A Nation in the Loom: The Scandinavian Fibre in Our Social Fabric: An Address by Rev. R. A. Jernberg
9781465652508
208 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
It is with pleasure I am permitted to give to you to-night a few words of what is technically called a "charge." Perhaps more than any other I am responsible for setting in motion the forces that caused you to come to this seminary for your last year's course of theological training, and begin while yet a theological student the work of instruction in the department over which to-night you are inaugurated a professor in this Seminary. Two summers we had you in North Dakota, while yet a student in theology, and we feel a little proud that our young State proves so good a place to discover and develop the qualities that make a good professor in a Theological Seminary. You are the second we have fitted for such a position, as Professor Gillette of Hartford was called directly from a North Dakota pastorate at Grand Forks. We feel like saying to our friends: Send us the men for our churches and we will send you back professors for your Theological Seminaries, Presidents for colleges, State Superintendents for the Home Missionary Society, and for our Sunday School Society; for we have furnished men for all these positions. Having discovered you, I have always felt a deep interest in you and in the work to which you have been called. The people whom you represent, and for whom this department is founded, are a most interesting people, and destined to have a very great influence upon the future of our great Northwestern States. In North Dakota, seventy per cent of our people are of Scandinavian origin. In Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, and on to the Pacific Ocean, these sturdy people from the north of Europe, of Protestant faith, of industrious and frugal life, form a large element in the population. Strong in body, accustomed to hardships, readily falling into our American ways of thought and life, they make the very best of American citizens. Through our public schools and other influences these people are becoming one with us in all that makes citizenship. Thousands of them are beginning to feel that our American churches are sure to gather in their young people, if they are kept in line with religious work. They feel that there is something lacking in the Old Country churches. The life and movement is different. They attend our Sunday Schools and our evening meetings. They sing our songs; and their young people mingle with ours in the Y. P. S. C. E. In one of our North Dakota towns where this work had been going on in connection with one of our churches, a former pastor of the English Lutheran Church in Fargo visited these people, and told them that they must withdraw their children from our Sunday School, and withdraw from our evening service and hold one of their own in English. While they obeyed him for a little while, in less than a month the children were back in our Sunday School, and the people back to our service. These people like the freedom and simplicity of our Congregational Churches. As earnest Christians to-day the world over care less and less to be known as followers of John Robinson, or John Calvin, or John Wesley, or John Knox, however glorious and worthy of honor are these men, but rather to be known as disciples of Jesus Christ, so these people will care less and less to be known by the name of the great and intrepid reformer of the 16th century, but rather by that name above every name, which makes us all brethren, marching under one banner and bent on executing the commission the Master left us,—to conquer the world for Him.
