age and forceful
eloquence of his sermons remind one of the best of his spiritual songs.

Kingo's writings and frequent travels brought him into contact with most
of the outstanding personages of his country in his day. His charming
personality, lively conversation and fine sense of humor made him a
welcome guest wherever he appeared. On the island of Taasinge, he was a
frequent and beloved guest in the stately castle of the famous, pious and
revered admiral, Niels Juul, and his equally beloved wife, Birgitte
Ulfeldt. His friendship with this worthy couple was intimate and lasting.
When admiral Juul died, Kingo wrote the beautiful epitaph that still
adorns his tomb in the Holmen church at Copenhagen. On the island of
Falster he often visited the proud and domineering ex-queen, Carolina
Amalia. He was likewise a frequent visitor at the neighboring estate of
the once beautiful and adored daughter of king Christian IV, Leonora
Ulfeldt, whom the pride and hatred of the ex-queen had consigned for
twenty-two years to a dark and lonely prison cell. Years of suffering, as
we learn from her still famous book _Memories of Misery_, had made the
princess a deeply religious woman. Imprisonment had aged her body, but
had neither dulled her brilliant mind nor hardened her heart. She spent
her remaining years in doing good, and she was a great admirer of Kingo.

Thus duty and inclination alike brought him in contact with people of
very different stations and conditions in life. His position and high
personal endowments made him a notable figure wherever he went. But he
had his enemies and detractors as well as his friends. It was not
everyone who could see why a poor weaver's son should be raised to such a
high position. Kingo was accused of being greedy, vain, over-ambitious
and self-seeking, all of which probably contained at least a grain of
truth. We should have missed some of his greatest hymns, if he had been a
saint, and not a man of flesh and blood, of passionate feelings and
desires, a man who knew from his own experiences that without Christ he
could do nothing.

Despite certain peculiar complications, Kingo's private life was quite
happy. Four years after the death of his first wife, he entered into
marriage with Johanne Lund, a widow many years older than he. She brought
with her a daughter from her former marriage. And Kingo thus had the
exceptional experience of being stepfather to three sets of children, the
daughter o