The situation as here described may serve to show the importance of an independent press, a journalism completely free from the least suspicion of spiritual tyranny. There are such journals among the Scandinavians. One or two of them are towers of strength, but the greater number are feebly supported by a few dissenters sprinkled over this entire land. And yet their influence is not unimportant. In the minds of their readers they open windows that have grown dim by the dust of ages; from the musty chambers they clear the cobwebs that no breath of air has disturbed before. They give new visions of a life much richer than that of the Fathers, and in this work they join from a Christian standpoint the stream of thought and aspiration in Scandinavian literature, which for the last century has broken away from the narrow bounds which hitherto held it; but mostly in channels realistic, un-Christian and often infidel. The work which these papers are doing should be encouraged more than it is, for it means the emancipation of a race, and a larger life for our republic. It remains to speak of another factor in the process of weaving the Scandinavian fibre into our social fabric. That is the Church. The only Church which until recently has had the moulding and determining influence on the Scandinavian people is the Lutheran. For three hundred and fifty years or more she has held undisputed sway over their spiritual and intellectual life. The result fills one with sadness. In England and America men have generally come to believe the Church of Christ the most potent power for the help and uplift of every man who comes under its influence. In Scandinavia they have come to think that before a man can be lifted out of his narrow, selfish and often stupid views of life, he must come out from the Church, for it is her influence that is crushing all higher life out of the people. This explains the exodus from the Church, on the one hand, of the men who are the intellectual leaders of the North to-day, the writers of its literature, and who go into infidelity; on the other hand of those who still believe that in Christ alone is life, but failing to find it in the forms and ceremonies of a lifeless church come out from it, and are like sheep having no shepherd, though looking for the true fold of Christ. The first class, the literati, have frankly and almost unanimously bidden Christianity farewell. Thinking the whole of it as hollow and emasculated as the only representative of it familiar to them, they have no use for it themselves, and only warnings against it for others. Apart from this hostility to the Church their endeavors seem to be on the side of good. In books and lectures they labor enthusiastically for the social and intellectual elevation of the people. The second class, those who for conscience sake have separated themselves, the dissenters, have naturally no sympathy with this intellectual movement. They look with distrust upon an education with