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To Missionary Skrefsrud In Santalistan
By Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson
(See Note 67)
I honor you, who, though refused, affronted,
Have heard the voice, and victory have won;
I honor you, who still by malice hunted,
Show miracles of faith and power done.
I honor you, God-thirsting soul so driven,
'Mid scorn and need the spirit's war to wage;
I honor you, by Gudbrand's valley given,
And of her sons the foremost in this age.
I do not share your faith, your daring dreaming;
This parts us not, the spirit's paths are broad.
For, all things great and noble round us streaming,
I worship them, because I worship God.
Extra Info:
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN IN THE ORIGINAL METERS BY ARTHUR HUBBELL PALMER
Professor of the German Language and Literature In Yale University
Note 67.
TO MISSIONARY SKREFSRUD IN SANTALISTAN. Written in 1879. Lars
Olsen Skrefsrud, born in Gudbrandstal in 1840, at first a metal
worker, led for a time a wild life, and was committed under a
sentence of four years to a penitentiary, where he remained from
February, 1859, to October, 1861. Here he underwent a complete inner
transformation and resolved to become a Christian missionary.
Rejected by the Norwegian missionary institutions, he went in 1862
to Berlin, and entered a School for Missions there. He supported
himself by work as an engraver, and by unflagging private study
acquired learning and the knowledge of languages. He went to a
German Mission in India, which he left in January, 1866. In 1867 he
began his independent work in Santalistan. Here his persistence and
success attracted the attention and support of the English, and thus
he gradually became known and esteemed in his native land, where a
Santalistan Society was formed to aid his undertakings. In 1882 he
was duly ordained as clergyman by a bishop of the State Church. In
1873 he published a grammar and in 1904 a dictionary of the language
of Santalistan.
I do not share your faith. The memorable speech which Björnson
delivered to the students in Christiania on October 31, 1877, the
anniversary of Luther's posting his theses in Wittenberg, revealed
that after a hard inner struggle he had freed himself from the
religious faith of his early life. The theme of his speech "Be in
the truth!" showed that for him henceforth the supreme thing was
freedom of thought and fidelity to the truth as expanding
development might manifest it to the individual. Liberal in thought
from the beginning, Björnson departed more and more, not least
through the influence of Grundtvig, from the strict dogmatic
orthodoxy of the State Church. The study of Darwin, Spencer, Mill,
and Comte led him still farther on to a position which may be called
that of the agnostic theist, that of Spencer, who does not deny God,
but says ignoramus. We may recall the late utterance of Björnson,
quoted above: "Grundtvig and Goethe are my two poles." It was the
dogma of Hell, the teaching of eternal damnation and punishment,
that began Björnson's breach with the Church. He saw how this
doctrine enslaved and dwarfed the souls of the peasants, and
blighted all liberal development, both personal and political.
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