Emigrants

WITH GOD'S HELP AND THROUGH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE AUTHORITIES

------VIII - - - - - WITH GOD'S HELP AND THROUGH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE AUTHORITIES -1ONE DAY IN FEBRUARY the churchwarden, Per Persson, came to Dean Brusander with grave tidings: behind locked doors in Karragarde Danjel Andreasson gathered his house folk and neighbors to nightly meetings and administered the Lord's Holy Supper. At first the dean would not believe his warden: the news was too shocking. But Per Persson had the word of eyewitnesses; some young people happening by the other night had peeked in through the windows in Karragarde, and had seen people gathered inside around a Communion table. After hearing of this, he himself last night had gone to the farm and looked through the window to ascertain the truth. He had seen some ten people sitting around a table, while Danjel conducted confession and Communion among them; no person with eyesight could remain in doubt as to what was taking place. By reliable people in the neighborhood he had also been informed that Danjel, through one of the timber drivers, had sent to Karlshamn for several gallons of Communion wine. Dean Brusander sat for a long while with bent head after hearing the warden's report. He had tried to bring Danjel Andreasson back into the church through peaceful and gentle means. He had warned, and thought he had enlightened him with kind admonitions. He had sought with mild measures to correct his false opinions of God and spiritual freedom. He had avoided commotion in the parish, and had treated the poor man with caution and consideration. Only when Andreasson had inoculated 1°9 110 THE EMIGRANTS simple, spineless people with his poison, and had continued to gather them to meetings in his house, had Dean Brusander excluded him from the Lord's altar. But through all his kindness, patience, and tolerance with the strayed one, he had apparently only given freer scope for the Evil Spirit: the miserable people· in Karragarde were now led so far by the devil that they confessed and held Communion among themselves. The sacred sacraments, Christ's body and blood, the church's most holy jewel and exclusive prerogative, these sacraments were desecrated by an ignorant peasant, they were soiled by the hands of a coarse and criminal person. Andreasson was inflated with spiritual vanity; he had commenced with Bible explanations and thereby encroached upon the ministry, later his presumption had gone so far that in his house he organized his own congregation and held his own church. Thus Danjel Andreasson in Karragarde set himself above temporal and spiritual ordinances. If God still hesitated and did not defend His holy and catholic church, then secular authorities must enter in, must discipline the strayed ones, rebuke the leader and agitator. Per Persson said: What now took place in Karragarde would stir and upset parish people profoundly. Deeply grieved, Brusander looked at his warden. "I fear the same. We must immediately avert these excesses." He now wished to ask the advice of Per Persson, his most trusted churchwarden. Brusander had been unlucky in his choice of wardens: one used to steal into the sacristy during weekdays and drink from the Communion wine, so that one Sunday when Brusander had announced a Communion he had been forced to call it off; another had appeared drunk in church and placed the numbers of the hymns upside down; a third had, on the holy Christmas morning, repaired to a corner of the organ loft and there let his water, in the presence of several women. But always the dean had had full confidence in Per Persson. Because he consumed only a fifth of brannvin per day he was, in sobriety, a worthy example for other parishioners. It was true that ugly rumors had circulated concerning his moral life, but these were, fortunately, unverified. When he had been accused of causing the pregnancy of a fifteen-year-old girl boarding in his house, as a parish pauper, the dean had questioned him privately, and Per Persson had repudiated the false accusation, saying it was spread by the malicious WITH GOD'S HBLP III and jealous. And it was a fact that the warden's great success in worldly affairs had him the object of much jealousy in the parish. "Speak freely, Per Persson! What means shall we use against these Akians?" The warden answered: Old parishioners remembered how much trouble Ake Svensson had caused in his day...