Rare Clenod of
Faith_ passed through six editions before the death of its author, and a
new church hymnal published in 1740 contained ninety of his hymns.
Pietism swept the country and adopted Brorson as its poet. But its reign
was surprisingly short. King Christian VI died in 1746, and the new king,
a luxury-loving worldling, showed little interest in religion and none at
all in Pietism. Under his influence the movement quickly waned. During
the latter part of the eighteenth century it was overpowered by a wave of
religious rationalism which engulfed the greater part of the intellectual
classes and the younger clergy. The intelligentsia adopted Voltaire and
Rousseau as their prophets and talked endlessly of the new age of
enlightenment in which religion was to be shorn of its mysteries and
people were to be delivered from the bonds of superstition.

In such an atmosphere the old hymns and, least of all, Brorson's hymns
with their mystic contemplation of the Saviour's blood and wounds could
not survive. The leading spirits in the movement demanded a new hymnal
that expressed the spirit of the new age. The preparation of such a book
was undertaken by a committee of popular writers, many of whom openly
mocked Evangelical Christianity. Their work was published under the title
_The Evangelical Christian Hymnal_, a peculiar name for a book which, as
has been justly said, was neither Evangelical nor Christian. The
compilers had eliminated many of the finest hymns of Kingo and Brorson
and ruthlessly altered others so that they were irrecognizable. To
compensate for this loss, a great number of "poetically perfect hymns" by
newer writers--nearly all of whom have happily been forgotten--were
adopted.

But while would-be leaders discarded or mutilated the old hymns and, with
a zeal worthy of a better cause, sought to force their new songs upon the
congregations, many of these clung tenaciously to their old hymnal and
stoutly refused to accept the new. In places the controversy even
developed into a singing contest, with the congregations singing the
numbers from the old hymnal and the deacons from the new. And these
contests were, of course, expressive of an even greater controversy than
the choice of hymns. They represented the struggle between pastors,
working for the spread of the new gospel, and congregations still
clinging to the old. With the highest authorities actively supporting the
new movement, the result of the conte