370 VIIL.—THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 1812—1gr0).
suffice to indicate the main directions, both of those which
may be called evangelical and social and those which are
more distinctly ecclesiastical.
The evangelical movements may be considered as more
or less derived from the Pietism which, as we have seen,
entered Sweden after the Church law became more
stringent under Charles XI., and especially in company
with the returning soldiers who had been taken prisoners
in the wars of Charles XII. It is a striking fact that these
movements, like many older ones in Sweden, were gener-
ally initiated in the northern provinces, and often by men
of northern birth. This is the case with the “New
Readers,” with Lars Levi Lastadius, with the prophets of
Helsingland, and with Rosénius and Lektor Waldenstrom.
They took, however, different forms, and it is necessary to
distinguish one from the other.
The earliest of these movements, that of the ‘‘new
readers,” took at its beginning the form of a protest
against the Catechism and Prayer Book put out by Arch-
bishop Lindblom, and prescribed by authority in the year
1810 and 1811 respectively. It arose in Norrland, particu-
larly in the neighbourhood of the coast towns of Pited and
Skellefted. The “Old Readers” had not separated from
the Church, but the new sect, after a time, were eagerly
desirous to do so. About the year 1848 they began to
administer their own sacraments. They professed to be
enthusiastic for *‘ pure doctrine,” as against the unortho-
doxy of the State Church, and they pressed justification
by faith to an antinomian extreme. For instance, a soldier
from Pited, who became one of their leaders, asserted that
a man could have saving faith, even when sin and a love of
this world were ruling in his heart; while John Rostrom,
a peasant preacher (who died in 1868), denounced the
clergy of the established Church as false prophets.
The movement which is connected with the name of
Lars Levi Lastadius (1800—1861) was, at any rate in its
inception, of a very different character. He was a learned
