has been like the coming of spring with its healing breath to some battlefield, when the scars disappear which cruel war had left. It is not her age, but her spirit, that has given Methodism her power. Greece was the smallest, as well as the shortest-lived of the nations, having at best but two brief centuries of national life, but what she was blessed all the nations of the earth with a new love of humanity, which breathes in her art, her science, her literature. In these tumultuous times when Rome, having been shorn of her temporal dominion, sees some of the Latin nations on which she has leaned for centuries deprived of their wealth and their colonies and others marked by a stationary census and threatened with social revolution; when the Church of England is being shaken to its foundations; when widespread unrest and differences of opinion threaten to divide some of the noble Churches of the Reformation-in such times as these, whether Methodism shall be able to still perform her mission of hope and of healing, or whether another great religious movement shall become necessary, will depend, not on the doctrinal integrity of Methodism, not on her gifted sons, not on her splendid organization, not on her "far-flung battle line" in the stronghold of paganism, but on that unfailing love of God, and hence of man, of which she has been from the beginning the steadfast and tireless evangel. Be it ever hers to teach the true and changeless nature of our holy religion: "In essentials unity; in nonessentials liberty; in all things charity." Like the voices of Hebrew prophets the voices of his Methodist ancestors speak to us through the uncrowned laureate of the Christian world: The tumult and the shouting dies- Eugene, R. Den diß. ART. II.—A BURNING BUSH IN ALSATIAN HIGHLANDS. JEAN FREDERIC OBERLIN worked a sociological miracle in Ban de la Roche, at the close of the last century. His achievement is a burning bush to which the sociologist of to-day may turn aside with profit. Europe scarcely afforded a more degenerate community than that mountain canton near the university and cathedral city of Strasburg. Like the Ghetto, it boasted a Yiddish of its own, a patois mixture of Italian, French, and German. The delusion of witchcraft prevailed to such an extent that at the beginning of the last century the public executioner admitted he had put seventy persons to death for this imaginary offense. Religion, although of the professedly reformed order, was really of a very low type; so much so that on entering the church the people bowed adoringly to a little wooden effigy of John Baptiste, and, in cases of weak eyes or blindness, to effect a cure, made pilgrimages to a neighboring mountain. The character of the curates is suggested by the story of one who was called to the bed of a dying parishioner. On the way a hare crossed the path, whereat the curate ran home for his gun, crying to the relative who had come for him, "The sick man can wait, the hare won't!" And, if religion was at such an ebb, where would one look for education? What advance in knowledge could be expected in a community where a superannuated swineherd was thought fit to be the schoolmaster? Paralyzed, and, so, incapacitated for the further care of swine, he was given the care of the children, who wallowed like little pigs upon the mud floor of his hut while he lay upon a heap of straw in the corner. He taught nothing, and for a sufficient reason. Even the curé, destitute of a calendar, kept the days of the week in mind by the rude device of putting seven heath brushes against the wall at the beginning of the week and then of removing one of the bushes each succeeding evening. Their very diet shows how near to savagery these unhappy people were reduced. Wild apples and pears, acorns and chestnuts, were among the staples of food. Grass boiled in milk was a common dish. Cases of poisoning were not rare, because of inability to distinguish nonedible and edible plants. A poor woman once said facetiously to a visitor, pointing to a certain herb, "This plant is my master. It has beaten me." "How is that?" he asked. To which she replied, "There is scarcely a plant in the place which has not served me for nourishment, but this is so terribly bitter that I cannot eat it, cook it as I will.” The potato had been introduced, but, although the soil was naturally well adapted to it, it was allowed to deteriorate until it in turn became unsound and unfit for food. There were no public works in the canton, no internal improvements, no roads worthy the name. Trees felled across the chasms were the only and often slippery and deadly substitutes for bridges. There were no physicians or apothecaries. The wonder is that patients survived the healing art as it was practiced. The vermin-infested cabins were full of foul miasmata; their rotting thatches dripped in puddles upon their floors. The clothing of the people was scant and ragged. Few families had sabots enough for half its members at a time, so that they must needs take turns in wearing them. Such was Ban de la Roche! Could any present-day slum or Ghetto be worse? Distrust, superstition, idleness prevailed. Brigandage was not unknown. It was a moral wilderness, presenting as stubborn a face to the missionary as its flinty soil did to the gardener. About the only alleviating circumstance was the comparative sparcity of the population. It had dwindled to a scant five hundred, and on the merciless-or merciful ?—principle of the survival of the fittest it was likely to be wiped out. A modern Macedonia! It was Jean Frederic Oberlin, one of the immortals pledged not to go round "in an eddy of purposeless dust," who heard the cry and heeded it, as in our day Edward Denison heard the cry of Stepney and Arnold Toynbee-Oxonians, both of them-heard that of Whitechapel. The general biographer finds in Oberlin a fascinating subject. To delineate his character and record his achievements makes a pleasant task. The sentimentalist finds in him, spite of his own disclaimer, the material for a romance. His love for Madelain, queen of his heart and home for fifteen years, to whose memory he remained true for forty-three years and until his death, makes a story noble and pathetic. He was chivalrous toward women, children, and defenseless persons. His courage, too, was dauntless. No bosom ever wore more worthily the red ribbon of a knight of the Legion of Honor. The religionist, in turn, finds in Oberlin the ideal self-oblivious pietist, wrapt in prayer and meditation, whose very look was a benediction. Before his dwelling, at the hours of his devotions, the passers uncovered and called to the children, "Hush! he is praying for us!" Upon the black oak door of his study, written in chalk, could be found the names of those who had asked his prayers. But not from any one of these angles does Oberlin appear the colossal personality he really was. It is from the viewpoint of the sociologist that he rears himself to his truly large stature and appears the unique forerunner of the latest of sciences. As if to put the excellence of his methods and the transcendence of his success beyond cavil, Providence gave him an all but hopeless field. Out of an inky agate, with pains and skill, he worked into high relief and clear-cut outline and lustrous whiteness an ideal community. He emancipated those peasants from what Karl Marx has characterized as the damnable indifference to their own elevation. He lifted those children from the mud floor of the swineherd's hut to a front rank as teachers in Paris, London, and St. Petersburg. His mountain pensionat attracted experts in pedagogics. His influence upon the manners of the people in general was phenomenal. From roistering hoodlums the youth of the Ban became preeminent for refinement, grace, cordiality, and courtesy. By the introduction of the best implements, by scientific draining, fertilizing, and terracing he brought the district to the maximum of productiveness. Fruit, grain, and vegetables in abundance and in best quality came from a once unproductive soil. Those who had never lived otherwise than from hand to mouth now had "basket and store." Exportation of the surplus brought a handsome revenue to a people unused to the sight of money. Well might the Royal Agricultural Society of France decorate Oberlin with its gold medal. The hum of industrialism was next heard. Native wheelwrights, smiths, masons, and carpenters appeared where an artisan of any kind had never been known. In a single year the spinning done in the cottages by hands previously idle brought in $6,000. A printing press, a fire engine, a magazine for farm implements, a dispensary with trained nurses attached, athletic games-all followed naturally in a community now thoroughly in earnest for its own betterment. An evidence of the unsordid nature of this reformation is found in the creation of an "emergency fund," formed by voluntary contributions and subject to draft in case of distress by fire, inundation, or epidemic in adjoining cantons. Finally, the solid bridge across the Brüche is a type of other internal improvements, and may be considered Oberlin's most appropriate monument. Such was Ban de la Roche when Oberlin found it. Such he left it, after sixty years of toil. His superb success is the heritage and inspiration of all social workers to-day. As he transformed a shiftless and suffering population into a selfrespecting and prosperous little commonwealth, so may the slums of our cities and the degraded rural districts of our newly acquired territories be metamorphosed. The principles upon which he proceeded are so fundamentally right that it is of prime importance to discover and define them: First, he came into personal and continuous contact with the people. His was no peripatetic mission of an emotional evangelist. He lived with the people, sharing their life and identifying himself with them. "He chose to dwell with the poorest of his brethren, and not with the richest of them, that his income would allow." He did not disdain to live in the rain-soaked and rat-haunted presbehre, and made no move to improve it until he had won the confidence of his suspicious neighbors. He took his turn in working the road. He set out fruit trees. He and Madame Oberlin both held the distaff and whirled the spindle. They may not have done it as romantically as Puritan dames once did it, upon the Mall of Boston Common; but, by their example, they finally broke down a childish prejudice against the spinning wheel. A hundred years before Canon Barnett enunciated the principle Oberlin lived it. "All help must be cooperative; the helper and the helped must be partners, and over the thing done |