People across the English-speaking world are often surprised to hear that 19th-century Denmark produced not one, but two figures of international significance in the field of religious thought and life, Soren Kierkegaard and NFS Grundtvig. Apart from the impact of his educational ideas on some parts of the southern hemisphere, most notably India, Grundtvig's viewpoint on human nature and human society, on the relationship between national and international community, on the inner dynamic which sustains and drives forward the Christian tradition, remains remarkably little known outside his own country. In recent years, however, this situation has begun to change. Grundtvig's thought is being more widely studied and discussed in an international perspective. This varied collection of essays, mostly European and North American, illustrates this development. It suggests that in NFS Grundtvig we have a 19th-century thinker with unexpected relevance to the dilemmas of the new century.

An exploration of the spirituality of the Welsh people through the ages by means of a study of the spiritual pilgrimages of seven Welsh men and women, namely Meilyr Brydydd, Guto'r Glyn, William Williams, Pantycelyn, Mary Jones, Ann Griffiths, Ruth Evans, Waldo Williams and D. Gwenallt Jones.

N F S Grundtvig (1783-1872) was a prominent preacher, poet, scholar and politician, who played a crucial role in the life of nineteenth-century Denmark. His sermons and hymns, and his educational and historical writings, gave birth to a national and spiritual awakening, which still strongly affects Danish life and thought today. This book is an introduction to Grundtvig to the English speaking world. It begins with an overview of Grundtvig's long and varied life, concentrating on a number of critical moments in his intellectual and spiritual development. He was a man of irrepressible energy and a volcanic temperament, and his life was not without moments of high drama. The second part of the book looks at vital aspects of his presentation of the Christian faith, beginning from his vision of the Church as a living sacramental and historical reality. It centres on the deeply Trinitarian nature of his thinking: for him faith in God as Trinity has its outworking in the whole of daily life, social and political, as well as personal. The third section of the book follows Grundtvig's exposition of the faith through the festivals of the Christian year. Grundtvig was a man firmly rooted in his own time and place. But his thoughts often have a prophetic ring to them. They have still much to say about the underlying unity of the Christian tradition, about questions of national identity and national interdependence, and about the way in which we may come to a new understanding of the creation itself as made in God's image and likeness.

One of the outstanding Christian thinkers of all time, Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662) exerted a powerful formative influence on the Church when it was still one and undivided. Maximus left his stamp on Christianity as it is now recognized by all three broad streams of Christian faith: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. Yet for centuries the detailed study of Maximus's writings was neglected. The first edition of Thunberg's Microcosm and Mediator (1965) helped to transform this situation of indifference into one of intense interest in Maximus and the subtleties of his thinking. This new edition has been revised and expanded, with updated references and bibliographies. The focus of Microcosm and Mediator is Maximus's anthropology, his highly developed general reflections on human nature. Maximus understands man as, not only a being - a microcosm - who reflects the constitution of the created universe, but also as a being - a mediator - created in the image of God, whose task it is, in Christ, to reconcile the spiritual and the sensible into one homogeneous unity.

It is the intention of these seventeen essays to introduce English-speaking readers to the life and thought of a great nineteenth-century Danish churchman who is still a living influence in the day-to-day life of the country to which he belonged.