One would scarcely expect to find the apostle of the High Alps in the person of a young Swiss soldier of artillery. Yet so it was. In his boyhood, Neff read Plutarch, which filled his mind with admiration of the deeds of the great men of old. While passing through the soldier phase of his career the "Memoirs of Oberlin" accidentally came under his notice, the perusal of which gave quite a new direction to his life. Becoming impressed by religion, his ambition now was to be a missionary. Leaving the army, in which he had reached the rank of sergeant at nineteen, he proceeded to prepare himself for the ministry, and after studying for a time, and passing his preliminary examinations, he was, in conformity with the custom of the Geneva Church, employed on probation as a lay helper in parochial work. In this capacity Neff first went to Mens, in the department of Isère, where he officiated in the absence of the regular pastor, as well as occasionally at Vizille, for a period of about two years.
It was while residing at Mens that the young missionary first heard of the existence of the scattered communities of primitive Christians on the High Alps, descendants of the ancient Vaudois; and his mind became inflamed with the desire of doing for them what Oberlin had done for the poor Protestants of the Ban de la Roche. "I am always dreaming of the High Alps," he wrote to a friend, "and I would rather be stationed there than under the beautiful sky of Languedoc."
But it was first necessary that he should receive ordination for the ministry; and accordingly in 1823, when in his twenty-fifth year, he left Mens with that object. He did not, however, seek ordination by the National Church of Geneva, which, in his opinion, had in a great measure ceased to hold Evangelical truth; but he came over to London, at the invitation of Mr. Cook and Mr. Wilks, two Congregational ministers, by whom he was duly ordained a minister in the Independent Chapel, Poultry.
Shortly after his return to France, Neff, much to his own satisfaction, was invited as pastor to the very district in which he so much desired to minister—the most destitute in the High Alps. Before setting out he wrote in his journal, "To-morrow, with the blessing of God, I mean to push for the Alps by the sombre and picturesque valley of L'Oisan." After a few days, the young pastor was in the scene of his future labours; and he proceeded to explore hamlet after hamlet in search of the widely-scattered flock committed to his charge, and to arrange his plans for the working of his extensive parish.
But it was more than a parish, for it embraced several of the most extensive, rugged, and mountainous arrondissements of the High Alps. Though the whole number of people in his charge did not amount to more than six or seven hundred, they lived at great distances from each other, the churches to which he ministered being in some cases as much as eighty miles apart, separated by gorges and mountain-passes, for the most part impassable in winter. Neff's district extended in one direction from Vars to Briançon, and in another from Champsaur in the valley of the Drac to San Veran on the slope of Monte Viso, close to the Italian frontier. His residence was fixed at La Chalp, above Queyras, but as he rarely slept more than three nights in one place, he very seldom enjoyed its seclusion.
The labour which Neff imposed upon himself was immense; and it was especially in the poorest and most destitute districts that he worked the hardest. He disregarded alike the summer's heat and the winter's cold. His first visit to Dormilhouse, in Val Fressinières, was made in January, when the mountain-paths were blocked with ice and snow; but, assembling the young men of the village, he went out with them armed with hatchets, and cut steps in the ice to enable the worshippers from the lower hamlets to climb up to service in the village church. The people who first came to hear him preach at Violens brought wisps of straw with them, which they lighted to guide them through the snow, while others, who had a greater distance to walk, brought pine torches.
Nothing daunted, the valiant soldier, furnished with a stout staff and shod with heavy-nailed shoes, covered with linen socks to prevent slipping on the snow, would set out with his wallet on his back across the Col d'Orcières in winter, in the track of the lynx and the chamois, with the snow and sleet beating against his face, to visit his people on the other side of the mountain. His patience, his perseverance, his sweetness of temper, were unfailing. "Ah!" said one unbelieving Thomas of Val Fressinières in his mountain patois, "you have come among us like a woman who attempts to kindle a fire with green wood; she exhausts her breath in blowing it to keep the little flame alive, but the moment she quits it, it is instantly extinguished."
Neff nevertheless laboured on with hope, and neither discouragement nor obstruction slackened his efforts. And such labours could not fail of their effect. He succeeded in inspiring the simple mountaineers with his own zeal, he evoked their love, and excited their enthusiastic admiration. When he returned to Dormilhouse after a brief absence, the whole village would turn out and come down the mountain to meet and embrace him. "The rocks, the cascades, nay, the very glaciers," he wrote to a friend, "all seemed animated, and presented a smiling aspect; the savage country became agreeable and dear to me from the moment its inhabitants were my brethren."
Unresting and indefatigable, Neff was always at work. He exhorted the people in hovels, held schools in barns in which he taught the children, and catechised them in stables. His hand was in every good work. He taught the people to sing, he taught them to read, he taught them to pray. To be able to speak to them familiarly, he learnt their native patois, and laboured at it like a schoolboy. He worked as a missionary among savages. The poor mountaineers had been so long destitute of instruction, that everything had as it were to be begun with them from the beginning. Sharing in their hovels and stables, with their squalor and smoke, he taught them how to improve them by adding chimneys and windows, and showed how warmth might be obtained more healthfully than by huddling together in winter-time with the cattle. He taught them manners, and especially greater respect for women, inculcating the lesson by his own gentleness and tender deference. Out of doors, he showed how they might till the ground to greater advantage, and introduced an improved culture of the potato, which more than doubled the production. Observing how the pastures of Dormilhouse were scorched by the summer sun, he urged the adoption of a system of irrigation. The villagers were at first most obstinate in their opposition to his plans; but he persevered, laid out a canal, and succeeded at last in enlisting a body of workmen, whom he led out, pickaxe in hand, himself taking a foremost part in the work; and at last the waters were let into the canal amidst joy and triumph. At Violens he helped to build and finish the chapel, himself doing mason-work, smith-work, and carpenter-work by turns. At Dormilhouse a school was needed, and he showed the villagers how to build one; preparing the design, and taking part in the erection, until it was finished and ready for use. In short, he turned his hand to everything—nothing was too high or too low for this noble citizen of two worlds. At length, a serious accident almost entirely disabled him. While on one of his mountain journeys, he was making a détour amongst a mass of rocky débris, to avoid the dangers of an avalanche, when he had the misfortune to fall and severely sprain his knee. He became laid up for a time, and when able to move, he set out for his mother's home at Geneva, in the hope of recovering health and strength; for his digestive powers were also by this time seriously injured. When he went away, the people of the valleys felt as if they should never see him more; and their sorrow at his departure was heart-rending. After trying the baths of Plombiéres without effect, he proceeded onwards to Geneva, which he reached only to die; and thus this good and noble soldier—one of the bravest of earth's heroes—passed away to his eternal reward at the early age of thirty-one.