Ohio History Journal

  • 1
  •  
  • 2
  •  

David Zeisberger Centennial

David Zeisberger Centennial.                173

 

signified his great satisfaction and comfort when his Indian brethren,

who watched with the dying saint, sang some of the Delaware hymns

for the dying, which he had rendered into their vernacular years ago.

And thus on the afternoon of November 17th he fell asleep amid

the prayers of his brethren and the singing of his converts, after the

benediction had been spoken in the name of the church.

On the following Sunday, at noon, after funeral sermons in Eng-

lish and in German, interpreted into the Delaware vernacular, three of

his Indian brethren and three of his white brethren bore his body to the

near Goshen God's-Acre, followed by a large concourse of the inhabi-

tants of the vicinity. There they buried him, one hundred years ago this

very hour. And to-day his name is more alive than ever in the memory

and esteem of the people of Ohio, and of this neighborhood, as every-

where in the world where men value apostolic love and fidelity to Christ

and to those for whom Christ lived and died.

 

 

GRAVE OF ZEISBERGER.

The following is the Poem written by Judge J. W. Yeagley

and read by Miss Bertha Kelly at the celebration of the Centen-

nial of the death of Zeisberger at the New Philadelphia Opera

House, November 20, 1908.

 

Close by a placid river's shore,

Near where its waters lave

The sylvan banks that fringe a plain,

I saw an ancient grave.

 

And by it rose a monument,

On which thereon was traced

The name of one who toils endured,

And many dangers faced.

 

The name of one who came from far,

Who crossed the ocean wave,

That he might be an instrument

The red man's soul to save:

 

Might make his home in wilderness,

And teach the savage rude

The mission true of human life,

And all it does include:

 

Might tell him of the loving One,

Who loves his creatures all,