Part 1

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A NATION IN THE LOOM.

The Scandinavian Fibre in Our Social Fabric.

An Address by

REV. R. A. JERNBERG

At His Inauguration as Professor in the Danish-Norwegian Department on Mrs. D. K. Pearsons' Professorship Endowment in the Chicago Theological Seminary,

With the Charge, by President H. C. Simmons.

Published by Vote of the Board of Directors.

Chicago: P. F. Pettibone & Co., Printers. 1895.

SERVICES OF INAUGURATION.

The services of the inauguration of Professors R. A. Jernberg and W. B. Chamberlain took place on Monday evening, April 15, 1895, in the First Congregational Church, Chicago, Ill. The President of the Seminary, Rev. Franklin W. Fisk, D.D., LL.D., presided.

The Program was as follows:

1. Organ Voluntary, "Benediction."

2. Te Deum in B minor, Solos, Quartet and Chorus.

3. Invocation and Reading of Scripture, by Rev. G. S. F. Savage, D.D.

4. Hymn, "I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord."

5. Declaration of Faith, by Professor Jernberg.

6. Charge to Professor Jernberg, by President H. C. Simmons.

7. Inaugural Prayer, by Professor G. N. Boardman, D.D., LL.D.

8. Address, by Professor Jernberg.

9. Hymn, "America."

10. Declaration of Faith, by Professor Chamberlain.

11. Charge to Professor Chamberlain, by Rev. James Gibson Johnson, D.D.

12. Inaugural Prayer, by President Franklin W. Fisk, D.D., LL.D.

13. Address, by Professor Chamberlain.

14. Anthem, "Send out Thy Light."

15. Benediction.

16. Postlude, "Prelude and Fugue."

THE CHARGE.

_Professor Jernberg_:

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.

My brother: From this great northern belt of states, where these your people live, if I mistake not, are to come the strongest type of men into the great centers of life of this nation. By their sturdy manhood they are to give a vigor and moral tone that is needed in these great centers of power. If you will train and send out from this Seminary preachers of the Gospel of Christ among these people, who shall hold up the Gospel in its simplicity and yet in demonstration of the Spirit and with power from God, you will not only do a work for your countrymen that will be welcomed by them, and will result in bringing them and us nearer together as a people, but a work for our country that needs more than ever to be done _now_. You will help to make the nation's life throb with the pulsations of a faith in God that is seen to be the foundation of a great brotherhood gathered out of these different nationalities, and made one by the breaking down of dividing barriers. This, if I mistake not, is the mission of your department in this Seminary: Not to give these people a new Gospel--they have the same Gospel with us--but to bring them into fellowship and co-operative work with us in making the moral force of their life felt with ours, in keeping this nation in the way of righteousness, and of faith in God. This department in this Seminary may yet become in its influence upon the religious life of the Northwest, second to none in the results achieved. North Dakota perhaps stands first to-day of all the States, in its successful fight in overthrowing the power of the open saloon; and this has been achieved largely by the power of the Scandinavian vote which is on the side of law and order.

Our fathers coming over the sea left behind them in large measure the forms of church life of the old countries from which they came, but they kept their faith in God. They shaped for themselves the forms of worship as they thought best adapted for the conditions of their new life. They drew them fresh from the Divine Word. They have built up for themselves and for us a church life and a national life, that have grown together into the life we now have. Shall we not expect that coming into our political and social life, these Scandinavian peoples will also readily assimilate our methods of religious worship and work? It is ours at least to place before them an open door and invite them into that liberty, that equality, that fraternity in Christian life and doctrine, which as a people it has been our privilege under God not only to proclaim, but I trust also in some degree to make real. May the blessing of God be with you in this work and upon the Seminary of which you now become an installed professor.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

A NATION IN THE LOOM.

THE SCANDINAVIAN FIBRE IN OUR SOCIAL FABRIC.

The analysis of the elements that enter into the composition of nations, and the effect of their combinations, is one of the most fascinating studies in universal history. The loom of time has been weaving garments for this old world of ours, and the nations of the earth have clothed him with the glory of their sons and daughters, as long as the fibre of their manhood or womanhood could stand the wear. When age and use have worn them thin, and the strength of their fibre has passed away, the cast-off garments have been flung to the rag-man, old Father Time, who has been able sometimes to use the pieces that still were good for some new robe with which to drape the captious old shoulders. This is history. The weaving of these robes must never cease, for the wearing of them uses them up, and their durability always depends on the stuff out of which they are made. The latest piece, which is still in the loom, is the nation into whose texture we are now weaving our lives and characters, and those of some seventy millions more of all kinds of men and women. Since our own go in with the rest, we may be pardoned for the interest which some of us feel in the improvement of the fibre from which the nation is made, and our anxiety that it be of the right kind. Our present inquiry concerns the quality of a part of our social fabric, the Scandinavian element in our population. What has been its use and its influence in the older nations, and by what processes does it find its place in the new?

The world was old and had worn out many nations, when out of the north, liberated from the snow and ice of Ultima Thule, there came the Norseman like the very whirlwind from his frozen home. He was like naught that the world had seen in all the ages before his time. His joy and happiness he found in battle, his sweetest pleasure in a violent death, for only through this portal could he hope to enter the company of heroes who dwelt with Odin in the glory of Valhalla, and there continue the joys of earth in daily battles and nightly feasting. "Is there any people," says Taine, "Hindu, Persian, Greek or Gaelic which has founded so tragic a conception of life? Is there any which has filled its infantine mind with such gloomy dreams? Is there any which has so entirely banished the sweetness from enjoyment, the softness from pleasure. Energy, tenacious and mournful energy, such was their chosen condition." The individuality of that vigorous race stamped its mark upon every nation which it conquered, and upon every institution which it touched. Scarcely a nation in the Europe of that time but felt their influence, and scarcely one on the continent to-day who is not indebted to them. But the influence which the Scandinavians had upon the Anglo-Saxon race can be traced more clearly still than its effect upon continental nations. The name of England or Englaland came from the North, from the province of Angeln, which was a part of Denmark until our own times. The Angles gave to the land their language also, which was further strengthened by a later infusion of the Danish tongue; so that wherever the English language shall be spoken until the end of time, there will men mould their thoughts in the forms which the Vikings used, and express the keenest feelings of their inmost hearts in the vigorous speech which the Norsemen taught us, years before the Norman conquest.

Having put the impress of his personality so indelibly upon English life, it goes without saying that the Norseman's influence reached America with the first Englishman who landed here, if, indeed, it had not been here already since the days of Eric the Red among the Iroquois Indians. But contenting ourselves with the established testimony of history, there are still surprises in store for us. Not many of those who trace their descent back to the Pilgrim Fathers would think perhaps of ascribing to their Scandinavian origin any share of the character which made these pioneers the moulding and determining force of this country's history. But a single witness will establish such a claim. John Fiske in his "Discovery of America" says: "The descendants of these Northmen (who came to England) formed a very large proportion of the population of the East Anglian counties, and consequently of the men who founded New England. The East Anglian counties have been conspicuous for resistance to tyranny and for freedom of thought." In another place he says, "While every one of the forty counties of England was represented in the great Puritan exodus, the East Anglian counties contributed to it far more than all the rest. Perhaps it would not be far out of the way to say, that two-thirds of the American people who can trace their ancestry to New England, might follow it back to the East Anglian shires of the mother country." So far John Fiske. But having done that, it might be possible for these same excellent people, if the record could only be found, to trace their descent back from the East Anglian counties to the mountains and plains of the Scandinavian peninsulas.

We may observe then that the difference of race is not so great as we sometimes think. What wonder is it that the Scandinavian immigrant assimilates so readily with the native population in this country as he does. Has he not come to his kith and kin, to share with them in the fruitage of the early sowing and careful planting of his fathers, which has found its fullest and freest development in the United States? Not that the seed has died or been destroyed over there in its native soil. The Scandinavian who comes here does not pose as the victim of oppression and persecution at home. Unlike most of the immigrants of his class, he is used to having a voice in the affairs of his country. He usually elects his own representative to the legislature, he manages the affairs of his district, town or city with a liberty almost as great as our own. Gladstone calls the constitution of Norway the most liberal in all the world. The burdens of public responsibility which come to the Scandinavian on his arrival to America are not new therefore, and to his honor be it said that he appreciates their importance quite as much as many of those who are born here. He soon learns to think of this country as his own. In the hour of peril when this nation called upon its sons to save its life, the Norsemen who had made their homes here responded as freely to the call as those who knew no other land, and gave their lives for their adopted country as cheerfully as these.

In speaking of the development of the Scandinavians in the United States, it must be evident, therefore, that the premises from which we start are very different from those in the case of almost any other foreigners among us; for the development of the qualities which many of them bring from their native lands would mean anything but the peace, prosperity or happiness of this. But the Scandinavian, however crude or untutored he may appear, is recognized even by those who love him least as having in him the elements that are the terror of evil doers. When the anarchists of Haymarket fame were on trial for their lives in this city, their counsel requested that no Scandinavian should be accepted on the jury, saying, that he would challenge every talesman of Norse blood on the ground of his nationality. The Scandinavians everywhere felt complimented by the challenge, and the lawyer was certainly correct in his estimate of them.

The most serious charge that can be brought against the Scandinavians in this country as a class is, that they are behind the times. Since the days of Gustavus Adolphus and his work for the Reformation the northern nations have had little influence upon the life of Europe. Charles XII. of Sweden for a time disturbed the peace of Russia, and Napoleon managed to mix up the Scandinavian countries in his difficulties with England, but with these exceptions no great interest has been felt for the world outside by the people of the North. While the great world south of him was moving forward through revolutions of governments and of thought, the Scandinavian sat still at home, pondering the question how the stones around him might be made bread. In the onward march of the world he was almost forgotten up there in the frozen north, and in his isolation his ideas and his interests narrowed down to the affairs of his own little circle, which to him became of supreme importance. Class distinctions, almost as severely marked as by the Hindu caste system, gradually divided each little community, and they still remain in a great measure, in spite of the modern renaissance which the Scandinavian countries have experienced during the present century. In religious affairs there has been until recently a regime as autocratic almost as that of the Czar. All Scandinavians since 1550 until the latter half of this century were by reason of their nativity members of the Lutheran church. When one ventures to separate himself from that church he voluntarily ostracises himself from the society in which he has had a standing hitherto, and is made to feel that his religious views are revolutionary and anarchistic, refusing obedience to appointed authority in spiritual things. This pressure unquestionably hinders the work of the reformed churches in Scandinavia no less perhaps than the intolerant dogmatism of the State Church, which unblushingly arrogates to itself the monopoly of Christian truth and the right to teach it. These characteristics have been intensified and stereotyped by the isolation of the people, so that the work of bringing those who come to this country into sympathy with the social and religious ideas of life here must of necessity be a work of time and of patient education.

One of the difficulties, perhaps the greatest, in the way of such endeavors is the common practice of all our foreigners to colonize, both in the city and in the country, thus creating for themselves an environment which perpetuates indefinitely the alien characteristics peculiar to them. The foreigner remains a foreigner still. He has simply transplanted the environment in which he was born, minus some of its burdens, from the Old World to the New, and he may continue the remainder of his life in the midst of these surroundings as much an alien, right here in Chicago, as if he had never crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He looks with distrust and with contempt upon the institutions of this land because he does not understand them, and he is suspicious of every stranger who is _hostis_ (an enemy) until he knows him.

The foreign settlements in the country districts are, if possible, still more unaffected by the influence of their larger environment than the foreign colonies in the cities. In many portions of our land it is possible to travel for miles through a foreign country, as far as population is concerned, and not seldom is the second generation as thoroughly foreign as their parents, so that an American may need an interpreter at every house if he intends to transact business there. Under such conditions it is very evident that the moral, intellectual, or religious development of these communities would be the work of ages, if dependent upon the forces within themselves. The cultivating power must come from without and be shot through and through them, so that the individuals and the families in them may somehow come under the influence of that larger environment lying outside of their immediate colony, or the years will only perpetuate the conditions which in our day have become not only interesting but very serious social problems for Americans to solve.

Such an outside penetrating power is the American public school. Here is an institution which, whatever else it does not do, certainly fosters a spirit of patriotism and of loyalty to the flag that floats above it. No other land can be as dear to the children educated here as this land; no language will be more thoroughly theirs than the language of their books and teachers; and thus it will be found that in any foreign community where the children attend the public schools, American ideas and standards of life are permeating it with a power which must eventually change it into an American community.

So well is this understood by those who are the guides and teachers of certain foreign nationalities among us, and who would, if they could, keep them forever intact from the influence of American life, that they spare no pains to shield them from it, and withdraw their children and youth from the teaching of the public school, putting them into schools of their own where their foreign ideas and their foreign tongues may be perpetuated in the next generation. This is the meaning of Protestant parochial schools, no matter what other explanation of them is offered.

The Scandinavians do not fall under censure in this matter. They have not as a rule set up their own schools in competition with the public school, but they have schools of a higher grade. Most of these were first established to furnish ministers for their own churches. Gradually, however, they have come to feel the pressure of their larger environment, so that their curriculum is now usually arranged with a view to giving all the inhabitants of the entire community the benefit of their instruction. Thus in the Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., representatives of seven different nationalities were in attendance last year; while the Swedish college in Rock Island, Ill., had fifty-one Americans, fifteen Germans, two Persians and two Hebrews among their five hundred students. The Luther College in Decorah, Ia, claims to send more young men to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for postgraduate study than any other western college. Several of these Scandinavian schools have come to see that they must adapt themselves more and more to the demands upon them from the entire community, and open the doors to all applicants for an education without regard to nationality. The principal of one of these schools writes: "Our school is not a Scandinavian, but an American institution of learning in the fullest sense of that word." Perhaps in no other sphere is the development of the Scandinavians into Americans better illustrated than in this evolution of their higher schools, for this tendency is not sporadic, but general; and when we remember that there are fifty-one such institutions in the Northwest, with five thousand young men and women studying in them, we begin to realize their importance, with their tendency towards a universal and liberal education, as factors in the development of the Scandinavians in this country.

It has already been intimated that this evolution of the Scandinavian schools has been compelled by their environment in American communities more than by any inherent desire of their own. One of these influences has been the attractions which American schools and colleges in the Northwest have especially offered to the Scandinavian young people. The University of Minnesota for example, offers an attractive course in Scandinavian literature under a very capable teacher in that department, and some effort in the same direction is made by the Chicago University. Carleton College has taken a still more decided step by establishing a complete Scandinavian department for the benefit of the young people of that race who may prefer to attend a purely American institution.