the most interesting personal
document that we have from Stensen's own hand, in which, on the
eighteenth anniversary of his conversion, he writes to a friend to
describe his feelings. "To-morrow," he says, "I shall finish, God
willing, the eighteenth year of my happy life as a member of the
Church. I wish to acknowledge once more my thankfulness for the part
which you took under God in my conversion. As I hope to have the grace
to be grateful to Him forever, so I sigh for the opportunity to
express {164} my thankfulnes to you and your family. I can feel that
my own ingratitude toward God, my slowness in His service, make me
unworthy of His graces; but I hope that you who have helped me to
enter his service will not cease to pray, so that I may obtain pardon
for the past and grace for the future, in order in some measure to
repay all the favors that have been conferred on me."

The distinguishing characteristic of his life as a bishop was his
insistence on poverty as the principal element of his existence. He
refused to enter his diocese in state in the carriage which the Duke
offered to provide for him, but proceeded there on foot. No question
of supposed dignity could make him employ a number of servants, and
his only retainers were converts made by himself, who helped in the
household and whom he treated quite as equals. He became engaged in
one controversy on religious matters, but said that he did not
consider that converts had ever been made by controversies. He
compared it, indeed, to the gladiatorial contests in which the
contestants had their heads completely enveloped in armor, so as to
prevent any possible penetration of the weapons of an opponent. He
insisted especially that in religious controversies the contending
parties do not realize the significance given to words by each other,
and that therefore no good can result.

After a time, Stensen did not find his work in Hamburg very
satisfactory, because it was typically a missionary country, and the
Jesuit {165} missionaries who had been introduced were accomplishing
all that could be hoped for. Accordingly, when the Duke of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin became a convert to the Catholic Church, and
asked that Stensen should be sent as a bishop into his dukedom, the
request was complied with. Here, in the hardest kind of labor as a
missionary, and in the midst of poverty that was truly apostolic,
Stensen worked out the remaining years of his life. At his death he