alvation.

Come, Holy Ghost, Thy grace impart,
Tear Satan's snares asunder.
The Word of God keep in our heart,
That we its truth may ponder.
Then, sanctified, for evermore,
In Christ alone confiding,
We'll sing His praise and Him adore,
His precious Word us guiding
To heavenly joys abiding.

Olavus Petri, 1530.

THE SWEDISH REFORMERS AND THEIR HYMNS

The Reformation fires kindled by Luther and his contemporaries in
Wittenberg spread with amazing rapidity to all parts of Europe. In the
year that Luther nailed his famous theses on the chapel door at
Wittenberg, two brothers--Olavus and Laurentius Petri--arrived from
Sweden to study at the university made famous by Luther and Melanchthon.
They were sons of a village blacksmith at Orebro, Sweden.

In 1519 they returned to their native land, full of reforming zeal.
Olavus was the more fiery of the two brothers, and he lost no time
entering into the political and spiritual storm that was threatening to
break over their country. In the Stockholm massacre the following year
Olavus almost lost his life when he cried out in protest at the cruel
beheading of his friend, the bishop of Strengnas. Only the intervention
of a Wittenberg acquaintance, who asserted that Olavus was a German
citizen, saved the young man from a similar fate. The massacre had been
instigated by Roman intrigue.

Olavus preached boldly against the sale of indulgences and other abuses
of the papal church, and, when the Swedish revolution placed Gustavus
Vasa on the throne in 1523, the young reformer found a powerful ally in
the new monarch. Despite protests of the ecclesiastical authorities, the
king ordered a pulpit placed in the cathedral church of Stockholm and
gave Olavus permission to preach to the populace in the native tongue.

The following year the two brothers were summoned to appear before the
papal authorities at Upsala, but, when neither threats nor bribes could
induce them to desist from their high-minded purpose, they were placed
under the ban. This, however, made them only the more determined to carry
out their Reformation plans.

Laurentius Andreae, archdeacon of Strengnas, also had been converted to
the principles of the Reformation and powerfully espoused the cause
championed by the Petri brothers. In 1523 he was appointed by Gustavus
Vasa as chancellor to the king, and it was largely