During this period of national self-assertion Björnson has unfolded a colossal activity. Though holding no office, and steadily refusing an election to the Storthing, he has been the life and soul of the liberal party. The task which he had undertaken grew upon his hands, and assumed wider and wider dimensions. As his predecessor Wergeland had done, and in a far deeper sense, he consecrated his life to the spiritual and intellectual liberation of his people. It is told of the former that he was in the habit of walking about the country with his pockets full of seeds of grass and trees, of which he scattered a handful here and a handful there; for, he said, you can never tell what will grow up after it. There is to me something quite touching in the patriotism which prompted this act. Björnson, too, is in the same sense "a sower who went forth for to sow." And the golden grain of his thought falls, as in the parable, in all sorts of places; but, unlike some of the seed in the parable, it all leaves some trace behind. It stimulates reflection, it awakens life, it arouses the torpid soul, it shakes the drowsy soul, it shocks the pious soul, it frightens the timid soul, but it lifts them all, as it were, by main force, out of themselves, and makes healthful breezes blow, and refreshing showers fall upon what was formerly a barren waste. This is Björnson's mission; this is, during the second period of his career, his greatness and his highest significance.
Of course there are many opinions as to the value of the work he has accomplished in this capacity of political and religious liberator. The Conservative party of Norway, which runs the errands of the king and truckles to Sweden, hates him with a bitter and furious hatred; the clergy denounce him, and the official bureaucracy can scarcely mention his name without an anathema. But the common people, though he has frightened many of them away by his heterodoxy, still love him. It is especially his disrespect to the devil (whom he professes not to believe in) which has been a sore trial to the Bible-reading, hymn-singing peasantry. Does not the Bible say that the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour? Nevertheless Björnson has the hardihood to assert that there is no such person. And yet Björnson is a man who can talk most beautifully, and who knows as much as any parson. It is extremely puzzling.