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374 VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
Sweden and the Swedes. The church had to be closed for the
time, and Scott left Stockholm secretly, so that Rosenius was
now sole leader of the revival in the Swedish capital.
In the following ten years he contented himself by holding
religious assemblies in private houses, and in hired rooms;
then his friends bought Scott s church for him, and called it
"
Bethlehem Church," and there Rosenius worked till his death
as lay-preacher, joined by many from all directions. His light
and manly figure, his honest and grave expression, his deep
feeling and his lively imagination brought great crowds when
he preached of
"
the pure unmerited grace in Christ Jesus
"
and
summoned individuals to seize that grace, saying "Come en
tirely as you are."
Many were prepared for such a sermon by
the
"
Readers," and the simple and gentle spirit which reigned
in the services of the Bethlehem Church, exercised a powerful
attraction on many who had not felt satisfied by the stiff ser
mons of the Pietists and Schartauans. Soon Rosenius con
gregation obtained their singer in "Oscar Ahnfeld," whose
hymns with tunes, easy to sing, became known in the three
northern kingdoms.
The circle which generally gathered to hear Rosenius ser
mons about "free
grace"
and "the sweet Gospel," stood in
a very loose relation to the established Church. Rosenius him
self did not secede from the established Church, and did not
advise his followers to do so, but he had no good words for
the
"
External Church," and for the preachers of the established
Church, who were for the most part, hirelings in his sight.
"The little flock," the conventicles, were enough for him, but
he always desired the Holy Communion in the established
Church, and also had his children baptized there. He died
young, exhausted by spiritual work, and his followers did not
separate. The lay preachers continued his work and spread
the gospel of "unmerited grace" and his other hyper-
Evangelical doctrines. His writings, especially his voluminous
Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, and his Family
Prayer-book, seemed to many in the three northern kingdoms,
the best reading for quiet hours, next to Holy Scripture. The
Family Prayer-book alone had a circulation of 30,000 copies in
Denmark and Norway. Through Bornholm, Rosenius ideas
found entrance into Denmark, and the neighbouring parts of
Germany; and Denmark, as well as Norway, have also some
"
Bornholmists
"
who are as slack in relation to the Danish
and Norwegian Church, as Rosenius to the Swedish . . .
After the death of Rosenius, the publication of the Pietist
was taken over by Lektor Paul Peter Waldenstrom in Gefle (born
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