HAUGE, Hans Nielsen (1771-1824), founder of a religious sect within the Lutheran Church of Norway and Denmark, was born in the former country, in the parish of Thunö, April 3, 1771. With the aid of various religious works which he found in his father’s house, he laboured to supplement the scanty education which he had received as a peasant’s son. In his twenty-sixth year, believing himself divinely commissioned, he began to preach in his native parish and afterwards throughout Norway. In 1800 he passed to Denmark, where, as at home, he gained many followers and assistants, chiefly among the lower orders. Proceeding to Christiansand in 1804, Hauge set up a printing-press to disseminate his views more widely, but was almost immediately arrested for holding illegal religious meetings, and for insulting the regular clergy in his books, all of which were confiscated. After being in confinement for ten years, he was released in 1814 on payment of a fine, and retiring to an estate at Breddwill, near Christiania, he died there, March 29, 1824. His adherents, called Haugianer or Leser (i.e., Readers), are still to be found in the south of Norway. By his writing and preaching he unquestionably did much to revive the spiritual life of the northern Lutheran Church. Though he cannot be said to have rejected any article of the Lutheran creed, the peculiar emphasis which he laid upon the evangelical doctrines of faith and grace involved considerable antagonism to the rationalistic or sacerdotal views commonly held by the established clergy....