One of the potent factors determining religious and theological education in the Middle West was Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872). Justly famous as hymn writer, archaeologist, educationist, and theologian, Grundtvig strove to build a new Germanic culture in Denmark to replace the “Latin culture” which he believed had been destroyed by the French Revolution. This new culture he hoped to found on Christian principles backed by the “living word” so thoroughly accepted by the earlier Germanic mysticism, which in turn came via Neo-Platonism from Plato himself. Hans Denck taught that the Scriptures apart from the inner living word were nothing, and Calvin, Herder, and Fichte seemed to support this teaching. It is likely that Fichte's influence in this direction was most keenly felt by Grundtvig, although he found the same idea in the old Germanic-Scandinavian theology and mythology which he sought successfully to revive. The Scandinavian Thuler, which may be translated seer or prophet, represented by the “living word” the human incarnation of Odin. Saxo calls the Thuler the Uggerus vates; and Caesar records the fact that the Druids who were certainly akin to the old Scandinavians forbade that their teachings about God and the immortality of the soul be put into written form, since such subjects could be understood only in the “living word.” All this Grundtvig adopted and taught. Likewise he held that the ten commandments should be considered “living words” handed down from mouth to mouth in order that they might carry the needed inspiration to make them effective in life. This idea he carried over immediately into his theory of education.

Gerald Massey, once hailed by Landor as comparable to Keats, to “a chastened Hafiz,” to Shakespeare when at his best in his sonnets, has earned the reward of forgotten prophets. This poet, who espoused the cause of chartism in the England of his day, who worked for the common people, who helped shape democracy, was eclipsed by Tennyson, his contemporary and rival. Massey, who came to the defence of F. D. Maurice with these lines:

God bless you, Brave One, in our dearth,

Your life shall leave a trailing glory;

And round the poor man's homely hearth

We proudly tell your suffering's story,

brought to America the seed of the social gospel. It was this same Massey whom George Eliot met and admired in London and later portrayed in Felix Holt, the Radical.

Some forty years ago, Frederic J. Turner, the eminent American historian, called attention to the fact that the religious life of the frontier has not been sufficiently investigated. Since then, much important work in this field has been done. One aspect of the religious life of the frontier, however, has been almost entirely neglected, that of Swedenborgianism, or, as followers of the Swedish prophet prefer to say, that of the New Church. Emanuel Swedenborg was born in Stockholm in 1688. Since we are approaching the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of his birth, now is an opportune time to investigate a hitherto neglected influence, very potent on the American frontier during the nineteenth century.