34 2
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
clergy brought home to them the consequences of theological study. In one place the old system has been preserved, like a frail and delicate curiosity, by excluding the air of scientific inquiry, whilst in the other LutheranislTI is decomposing under its influence. In Norway, wher
the
clergy have no political representation, religious liberty was established in I 844. Throughout the north of Europe the helpless decline of Protestantism is betrayed by the numerical disproportion of preachers to the people. Norway, with a population of 1,500,000, thinly scattered over a very large territory, has 485 parishes, with an average of 3600 souls apiece. But the clergy are pluralists, and as many as five parishes are often united under a single incumbent. Holstein has only 192 preachers for an almost exclusively Lutheran population of 544,000. In Schles\vig many parishes have been deserted because they were too poor to maintain a clergyman's family. Sometimes there are only two ministers for 13,000 persons. In the Baltic provinces the proportion is one to 4394. In this \vay the people have to bear the burden of a clergy \vith families to support. The most brilliant and important part of this chapter is devoted to the state of Protestantism in the author's native country. He speaks with the greatest authority and effect when he comes near home, describes the opinions of men \vho have been his rivals in literature, or his adversaries in controversy, and touches on discussions which his o\vn writings have influenced. There is a difference also in the tone. When he speaks of the state of other countries, \vith which he has made himself acquainted as a tr.aveller, or through the writings of others, he preserves the calmness and objectivity of a historian, and adds few reflections to the simple de- scription of facts. But in approaching the scenes and the thoughts of his own country, the interests and the most immediate occupations of his own life, the familiarity of long experience gives greater confidence, warmth, and vigour to his touch; the historian gives way to the divine, and the narrative sometimes slides into theology. Besides
