odeled; the pastor's salary nearly doubled; about as much given to
benevolences as in the half-century preceding; the Sunday school has grown
to 300 members; the people from miles away flock to the preaching
services, the lectures, concerts and socials; large numbers have been
added to the church; while the "New Era Club" has been crumbling into
ruin, simply starved out by religious competition! There has not been a
dance there for eight or nine years, though the pastor has never preached
against it.

This all began with an old-fashioned singing school which gathered
together the young people socially at the church; and from this simple
beginning, other plans developed which met the needs of the people and won
their loyalty. Though the pastor modestly disclaims special merit or
ability, the man who cannot only keep his preaching services at a high
standard of success and keep up a system of cottage prayer meetings
throughout his parish as centers of the spiritual life, and also gather
over 2,000 people for the annual community plowing contest (more than
double the population of the whole township) must be a personality to be
reckoned with! There is, however, nothing in the situation or in the
program of successful achievement which could not be duplicated elsewhere
in thousands of purely rural communities, given the same kind of
intelligent leadership and consecrated cooperation.

_Oberlin: The Prince of Country Ministers_

With all the resources of our modern church life, it is doubtful if there
has ever been a country pastor more strikingly efficient or broadly
influential than Johann Friedrich Oberlin, who died nearly a century ago.
He was pastor of four rural parishes in the Vosges Mountains for over
sixty years and became the most beloved and influential person in the
entire section. He was a graduate of Strassburg University and declined a
city pulpit in order to accept the most needy and difficult field of
service which he could find. The people of Ban-de-la-Roche to whom he came
were a rude mountain folk isolated from civilization; but since Oberlin's
work of transformation they have been a prosperous, happy people with many
of the marks of culture.

Seven years before his death, Pastor Oberlin received the gold medal of
the Legion of Honor from the King of France, "for services which he has
rendered in his pastorate during fifty-three years, employing constant
efforts for the amelioration of the people, fo