Full text: The national Church of Sweden

414 VIIL—THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 1812—1910). 
§ 9.— THE GENERAL SUBJECT: SUMMARY OF IMPRESSIONS. 
FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLAND 
AND SWEDEN. THE NOBILITY ALOOF FROM MUCH OF 
NATIONAL LIFE. THE CLERGY AND THE KING CON- 
[ROL RELIGION. TWO-FOLD RESULT: (1) THE 
CHURCH RELATIVELY INDEPENDENT OF THE STATE; 
(2) IT HAS CLOSE CONNECTION WITH THE UNIVERSI- 
ries. NEED FOR MORE SPIRITUAL TRAINING OF THE 
CLERGY. THE DIACONATE. VALUE OF THE EPISCO- 
PATE TO SWEDEN. DIVISION OF DIOCESES AND 
CLOSER RELATION TO THE PEOPLE NEEDED. 
Having said thus much on the special subject, I must now 
attempt a short general summary of the impressions which 
[ have formed from a study of this history. 
[ have several times remarked upon the difference 
between England and Sweden in certain fundamental social 
and political conditions which have affected its history in 
the past, and still continue to do so. Sweden, unlike 
England, was a settled rather than a conquered country. 
Its civilization is founded on a community of small free- 
holders. Like England, it never accepted Roman law, 
but, unlike England, it never had a feudal system. The 
result has been that the nobility have formed a body with 
interests easily detachable from, and often in opposition to, 
those of the rest of the community. They have been 
naturally prominent in time of war, just as they were in 
the Viking Age, but in time of peace they have tended to 
stand somewhat apart from the general development of the 
country. Where they have governed, as in the Union 
period and the ‘‘ time of freedom,” things have not pro- 
gressed favourably. There have, of course, been frequent 
and striking exceptions of public-spirited noblemen, and 
the names of Per Brahe, founder of the University of 
Finland, and Jacob Gustaf De La Gardie, founder of many 
Bell and Lancaster elementary schools and a normal school 
for teachers ® in the first quarter of the last century, and 
8 See Cornelius : Hist., § 291.
	        
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