Christiania

“ It is only in a few districts around the Christiania Fjord and the Hardanger Fjord that horticulture is carried on to any greater extent than to satisfy the farmer's own requirements, although at the present time there is a strong movement for the promotion of horticulture, and many of the counties ("amt") have appointed gardeners, who travel round the district giving farmers free instruction in the laying out and management of gardens and orchards. ”

“ Old granite occurs in Christiansand stift, Thelemark, the Hardanger Waste, where it extends over extensive tracts and at its boundaries is seen to break through the Archaean formation, sending off multitudinous coarse-grained dykes, as also on the east side of the mouth of Christiania Fjord, in Aadal and in Hedal, south of Valders, and in Österdal. ”

“ Petersburg poles are the most generally used for scaffolding. They are weaker than the Christiania poles, breaking shorter under cross strains, are whiter in colour, have a smoother bark, are straighter in grain, and therefore make better ladder sides. ”

“ The remains at Nöstvet in the Christiania fjord show traces of a considerable population. Ground slate implements are found scattered along the coasts of Norway and Sweden, and are attributed to a nomadic people, whose arctic culture persisted much longer in these countries than in the much earlier flint civilization of the Kitchen-middens in Denmark. ”

“ Humbly implore our holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church to receive you into her bosom at her mercy and discretion. The soilure, now upon you, being washed off, you shall take the eternal vows and shall bury in the shadow of the cloister the criminal life you have led in the past. Choose: either immediate abjuration, or—to the soldiers. These pious Catholics will slake their amorousness upon you."
"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Cornelia, seized with terror, and her head reeling. "Am I awake? Am I dreaming? Can a man, a priest, outrage a woman's modesty to such an extent? ”

“ Against Rome, the professed head of Christendom, who prides herself that her bishops are received in direct succession from the apostles; who adores the name of Christ, and glories in offering honour to his most devoted followers—against her is the sentence gone forth, “Double unto her double, according to her works. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much trouble and sorrow give her; for her plagues shall come in one day—death, and mourning, and famine! and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.” ”

“ Have they ever heard with their ears, or listened when their fathers have declared unto them, the noble works which God did in their days, and in the old time before them? Do they believe that the path of Christendom has been, on the whole, the path of life and the right way, and that the living God is leading her therein? ”

“ Like the Roman Christian, he believes in the divinity of the Virgin Mary, and consequently he is an idolater and no idolater can be admitted into the kingdom of 'Heaven." So away goes the old Greek Church, with her seventy million disciples, down into the world of endless woe, if the testimony of our Presbyterian brother is to be relied upon. And thus two-thirds of all Christendom, comprising the disciples of the Romish Church and the Greek Church, are doomed to an endless hell, according to their own witnesses. ”

“ A letter had been addressed from Jerusalem by the Creator to his sinning creatures, and it was their mission to spread this through Europe. They preached, confessed, and forgave sins, declared that the blood shed in their flagellations had a share with the blood of Christ in atoning for sin, that their penances were a substitute for the sacraments of the church, and that the absolution granted by the clergy was of no avail. They taught that all men were brothers and equal in the sight of God, and upbraided the priests for their pride and luxury. ”

“ Christianity, springing up in Judæa within the first century of the Empire, spread through and around it like an interlacing vine,—sweet and wholesome in its early fruits, strong as a bond, powerful as a regenerating influence. But when the ecclesiasticism of a politically fashioned Church had been grafted on the Christian vine, it bore then the evil seeds of new corruption, new discord, new maladies for the Roman world. ”

“ The worship of Christendom is visible, ceremonious, and gaudy; the clergy, ambitious of worldly preferments, under the pretence of spiritual promotion; making the earthly revenues of churchmen much the reason of their function; being almost ever sure to leave the present smaller livings, to solicit and obtain benefices of larger title and income. So that with their pride and avarice, which good old Peter foresaw would be their snares, they have drawn after them ignorance, misery, and irreligion upon Christendom. ”

“ This kingdom of Jesus Christ is His holy Church. She is in the world, and for the world, but not of the world; she comes from heaven, and is the kingdom of divine truth and grace. When our Lord Jesus Christ stood before Pilate this kingdom was very small, but, since then, He has conquered to Himself lands and nations over the whole face of the earth, not by force of arms, but by the power of the Cross, on which the God- Man offered Himself, and which is the sceptre with which He, as King, rules over His Church. ”

“ Three thousand people turned away from sin and were baptised and sought to lead the life deep hid with Christ in God.
40. And in one day the Christine Church became a mighty power; and Christ became a mighty word that thrilled the multitudes in many lands. ”

“ Love ye one another, said you; and yet, the Pharisees, who call themselves your priests, caused, and to this hour continue to cause, torrents of Christian blood to flow. I do not share the belief of the reformers, but I remain with them body and soul so long as they combat the cruelties, the iniquities and the idolatries of the Roman Church! ”

“ This may be good, or even necessary, but it is not religion. "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble." We speak with pride, sometimes, of our puissant Christendom, so industrious, so intelligent, so moral, with its ubiquitous commerce, its adorning arts, its halls of learning, its happy firesides, and its noble charities. And yet what is our vaunted Christendom but a vast assemblage of believing but disobedient men? ”

“ Whatever political troubles have agitated the world since that time, and whatever changes may be fermenting in the inner heart and mind of the Church, none has since altered its outward aspect and divisions. But there is one wide difference between the history of Christendom as it was before and as it has been since the Reformation. Henceforward it is impossible to follow its course as a whole: each country must have its own ecclesiastical as well as its own civil history. ”

“ If we possessed a continuous and detailed history of the Christian Faith in any one city, say Rome, or Alexandria, or Antioch, or Ephesus, or Carthage, or Corinth, for the first three centuries, what a wonderful exhibition of spiritual power and material [pg 253] weakness it would offer. By fixing the mind on Christianity as merely one object, as an abstraction, we lose in large part the sense of the moral force to which its propagation bears witness. ”

“ The Mendicants came upon Christendom like a revelation—men who had abandoned all that was enticing in life to imitate the apostles, to convert the sinner and unbeliever, to arouse the slumbering moral sense of mankind, to instruct the ignorant, to offer salvation to all ”

“ A few adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully about, as memorials of what had been. 'The Roman Catholics'—not a sect, not even an interest, as men conceived of it—not a body, however small, representative of the Great Communion abroad, but a mere handful of individuals, who might be counted, like the pebbles and detritus of the great deluge, and who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed which, in its day indeed, was the profession of a Church. ”

“ Yet this is Christendom, and the Christian principles are entirely familiar, and every Sunday and saint's day in all the Christian churches we protest that the practice of them is essential to our soul's salvation. Then we wipe our eyes, and smile kindly upon any one who really insists that we should offer the other cheek, and forgive seventy times seven. Oh no, we say; that is an eccentric view. No man in this world—that is, in Christendom—can afford to allow himself to be imposed upon. ”

“ Few evolutions in history, indeed, can be more clearly traced than the successive stages through which Rome, by a gradual and very natural process, obtained the primacy of Christendom. In the condition of Europe, again, at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire, the invasion, the triumph, and the rapid conversion of the barbarians, the chief causes of the materialising transformation which Christian ideas underwent appeared abundantly evident; and it became clear to me that some such transformation was inevitable, and essential to their enduring influence. ”

“ Anglican Church; but I considered that the special point or plea of Rome in the controversy was Catholicity, as the Anglican plea was Antiquity. Of course I contended that the Roman idea of Catholicity was not ancient and apostolic. It was in my judgment at the utmost only natural, becoming, expedient, that the whole of Christendom should be united in one visible body; while such a unity might, on the other hand, be nothing more than a mere heartless and political combination. ”

“ Now this one, united, and Catholic Church which, according to His good pleasure, our Lord founded, can only be the Roman Catholic Church, in which the faithful of the five parts of the world are joined together in real unity of faith and government under one Chief Shepherd, the Pope.
The Love of Jesus for sinners. The touching parable of the lost sheep shows our Lord’s compassionate love for individual sinners. The lost sheep signifies a sinner who, obeying his own evil inclinations and the allurements of sin, has separated himself from Jesus, and is shut out from the number of the faithful. ”

“ And we say that such men and women are the salt of the earth, who keep society from rotting; that by such men and women, and by their example and influence, direct and indirect, has Christendom been raised up out of the accursed slough into which Europe and, indeed, the whole known world, had fallen during the early Roman Empire; and that to this influence, and therefore to the Holy Spirit of God alone, and not to any prudential calculations, combined experiences, or so-called philosophies of men, is owing all which keeps Europe from being a hell on earth. ”

“ There are who venture to hope that the English Church, being in like manner double-fronted, looking on the one side toward Rome, being herself truly Catholic, looking on the other towards the Protestant communions, being herself also protesting and reforming, may yet in the providence of God have an important part to play for the reconciling of a divided Christendom. ”

“ But I have one plain question to put,—Does anybody believe that the present condition of Christendom, and the relations to one another even of good Christian people in the various churches and communions of our own and of other lands, is the sort of thing that Jesus Christ meant, or is anything like a fair and adequate representation of the deep, essential unity that knits us all together? ”

“ Sometimes, as in the period of the Roman Empire, when this comparison was first made, the influence of one on the other is more by contagion, by atmosphere, even by contrast, than by direct intercourse. Sometimes the main interest of religious history hangs on an institution, like Episcopacy; on a war, like the Crusades; on a person, like Luther. In some periods, as in the middle ages, the combination of the secular and religious elements will be effected by the political or the intellectual influence of the clergy. ”

“ They will live among those who have suffered in Christendom's trouble, and amid the blessed Kingdom influences by contrast the others shall see their continued evil ways and doings. And they will cause everyone to feel satisfied, content, over the trouble God is bringing upon Christendom. ”

“ I have laid before you, to the utmost of my abilities and means, the result of my inquiry into the evidence of holy Scripture and primitive antiquity, on the invocation of saints and angels, and the blessed Virgin Mary. In this inquiry, excepting so far as was necessary to elucidate the origin and history of the Roman Catholic tenet of the Assumption of the Virgin, we have limited our researches to the writers who lived before the Nicene Council. That Council has always been considered a cardinal point,—a sort of climacteric in the history of the early Church. ”

“ The proper Greek form of the derivation would have been Christicos, or Christenos, and the substantive would have been, not Christianity, but Christicism, or Christenism,――a word so awkward in sound, however, that it is very well for all Christendom, that the Roman barbarism took the place of the pure Greek termination. And since the Latin form of the first derivative has prevailed, and Christian thus been made the name of “a believer in Christ,” it is evident to any classical scholar, that Christianity is the only proper form of the substantive secondarily derived. ”

“ Well might the supporters of the Papal system exclaim with bitterness that their power and influence were gone when the common people had thus the opportunity of examining the Bible for themselves, by its light trying the pretensions which that system puts forth. Would that all professing Protestants, at the present day, studied prayerfully the Word of God, and by its light examined the doctrines and the system of the Church of Rome. ”