The most serious charge that can be brought against the Scandinavians in this country as a class is, that they are behind the times. Since the days of Gustavus Adolphus and his work for the Reformation the northern nations have had little influence upon the life of Europe. Charles XII. of Sweden for a time disturbed the peace of Russia, and Napoleon managed to mix up the Scandinavian countries in his difficulties with England, but with these exceptions no great interest has been felt for the world outside by the people of the North. While the great world south of him was moving forward through revolutions of governments and of thought, the Scandinavian sat still at home, pondering the question how the stones around him might be made bread. In the onward march of the world he was almost forgotten up there in the frozen north, and in his isolation his ideas and his interests narrowed down to the affairs of his own little circle, which to him became of supreme importance. Class distinctions, almost as severely marked as by the Hindu caste system, gradually divided each little community, and they still remain in a great measure, in spite of the modern renaissance which the Scandinavian countries have experienced during the present century. In religious affairs there has been until recently a regime as autocratic almost as that of the Czar. All Scandinavians since 1550 until the latter half of this century were by reason of their nativity members of the Lutheran church. When one ventures to separate himself from that church he voluntarily ostracises himself from the society in which he has had a standing hitherto, and is made to feel that his religious views are revolutionary and anarchistic, refusing obedience to appointed authority in spiritual things. This pressure unquestionably hinders the work of the reformed churches in Scandinavia no less perhaps than the intolerant dogmatism of the State Church, which unblushingly arrogates to itself the monopoly of Christian truth and the right to teach it. These characteristics have been intensified and stereotyped by the isolation of the people, so that the work of bringing those who come to this country into sympathy with the social and religious ideas of life here must of necessity be a work of time and of patient education.