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430 VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
baptized in church is growing (p. 51), and many societies
of young people who have lately been confirmed are being
formed (ungdomskretsar eller ungdoms foreningar, p. 61),
answering, I suppose, to our communicants guilds. This
movement is, I
may note, supported by a popular fort
nightly periodical, Sveriges Ungdom, which has a circula
tion of 30,000 in the present year throughout the kingdom.
Notwithstanding this, even in the diocese of Kalmar, no
return from any parish states an increase in the number of
communicants, and several state a decrease. It is worth
noticing that the bishop does not much press for the
establishment of Sunday Schools or children s services,
holding that Sunday ought to be made a day for the union
of parents and children in religious life (pp. 40 and 71).
The charge of the Bishop of Strengnas (Dr. U. L.
Ullman), The present condition of our Swedish Church,
has been printed as one of a series of useful tracts (Svenska
Kyrko-forbundets Skriftserie) in the current year (1910).
In the form in which it has reached me it is general rather
than particular in its contents. All the first part is a
lament over the opposing tendencies of the age. The
bishop deeply regrets the separation of the schools from
Church influence, even though the clergy are expected
to give religious instruction. Children in them are in
structed rather than educated, and are not introduced
into the living fellowship of the Church (p. 13). He
complains of rationalistic school books in the gymnasia.
As regards the clergy, he declares that the State has ex
ploited them for its own purposes by laying on them ever
increasing burdens, treating them as clerks for the pre
paration of statistic, economic and military details, in a
way which is unknown elsewhere in the world, and using
their services to save the public purse without any acknow
ledgment (pp. 18-19). Many, too, of the clergy are so
poor as to have no joy in life, and no heart for their voca
tion (p. 19). He speaks sadly of the growth of unbelief
and Socialism, of the neglect of Sunday, and of the in
crease of acts of murder and bitter revenge, and of cases of
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