In Norway, the rivers can be swift and hard to cross by boat. Hans had the feeling that danger was close by. He tells the story in his words:
“When I was thirteen, my father and I, a brother, and another man, were nearly drowned hauling hay across the river by boat. One of the men fell into the water and, in grabbing hold of the side of the craft where the rest of us were lying, tipped us all into the stream. All day I had a premonition of danger. Nor did I escape.
“When we fell into the water, I looked round to see if there was anything to keep me afloat. I saw nothing but my companions who were calling for help. I remember thinking, “What are they shouting for? There is no hope of rescue here!”
“Other ideas kept running through my mind. First, I thought about my mother, who became deeply upset even by little things. And now my father, brother and I were to perish here. That would be an unbearable sorrow for her.
“I remembered the small possessions I had in the line of clothing and the rest, and said to myself, ‘My brothers will get all that.’ It was hard for me to give up these things which I loved, even though death seemed imminent. When a person’s pleasures are in temporal things, the end result is just as Christ says in Luke 12, about the man who had received such a good harvest: ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. Then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?’ I prayed God to be gracious to me for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the anguish of hell gripped my soul and I began to fear its darkness as I realized that I had not loved God as I ought. The dark terror of death filled me with such dread that my heart weeps when I think about it. The physical pain was nothing to compare with the terror in my soul and the anguish in my conscience. And though I longed for light, it grew dark around me. I lost consciousness.
“Where my spirit was at that moment I do not know. My companions have told me that I lay still and floated on the water. Then the current carried me to shore and my brother pulled me out. I was like a dead person. When they were not able to find any signs of life, my father prayed to God to show mercy on my soul. In the meantime they tried to resuscitate me. Soon I began to breathe again. Within half a day I was, by the grace of God, as well as ever.”
Hans revived, but the dread he felt in that river followed him. And though he was very religious, he still knew he was not prepared to meet God. Twelve years passed and Hans lived for himself; he made money, but was not rich toward God. Working on his father’s farm, the “Hauge Gaard,” just fifty miles southeast of Oslo, he excelled in mechanics. He became the village handyman, as a self-taught cabinetmaker, carpenter, beekeeper, and blacksmith. Many of the tools he used he both invented and forged himself.
On April 5, 1796, at twenty-five years of age, while working in the field, an old song came to his mind:
Oh, take Thou captive each passion and win me,
Lead Thou and guide me my whole journey through!
All that I am and possess I surrender,
If Thou alone in my spirit mayest dwell,
Everything yield Thee, O Saviour, most tender,
Thou, only Thou, canst my sadness dispel.
Hans knew that to trust the Lord Jesus Christ would mean surrendering all to Him and, until then, Hans had lived to make money. There in the field, Hans saw the love of Christ for him and he confessed all his greed and covetousness to God. Instead of serving himself, Hans said, “Now I wanted very much to serve God. I asked Him to reveal to me what I should do. The answer echoed in my heart, ‘You shall confess My name before the people; exhort them to repent and seek Me while I may be found and call upon Me while I am near; and touch their hearts that they may turn from darkness to light.’ “
That same spring Hauge (pronounced How-gee) published a little book entitled “Meditation on the Folly of the World.” In all, he would write thirty-three books. During the first year of his evangelistic work, Hauge confined his activities to his own community, but within a few years he had reached practically every valley in the country.
Traveling by foot, on ski, on horseback and by boat, in all seasons and in all kinds of weather, he journeyed more than ten thousand miles in the first eight years of his ministry. Speaking to cottage gatherings, Hauge was shocked when, as he spoke from the Bible, his audiences would melt down before his eyes. To see stoic farmers and fishermen, sitting beside their wives and children, break into tears, caused Hauge to marvel. It was evident that the words spoken were accompanied with spiritual power. Home prayer and testimony meetings became commonplace throughout that rugged land.
But Hauge’s evangelistic message was not universally appreciated. Between 1796 and 1804, he was arrested ten times, accused of violating the Conventicle Law (which required special permission from clergyman of the state church to assemble for religious purposes), as well as witchcraft, drunkenness, adultery, theft, dishonesty, and insubordination toward constituted authority. He was physically assaulted three times. On one occasion, the local clergyman came down to the police station to see his prize in order to spit in his face and slap his cheek. His enemies either caricatured him as an eccentric phenomenon, a religious fanatic, or else feared his influence and warned that he had ambitions to lead a peasant revolt. Dogged by police, and hailed into court, he would prove his innocence and be set free, usually with a warning that he stop preaching lest he violate the Conventicle Law.
Hauge had his own interpretation of the Conventicle Law, which he said was an outmoded attempt to control heretics and fanatics, of which he was neither. But the state church felt differently. On a preaching trip to the Eker diocese, he was arrested October 24, 1804, on government orders from Copenhagen. He was put in iron chains and placed in custody. Despite a general outcry and many appeals, he remained in prison, awaiting trial, for about a decade.
During the time of Hauge’s imprisonment, England had imposed an embargo against Norway and Denmark, which resulted in a shortage of salt. Hauge had often used his mechanical genius in his travels. For instance, he would confer with local businessmen and explain how they could harness the fast moving streams and waterfalls for mills, or how they could set up a potash plant. In these ways, Hauge went about doing good. So it was that he was briefly taken from his imprisonment and asked if he would help devise a way to economically extract salt from the sea water, which Hauge happened to know how to do. That task completed, back to prison he went.
The eventual trial was a lengthy, far-flung ordeal in which one hundred and thirty witnesses testified. The courts finally decided that Hauge was innocent of all charges except the crime of preaching to gatherings without government permission. He was then fined and released.
Hauge’s health was broken by this long imprisonment. He entered prison as a robust thirty-three year old, and left eleven years later, having lost most of his teeth and hair, an old man ready to go Home. But the movement God had begun was enjoying the strength of it’s youth. Most of Hauge’s remaining years were spent as a semi-invalid on his farm, called “Bredtvet.” From his couch, he was confidant and counselor to a vigorous evangelistic and missionary movement until his death in 1824.
Hans Nelson Hauge is known as the apostle to Norway. In the eight years after his conversion to Christ, he criss-crossed mountainous Norway preaching the Gospel. His imprisonment made him a symbol of true, experiential Christianity, laboring against ritualistic, worldly religion. Following his vindication in a court of law, thousands were saved and began home Bible study and prayer meetings, and hundreds followed Hauge’s example and became what the clergymen call “lay preachers.”
The common people loved Hauge but many of the religious leaders scorned him. Today in Norway, Hauge is praised as a national hero, and the same religious system that persecuted him, now erects statues to his memory and yearly observes “Hauge Day” garnishing the sepulchre of this prophet as others have done to others before.
FURTHER READING:
The Apostle of Norway, Hans Nielsen Hauge, by M. Arntzen
Autobiographical Writings, by Hans Nielsen Hauge
The Light in the Prison Window, by W. Pettersen
Pulpit Under the Sky, by Joseph M. Shaw