228 RUEAL LIFE IN CA:^rADA 



student of engineering he summoned his parishioners 

 to roadmaking. The land, poorly cultivated, yielded 

 less than was needed for food for its own inhabitants. 

 Oberlin taught better methods of agriculture, — the use 

 of compost, the rotation of crops ; he instituted an agri- 

 cultural society and a school of agriculture — one of the 

 first known — himself experimenting and teaching. He 

 founded infant schools — the first of which history 

 speaks — with '' conductrices " to bring children to and 

 from their homes — the Greek " pedagogue " revived. 

 He introduced scientific methods into the ordinary 

 schools, and instituted a higher school. The children 

 were taught to sew, plait, and knit from earliest years ; 

 weaving and dyeing with the plants of the country were 

 taught later. He took boys into Strasburg and had them 

 taught trades, of which they in turn became teachers in 

 the parish. Thus home industries were introduced into 

 every household. The population, 500 when Oberlin 

 began his ministry, had increased to 3,000 before his 

 death, and this growth in numbers was the least part of 

 the progress. The Royal Agricultural Society of Paris 

 sent a commission to study his methods of husbandry, 

 invited him to a more public sphere of labor, and con- 

 ferred on him a gold medal. This man of genius had 

 by his direct outlook upon life and its needs in the spirit 

 of Christ anticipated modern education, agriculture and 

 sociolog}^ He had given his people the most scientific 

 husbandry and the most advanced education known in 

 his age, and thus secured for them economic prosperity, 

 social welfare, and numerical growth. 



In Denmark we have an example on the national scale 

 and at the present time of the uplift of an agricultural 

 people ; and here again the impulse is due to a Christian 



