p. 13 | General Meetings in Scandinavia by L. R. Conradi

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 19, 1909

General Meetings in Scandinavia

By L. R. Conradi

L. R. CONRADI

AFTER our good General Conference, a company of nine of us sailed from New York on the White Star steamer “Cedric,” June 12. We had so arranged it that a full quorum of the European division of the General Conference Committee made the trip back to England together. This gave us an excellent opportunity to talk over the needs of the European fields each day, and to plan for the progress of the work here. There were in our party, Brethren W. J. Fitzgerald, H. F. Schubert, L. P. Tieche, W. C. Sisley, O. A. Olsen, and myself, which gave us six members of the Committee, and beside these, Brethren G. Dail and J. Vuilleumier, and Mrs. Conradi. Special attention was given to the work in the Levant and in Africa, and to our institutions. This was the smoothest passage I ever had over the Atlantic, and none of our party suffered from seasickness.

We were favored with a new departure, in that the passengers for London were landed at Holyhead, Wales, instead of waiting until they reached Liverpool, as they have always done in the past, so that it was possible for us to reach Watford about seven in the evening of Sunday, the twentieth, whereas, if we had gone on to Liverpool, as the passengers usually do, we should not have been in Watford before Monday morning.

We spent a day at Stanborough Park, where we found some improvements in progress. Several neat new cottages have been erected by the society for the use of our employees at Stanborough Park, and they will now put up the

union school building as quickly as possible.

Leaving London Monday night, Mrs. Conradi and I came on to Hamburg, where I remained until Wednesday morning, when, after spending a short time looking after matters in Hamburg that had to be attended to, I left, in company with Elder O. A. Olsen, for Scandinavia. We met Brethren A. C. Christensen and Jens Olsen at Copenhagen, to counsel with them concerning some important matters, and then went on to Upsala, Sweden.

At this place Elders J. C. Raft and S. F. Svensson had been holding a workers’ meeting preceding the conference proper. The conference business was well under way when we arrived.

Upsala, meaning “lofty halls,” is the more important of the two Swedish university towns (Lund is the other). Upsala has a population of nearly twenty-five thousand. Old Upsala, a few miles from the modern town, was, until the end of the thirteenth century, the residence of the pagan kings of Sweden. There was here an old and famous heathen temple, and there are three mounds of the kings, each of which is about fifty-eight feet high and several hundred feet in diameter, and near by is the “assize hill,” still marking the site from which the kings, down to Gustavus Vasa, were accustomed to address the people. The new city contains one of the largest cathedrals in Sweden, and it was nearly two centuries in building. A number of kings and noted persons are buried in it. The university was founded as early as 1477, but it did not become of much importance until Gustavus Adolphus endowed it with the whole of his landed property. The new building, erected in 1877–86, is a credit to the city. The university has over fifty professors, seventy lecturers, and about eighteen hundred students. One of our brethren who was taking the medical course here has now gone to Stockholm, where there has been growing up a newer and more important university. While on the train en route to Upsala, I noticed in a description of the city that in the library of its university, with its three hundred thousand volumes and more than twelve thousand manuscripts, there is, as the chief treasure, the famous Codex Argenteus, a translation of the four Gospels into the Gothic by Bishop Ulphilas. It was written about 380 A. D., on one hundred eighty-seven leaves of parchment, in gold and silver letters, on a reddish background. This precious parchment was captured by the Swedes at Prague, in 1648. This Arian bishop’s translation is the first translation of the Gospels made into any other than the Latin or Greek language, and it is to this work that we are almost exclusively indebted for our knowledge of the ancient or Meso-Gothic language.

There were about two hundred of our people in attendance at the meeting. The conference sessions were held in a good, well-situated hall, while the lectures were given in the tent. The brethren had begun a series of lectures there a short time before the conference, and there was a good attendance. Sweden has been blessed in its canvassing work, and in the prosperity attending its institutions, and it stands well financially. Its growth in membership and tithe has been rather slow. All the workers at this meeting expressed their determination, through the grace of God, to put forth their utmost efforts to bring about a greater growth.

As the north had been worked but little, and as that part of the Northland Mission that is located in Sweden would hardly be enough to hereafter form a separate mission field, the brethren cut off several more districts, so that there will be in the North Swedish Mission, which is to date from Jan. 1, 1910, only a few Sabbath-keepers and a very few workers to labor among about eight hundred thousand people. The Swedish Conference, however, will still contain about four and a quarter millions of people. As the Scandinavian Union Conference is thus taking a greater field to look after in the north, the Swedish Conference readily voted a second tithe to assist the union conference in its efforts to carefully develop that part of Sweden; and so all three of the Scandinavian conferences have now pledged themselves to the policy of paying two tithes to the union conference.

In all their deliberations, the brethren acted very harmoniously. Elder S. F. Svensson was re-elected president of the conference, and Brother E. Lind as the head of the legal society. Brother J. Wallenkampf was transferred from the Northland Mission to the Swedish Conference, and Brother A. J. Settergren will leave southern Sweden for work in the north.

Besides Elders Olsen and Raft, and myself, Brother Nils Andersson, of Iceland, and Elder F. R. Oeberg, of Finland, were present, to take their part with the local conference workers in sharing the burdens of the meeting. A good one-and-a-half-column article that had been prepared by Brother E. J. Ahren concerning the growth of our denominational work, was published in a leading Upsala paper.

The ready manner in which the Swedish brethren responded to the call in behalf of missions showed that they have a deep interest in that work. The collection for the Abyssinian Mission amounted to over one hundred two kroner.

Sweden is a good field. There is perfect liberty in that country. Everybody can read and write. They are all Protestants. There is a good degree of prosperity in the land, and I feel sure that with the power of God accompanying the efforts of our workers, we shall soon have two strong conferences here.

Hamburg.