8. Hauge's First Publication

HAUGE’S FIRST PUBLICATION.

As Hauge’s life thus passed through different inner vicissitudes, he set to work to write his spiritual career. His aim was, by telling how God had led him to disprove the wicked rumors which circulated about him. Incidentally he would also, as he appeared as a revivalist at a time when so very few knew from their own experience what conversion and life in God were, give his own impressions of what it means to be converted and become a living Christian. That is why he started his first book with these words: “As I, by the long-enduring kindness of God, have been kept in the world until now, I will here enumerate the most notable of good and bad which has happened to me so far, with the intention that others together with me may consider what we ought to have done, and what we really did.”

Many derived benefit from this publication. The converted ones had nobody to guide them. The parents were afraid of insanity, the pastor advised blood-letting, others wanted those converted to play cards, to dance, etc., in order to get the notions out of their heads. In this extremity Hauge’s publication was a precious guidance to peace and strength against all ignorant advices and temptations.

This publication was added to another which he printed soon thereafter. Here he had in a way interpreted his programme for his later activity: to induce “the great controversy between Michael and the dragon,” to strive for “that the true Christianity shall get the upper hand,” this is the inscription on the banner he raises in the air, and under which he will fight, even if the struggle shall bring him a “crown of martyrdom.”
In this pamphlet he severely punished the dead clergy, and it took him much struggle before he decided to have it printed.

To Be Continued....