Church dues. In consequence of
this he is an elected member of the Representative Church
Council. What will be the future of his society it is not
easy for a foreigner to prophesy. He has a large follow
ing of about 100,000 members or adherents, and 1,200 to
1,500 chapels or prayer-houses (Bon-huser) scattered over
every part of the country.
He or his son (I forget which) was good enough to tell
me something of his experiences in Norrland, where he
learnt to preach in the style of Luther by continually read
ing aloud to the people in Umea and its neighbourhood.
He found that this was what still interested them more
than anything else, to hear Luther s commentaries and
postils read aloud for hours together. The mission house
is an excellent building, and it prepares men and women
both for home and foreign missions. The society has
stations in the Congo State, in the Hu-peh province of
China (on the Yang-tse Kiang), and at Kashgar in East
Turkestan and elsewhere.9
It has thus, like the Moravian brotherhood, a strong
missionary activity to keep it sweet and to save it from
the narrowing influences which have beset sectarian
bodies everywhere, and, not least of all, in Sweden. An
English Churchman cannot but pray that some place may
still be found for it inside the National Church, and that
the reconciliation may not be too long delayed. I have
not heard that Lektor Waldenstrom has any very clearly-
marked successor to whom he would naturally bequeath
the direction of his society.
9
See Ndgot i ord och bild om Svenska Missions forbundets
Mission, Stockholm, 1909, a report on The Congo Mission of
the Swedish Missionary Society (1909), and The Mission Field
in Russia and Chinese Turkestan (for Edinburgh M. Conference,
1910).
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