“You are my man!” exclaimed Stuber, rising from his chair. “You live on the diet of Lacedæmon. Yes, you are my man. I see you do not understand me; but I have got my man, and I shall not let you go. I want you for the pastorship of Waldbach in the Ban-de-la-Roche. There a hundred poor and wretched families in want of the bread of life; four or five hundred to shepherd and to save, poor, wretched, friendless.” Oberlin’s heart was in a tumult. This was just the field of labor he had wished. But what of the difficulties? “The parish must be in a very cold region,” suggested Oberlin. “My dear Oberlin, I do not wish to exaggerate anything. Six months of winter; at times the cold of the Baltic; sometimes a wind like ice comes down from the mountain-tops above; the sick and dying are to be visited in remote, wild, solitary places in the forests.” “And the parishioners, are they well disposed?” inquired Oberlin. “Not too much so, not too much. They are frightfully ignorant and untractable, and proud of their ignorance. It is an iron-headed people, a population of Cyclops.” Oberlin was taking in the situation. He slowly lifted his large blue eyes and asked: “You say most of the parishioners are extremely poor? Are there resources to aid the poor?” “The parishioners have nothing. Four districts even poorer than the mother parish are to be served. Not a single practicable road. Deep mud-holes among the cabins. The people, abandoned to indifference, have not the least concern to meliorate their condition.” “Every one of your words has knocked at the door of my heart like the blows of a hammer,” said Oberlin. And it was settled that Oberlin would go to the mountains; and on March 30, 1767, in his twenty-seventh year, Oberlin arrived at Waldbach. No single piece of literature equals the story of Jean Frederick Oberlin’s pastorate in the Ban-de-la-Roche as an interpretation of a country minister’s social, economic, and religious relation to his parish. Overture after overture came to him during the years to give up his laborious cares in the hills and take charge of a church where cultured life would bring with it superior advantages, greater recognized honor, and a satisfactory salary. His answer was the same to all: “No, I will never leave this flock. God has confided this flock to me. Why should I abandon it?” And in that out-of-the-way parish he played the shepherd and the man for nigh on to sixty years. Like the Venerable Bede in the eighth century, he died with the shepherd’s crook in his hand. _Preachers’ Alibis Pass Inspection_