His Christ was not primarily the bleeding, the
scourged, the crucified, but rather a benigner and lovelier Phoebus
Apollo, the bringer of clearness and light, the dispeller of the
unwholesome mists and barbaric gloom that yet brood over the human soul.
Like Goethe, he cherished a veritable abhorrence of the mystic symbolism
of the mediaeval church; and was rather inclined to minimize the
significance of Christ's death and passion. He had undeniably imparted
into his Christianity a great deal of sunny Hellenic paganism--a fact
which in his familiar correspondence with Franzen he scarcely cares to
disguise.
Having this conception of the episcopal office, he could not escape
emphasizing his function as the supervisor of the schools of his
diocese. If he was to be a civilizer on any great scale, the chance
which was here afforded him to impress his ideals upon the rising
generation was not one to be neglected. And, as a matter of fact, Tegner
was indefatigable in his labors as an educator. His many speeches at
school celebrations preached, as ever, a gospel derived from Greece
rather than Judaea; and half-improvised though some of them appear to be,
they contain passages of lofty eloquence.
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