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4 . SOCIAL PROGRESS. TEMPERANCE. 379
society in Sweden was started by a schoolboy. But his
real power of leadership came to him in his parish of
Vasterstad. One incident of his ministry may be men
tioned as an example of his experience and courage. A
peasant, who was being punished for his evil life by the
Church Council, resolved to kill his pastor. He sent for
him to come to his house on the pretext that his wife \vas
dying. Wieselgren was warned, but went all the same.
He first commanded the pretended dying woman to rise
from her bed, and then turned to her husband, who stood
axe in hand behind the door, and said:
"
Lay down your
weapon." The man obeyed; but when his pastor urged
him to change his evil life and ask God for pardon, the man
answered scornfully: "There ll be time enough for that
when one lies on one s sick bed." The priest s answer
came back like lightning: "You ll never lie on a sick
bed." A few days after the man fell down his own well in
a drunken fit, and was drowned, and Wieselgren s in
fluence was stronger than ever. In time his parishioners
saw that temperance was for their own good, and his re
putation spread far and wide. Prince Oskar, afterwards
Oskar I., who succeeded King Karl Johan in 1840, took
up the movement, and so did the great chemist Berzelius,
and the physician Huss. From them proceeded the
familiar physiological arguments, which explain the action
of alcohol on the human body, and on the descendants of
drunkards, as well as on drunkards themselves. Wiesel
gren himself travelled over the whole country from south
to north, and at length the nation was ready for the great
reform of 1854, when private distillation was forbidden,
and a heavy tax put upon brandy. But, though the results
were great, it was found after a time that beer drinking
had become a national danger, and the new temperance
movement of 1880 and the following years was inaugurated.
The various societies are supposed to number about a
quarter of a million members.
I regret to learn from the bishops charges, which will
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