ll them that we accept nothing
unto salvation except what the Christian church has taught and confessed
from generation to generation. To or from that we neither add nor
detract. We acknowledge without reservation that word of faith which Paul
says is believed to righteousness and confessed unto salvation. The
manner of teaching and believing that faith so that the Old Adam may be
put off and the new put on, we hold to be a matter of enlightenment in
which we shall be guided by Grundtvig, as we are guided by Luther, only
in so far as we are convinced that he has been guided by Scripture and
the Spirit. We also disclaim any intention of making our conception of
Scripture an article of faith which must be accepted by the church."
Grundtvig's followers would, no doubt, have profited greatly by
remembering this truly liberal view of their leader.

Thus his years passed quietly onward, filled with fruitful labor even
unto the end. In contrast to his often stormy public career, Grundtvig's
private life was quite peaceful and commonplace, subject only to the
usual trials and sorrows of human existence. During the greater part of
his life he was extremely poor, subsisting on a small government pension,
the meager returns from his writings and occasional gifts from friends.
For his own part this did not trouble him; his wants were few and easily
satisfied. But he "liked to see shining faces around him," as he once
wrote, and he had discovered that the face of a child could often be
brightened by a small gift, which he was frequently too poor to give.
"But if we would follow the Lord in these days," he wrote to a friend,
"we must evidently be prepared to renounce all things for His sake and
cast out all these heathen worries for dross and chaff with which we as
Christians often distress ourselves."

Grundtvig was thrice married. His first wife, Lise Grundtvig, died
January 4, 1851, after a long illness. Her husband said at her grave, "I
stand here as an old man who is taking a decided step toward my own grave
by burying the bride of my youth and the mother of my children who for
more than forty years with unfailing loyalty shared all my joys and
sorrows--and mostly latter."

But Grundtvig did not appear to be growing old. During the following
summer he attended the great meeting of Scandinavian students at Oslo,
where he was hailed as the youngest of them all. And on October 4 of the
same year, he rejoiced his enemies and griev