k."

The immediate effect of this bold challenge was a stern reprimand from
Bishop Frederik Munter, accompanied by a solemn warning that if he ever
again ventured to voice a similar judgment upon his fellow pastors,
sterner measures would at once be taken against him. Besides this, his
enemies raved, some of his few remaining friends broke with him, and H.
C. Oersted, the famous discoverer of electro-magnetism, continued an
attack upon him that for bitterness has no counterpart in Danish letters.
In the midst of this storm Grundtvig remained self-possessed, answering
his critic quite calmly and even with a touch of humor. Although
relentless in a fight for principles, he was never vindictive toward his
personal enemies. In 1815, he published a collection of poems,
_Kvaedlinger_, in which he asks, "Who knoweth of peace who never has
fought, whoso has been saved and suffered naught?" And these lines no
doubt express his personal attitude toward the battles of life.

Being without a pulpit of his own, Grundtvig, after his return to
Copenhagen, frequently accepted invitations to preach for other pastors.
But as the opposition against him grew, these invitations decreased and,
after the Roskilde affair, only one church, the church of Frederiksberg,
was still open to him. Grundtvig felt his exclusion very keenly, but he
knew that even friendly pastors hesitated to invite him for fear of
incurring the disapproval of superiors or the displeasure of influential
parishioners. And so, at the close of a Christmas service in the
Frederiksberg church in 1815, he solemnly announced that he would not
enter a pulpit again until he had been duly appointed to do so by the
proper authorities.

Grundtvig's withdrawal from the church, though pleasing to his active
enemies, was a great disappointment to his friends. His services had
always been well attended, and his earnest message had brought comfort to
many, especially among the distressed Evangelicals. But others, too, felt
the power of his word. Thus a man in Copenhagen, after attending one of
his services, wrote to a friend, "that he had laughed at the beginning of
the sermon and wept at its conclusion" and that "it was the only earnest
testimony he had ever heard from a pulpit." And a reporter writing to a
Copenhagen newspaper about his last service said, "Our famous Grundtvig
preached yesterday at Frederiksberg church to such a crowd of people that
the church was much too small to a