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3g8 VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
after he had finished the last volume of his history of the
Jewish Church, saying in his deep voice and quaint abrupt
manner: "
I have tried to do justice to Judas Maccabeus:
I hope he will some day thank me for it." I have tried in
a much humbler way to be just to the men and women of
the Swedish Church, whose lives fall within the compass of
this volume. I undertook the task partly, I must confess,
with the feelings of a traveller who desires to explore a new
and interesting country. But my chief attraction to it was
the sense that the task must, under the circumstances of the
times, be undertaken by some one, and my wish was that
it should be handled by a sympathetic English Church
man. I began it with sympathy. I prepare to leave it
with much greater sympathy. But before I
say farewell to
it and you, I have still two duties to discharge, the first
special, the second general.
The Swedes in U.S.A.
My special duty is to turn away from the lakes and
forests of the Scandinavian peninsula to the new regions of
this great country, and especially to the lakes and forests of
Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota, and the other States
of the Middle West. They offer scenes very like those of
Sweden itself, but with greater freedom and fertility, and
they have had for the last seventy years, since Unonius
landed in this country, a marked attraction for the Swedish
people.
22
The subject is full of interest, and there are
plenty of materials in my hands for writing about it, but as
it is not the main subject of my. lectures, I will ask your
indulgence for very slight treatment of it. Over one
million immigrants from Sweden have landed in this
country since 1841, most of them young and middle-aged
22
On the reasons for this attraction see Grimberg :
I.e.,
pp. 560 ;
such as love of adventure, desire for greater freedom,
introduction of manufactures into Sweden displacing labour,
poverty at home, overplus of population about 1880, national
tendency to overvalue what is foreign, brilliant pictures of
success sent home by settlers, etc.
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