31 August: Boreham on Jean Oberlin

An Agricultural Idyll
Nobody did more to demonstrate the sanctity, significance and science of agriculture than Jean Frederic Oberlin whose birthday we mark today and whose brave record is receiving a good deal of attention in France just now.[1] The episode is worth recalling. Like a green oasis in a hot and thirsty desert, the story of Oberlin's sequestered life emerges as an exquisite and delicious refreshment from the stormy records of the French Revolution. During the 60 years of his residence in Stony Valley in Alsace, it is doubtful whether he ever once enjoyed a good square meal, wore a decent suit of clothes, or knew anything in the nature of a holiday; yet no man in the France of that feverish day lived a happier life than he, and no man did more to earn the gratitude of posterity.

When Jean settled in the Ban de la Roche in 1767, the whole dismal valley was a morass of swampy bogs and rocky tracts. In his "French Revolution," Carlyle stresses the brutality of the aristocrats in telling the starving people to go and eat grass. But in the Ban de la Roche the peasants actually did subsist on that unappetising diet. Oberlin one day came upon a woman by the roadside angrily cursing a herb that she had just plucked from the hedgerow. He asked the reason for her wrath "It is this," she exclaimed holding up the weed, "there is scarcely a plant in the place that has not served me for nourishment at one time or another; but this one is so bitter that, cook it as I will, I cannot eat it!" Grass in the raw was deemed tolerable; grass boiled in water enjoyable; grass prepared in milk delectable. Such was the life of the 500 semi-barbaric peasants who populated Stony Valley when Jean Oberlin first made his home there. No stretch of territory in Europe offered less inducement to an ambitious young student.

Turning Small Potatoes Into Big Ones
In his 20th year Jean Oberlin passed through a profound religious experience and resolved to enter the ministry. The problems of ways and means was a formidable one, but Jean discovered with delighted surprise that he could live very inexpensively. He subsisted on bread, and what food could be more wholesome? He had breadcrumbs dry or moist, for breakfast; he gnawed the crusts for his midday meal; and, in the evening, he made a soup of such fragments as remained. Sometimes he sipped his bread, broth hot, sometimes cold, sometimes fresh, sometimes savoured with a pinch of salt, sometimes sweetened with a suspicion of sugar; there seemed to be no limit to the variety that could be imparted to his cuisine! It was while he was pursuing his theological studies on this frugal plan that George Stuber, the minister of the Ban de la Roche, called upon him. The good man was at the end of his tether; he was casting about for a successor: and when he saw Jean's spartan mode of life, he felt that he had found his man. He told Jean frankly that Stony Valley was the most cheerless spot on earth; that it could offer little or nothing in the shape of a stipend; and that the new pastor would almost certainly be rewarded by slow starvation. Jean recognised in all this the voice of a challenge; he accepted the invitation with avidity.

He went. He lived at first in a ramshackle, tumbledown, rat-eaten old hut that he was pleased to call his presbytery. He soon noticed that the valley produced a poor pimping little variety of potato. He argued that, if the soil would grow little potatoes, it should be able to grow big ones. Developing the genius that eventually established his fame, he experimented on the tiny patch of ground at the presbytery and was amazed at the results. From living on bread he was now able to luxuriate on bread and potatoes, and he excitedly showed the incredulous peasants how to treat their soil and improve their crops. Under the witchery of his magic influence, harvests soon waved over areas that had been regarded as incapable of cultivation.

Land And Lives Of The People Transformed
He had not been long in the Ban de la Roche before destiny poked its finger into his pie. His sister Sophie came from Strasbourg to keep house for him. But feeling a trifle lonely, Sophie invited her schoolfellow, Madeleine de Witter, to visit her. Madeleine was not only bewitchingly beautiful, but she was shockingly addicted to the brightest frocks and the prettiest bonnets. Poor Jean was scandalised; and, lest his parishioners should condemn him for the gaieties of his guest, he took occasion each Sunday to expatiate from the pulpit on the frailties of feminine vanity. As though to match her finery, Madeleine's cheeks crimsoned under this public exposure, and she announced her intention of curtailing her stay. But, when she had gone, Stony Valley seemed stonier than ever; Jean hurried to Strasbourg to express his contrition; and, while with her, begged Madeleine to return as mistress of his crazy old manse. And Madeleine came!

During the half century that followed, Jean earned the devotion of his scattered people, not only by the triumphs that he effected on their farms with his green fingers but by maintaining among them the highest traditions of the Christian ministry. In the course of that ministry he wrote at least one hymn that is still included in the hymnaries of most of the churches. His personality radiated helpful and beneficent influences in all directions. When he first entered the dreary valley it sheltered about 500 starving peasants; he lived to see it the home of thousands of prosperous farmfolk. And the principles by which he had achieved his triumph became the heritage, first of France, then of Europe, and ultimately of the world. He died in 1826. Few men have been more sincerely wept. The spreading landscape round his tomb is the most eloquent memorial to his many-sided ministry. Yet, as one writer justly observes, even the transformation of Stony Valley is not to be compared with the amazing transformation that he effected in the hearts and homes, the lives and the characters, of his grateful people.

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on October 11, 1947.

F W Boreham

Image: Jean Frederic Oberlin