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Christian Gellert’s Last Christmas
by
“You are a good creature, and have just spoken good words. Certainly, the convalescent is the most grateful. We are, however, for the most part, sick in spirit, and have not strength to recover: and a sickly, stricken spirit is the heaviest pain.”
Long time the two sat quietly together: it struck eight. Gellert started up, and cried irritably: “There, now, you have allowed me to forget that I must be on my way to the University.”
“The vacation has begun: Mr. Professor has no lecture to-day.”
“No lecture to-day? Ah! and I believe today is just the time when I could have told my young friends something that would have benefited them for their whole lives.”
There was a shuffling of many feet outside the door: the door opened, and several boys from St. Thomas’ School-choir advanced and sang to Gellert some of his own hymns; and as they chanted the verse–
“And haply there–oh! grant it, Heaven!
Some blessed saint will greet me too;
‘All hail! all hail! to you was given
To save my life and soul, to you!’
O God I my God! what joy to be
The winner of a soul to thee!”
Gellert wept aloud, folded his hands, and raised his eyes to heaven.
A happier Christmas than that of 1768 had Gellert never seen; and it was his last. Scarcely a year after, on the 13th of December, 1769, Gellert died a pious, tranquil death, such as he had ever coveted.
As the long train which followed his bier moved to the churchyard of St. John’s, Leipzig, a peasant with his wife and children in holiday clothes entered among the last. It was Christopher with his family. The whole way he had been silent: and whilst his wife wept passionately at the pastor’s touching address, it was only by the working of his features that Christopher showed how deeply moved he was.
But on the way home he said: “I am glad I did him a kindness in his lifetime; it would now be too late.”
The summer after, when he built a new house, he had this verse placed upon it as an inscription:
“Accept God’s gifts with resignation,
Content to lack what thou hast not:
In every lot there’s consolation;
There’s trouble, too, in every lot.”