hat his hymns were becoming popular in
private assemblies throughout the country, and that even a number of
churches were beginning to use them at their regular services in defiance
of official edicts. The demand for granting more liberty to the laymen in
their church life, a demand Grundtvig long had advocated, was in fact
becoming so strong that the authorities at times found it advisable to
overlook minor infractions of official rulings. Noting this new policy,
Grundtvig himself ventured to introduce some of the new hymns into his
church. In the fall of 1845, he published a small collection of Christmas
hymns to be used at the impending Christmas festival. When the innovation
passed without objections, a similar collection of Easter hymns was
introduced at the Easter services, after which other collections for the
various seasons of the church year appeared quite regularly until all
special prints were collected into one volume and used as "the hymnal of
Vartov."

The work of preparing a new authorized hymnal was finally given to
Grundtvig's closest friend, Ingemann. This hymnal appeared in 1855, under
the title, _Roskilde Convent's Psalmbook_. This book served as the
authorized hymnal of the Danish church until 1899, when it was replaced
by _Hymnal for Church and Home_, the hymnal now used in nearly all Danish
churches both at home and abroad. It contains in all 675 hymns of which
96 are by Kingo, 107 by Brorson, 29 by Ingemann and 173 by Grundtvig,
showing that the latter at last had been recognized as the foremost
hymnwriter of the Danish church.

Chapter Fifteen
Grundtvig's Hymns

Grundtvig wrote most of his hymns when he was past middle age, a man of
extensive learning, proved poetical ability and mature judgment,
especially in spiritual things. Years of hard struggles and unjust
neglect had sobered and mellowed but not aged or embittered him.

His long study of hymnology together with his exceptional poetical gift
enabled him to adopt material from all ages and branches of Christian
song, and to wield it into a homogenous hymnody for his own church. His
treatment of the material is usually very free, so free that it is often
difficult to discover any relationship between his translations and their
supposed originals. Instead of endeavoring to transfer the metre,
phrasing and sentiment of the original text, he frequen