The Baptists in Sweden. By Mrs. M.F. Anderson ...

SWEDEN SINCE THE REFORMATION. 33
ment on the people seems to stop. A careful attendance upon all the ceremonies of the Church;
the saints' days, or prayer days, or church festival
days; the high mass; the forms of baptisms, christenings, sacraments, funerals; the decorations of
the church' and altar, and of the priests' robes; the
Easter offerings, Christmas offerings, and such observances, appear to stand in the place of all mental exertion or application, on their part, in religious matters, after they have once, if I may use
the expression without offense, taken out their
diploma as Christians by the rite of Confirmation,
and by receiving their first Communion. Religion
seems to rest here. "*
An extract from another more recent traveler
will give some idea of the manner in which the
Catechism is learned.
"He visited the school, [in a manufacturing
district in the West of Sweden]. There were
fifty-three scholars in it, with a rather stupid-looking old man as teacher. All the children were
bawling out their Catechism together, evidently
with no more idea what the sacred words meant
than if they had been Indian incantations. And
this is what the Swedes everywhere call'teaching
religion.'"
"As we went out, the Englishman [employed in
the mills] said:'You see it haint here just as it
* Laing's Tour in Sweden, p. 248.