races, nor will there ever be,
but there is probably as little conflict between them as is compatible
with the difference of blood.

At Tromsoe, a tall, strong, clerical gentleman came on board, who proved
to be the noted Pastor Lamers, one of the first if not the very first
Clergyman in Norway, who has refused to receive the government
support--or, in other words, has seceded from the Church, as a State
establishment, while adhering to all its fundamental doctrines. It is
the first step towards the separation of Church and State, which must
sooner or later come, in Norway and in Sweden. He has a congregation of
three hundred members, in Tromsoe, and is about organising a church at
Gibostad, on the island of Senjen. He has some peculiar views, I
believe, in relation to the baptism of children, and insists that the
usual absolution dealt out by the Pastors is of no effect without full
confession and the specification of particular sins--but in other
respects he is entirely orthodox, retaining even the ceremonial of the
Eucharist. This, in the Lutheran church of Norway, comes so near to the
Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, that one cannot easily
perceive any difference. Instead of bread, an unleavened wafer is
administered to the communicants, the priest saying, as he gives it,
"This is the _true_ body and blood of Jesus Christ." Mr. Forrester, a
devout admirer of the Church, which he thinks identical with that of
England in all its essentials, says, "The Lutherans reject the Romish
doctrine of transubstantiation, but they hold that of a spiritual and
ineffable union of the divine nature with the elements, the substance of
which remains unchanged. This is called _consubstantiation_." Verily,
the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee--one being as absurd as
the other.

No one, coming from a land where all sects stand upon an equal footing,
and where every church must depend for existence on its own inherent
vitality, can fail to be struck with the effete and decrepit state of
religion in Sweden and Norway. It is a body of frigid mechanical forms
and ceremonies, animated here and therewith a feeble spark of spiritual
life, but diffusing no quickening and animating glow. I have often been
particularly struck with the horror with which the omission of certain
forms was regarded by persons in whom I could discover no trace of any
religious principle. The Church has a few dissensions to combat; she has
n