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io. PRESENT CONDITION. 427
(pp. 42-3). Besides the legal services, most parishes (all
but fifteen) have these Bibel-forklaringar. Children s ser
vices are held in about sixty of the larger town and country
parishes. There are only twenty-five Church Sunday
Schools, but fifty Free Church ones, and one Socialist.
Services of preparation for holy communion are not
popular. Generally what we should call "mission ser
vices," held outside the churches, seem more popular than
those in church, even when the man who conducts them
is the same. It is suggested that the sermons preached in
church are too long. Probably also both heating and
lighting are imperfect. The attendance in church is poor
in one hundred cases, fair or tolerable in eighty, and
satisfactory in fifteen. In only ten is an increase observ
able (p. 61). There is a serious decline in the number of
communicants, and not eight per cent, of the qualified
adults come to communion. Yet there are some cases of
very large numbers. Monthly communion is, I believe,
the ordinary rule.
Of other services, the churching of women has been
generally given up. It is, perhaps, retained only in
twenty parishes (p. 66). Baptism in church appears to be
confined to forty parishes, and that chiefly in summer time.
Yet, on the whole, children are usually baptized. In more
than fifty parishes there is a number of persons, more or
less, who are not confirmed, and yet still belong to the
Swedish Church (p. 67). This would seem to be remark
able since, until lately, confirmation was a legal require
ment. Apparently the clergy have often failed to seek out
personally those who did not send in their names, and have
required too high an age (fifteen years complete) for con
firmation (p. 67). Clearly a transformation of the
approach to confirmation into a personal act of the will in
stead of a legal requirement is very much needed. Pre
paration for confirmation is, indeed, more elaborate and
thorough than is usual in England, and there seems no
reason why the rite should not be restored to its proper
place in public estimation. The confession of faith in it is
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