These old fathers of the United States had found a soil, fair and well watered; and though less rich than the wondrous alluvial lands to the west, yet with capacities to yield them plentiful provision, when cleared from the vast forest that covered it. Nor had they come for the sake of wealth or luxury; the earnestness of newly-awakened, and in some degree persecuted, religion was upon them, and they regarded a sufficiency of food and clothing as all that they had a right to seek. Indeed, the spirit of ascetiscism was one of their foremost characteristics. Eliot was a man who lived in constant self-restraint as to both sleep and diet, and, on all occasions of special prayer, prefaced them by a rigorous fast-and he seems to have been in a continual atmosphere of devotion.
One of his friends objected (oddly enough as it seems to us) to his stooping to pick up a weed in his garden. "Sir, you tell us we must be heavenly-minded."
"It is true," he said, "and this is no impediment unto that; for, were I sure to go to heaven to-morrow, I would do what I do to-day."
And, like many a good Christian, his outward life was to him full of allegory. Going up the steep hill to his church, he said, "This is very like the way to heaven. 'Tis up hill! The Lord in His grace fetch us up;" and spying a bush near him, he added, "And truly there are thorns and briars in the way, too."
He had great command of his flock at Roxbury, and was a most diligent preacher and catechiser, declaring, in reference to the charge to St. Peter, that "the care of the lambs is one-third part of the charge to the Church of God." An excellent free school was founded at Roxbury, which was held in great repute in the time of Cotton Mather, to whom we owe most of our knowledge of this good man. The biography is put together in the peculiar fashion of that day, not chronologically, but under heads illustrating his various virtues, so that it is not easy to pick out the course of his undertakings. Before passing on to that which especially distinguished him, we must give an anecdote or two from the "article" denominated "His exquisite charity." His wife had become exceedingly skilful in medicine and in dealing with wounds, no small benefit in a recent colony scant of doctors, and she gave her aid freely to all who stood in need of help. A person who had taken offence at something in one of his sermons, and had abused him passionately, both in speech and in writing, chanced to wound himself severely, whereupon he at once sent his wife to act as surgeon; and when the man, having recovered, came to return thanks and presents, he would accept nothing, but detained him to a friendly meal, "and," says Mather, "by this carriage he mollified and conquered the stomach of his reviler."
"He was also a great enemy to all contention, and would ring a loud Courfew Bell wherever he saw the fires of animosity." When he heard any ministers complain that such and such in their flocks were too difficult for them, the strain of his answer was stilclass="underline" "Brother, compass them;" and, "Brother, learn the meaning of those three little words, 'bear, forbear, forgive.'"
Once, when at an assembly of ministers a bundle of papers containing matters of difference and contention between two parties-who, he thought, should rather unite-was laid on the table, Eliot rose up and put the whole upon the fire, saying, "Brethren, wonder not at that which I have done: I did it on my knees this morning before I came among you."
But that "exquisite charity" seems a little one-sided in another anecdote recorded of him, when "a godly gentleman of Charlestown, one Mr. Foster, with his son, was taken captive by his Turkish enemies." {f:6} Public prayers were offered for his release: but when tidings were received that the "Bloody Prince" who had enslaved him had resolved that no captive should be liberated in his own lifetime, and the distressed friends concluded, "Our hope is lost;" Mr. Eliot, "in some of his prayers before a very solemn congregation, very broadly begged, 'Heavenly Father, work for the redemption of Thy poor servant Foster, and if the prince which detains him will not, as they say, release him so long as himself lives, Lord, we pray Thee kill that cruel prince, kill him, and glorify Thyself upon him.' And now behold the answer. The poor captiv'd gentleman quickly returns to us that had been mourning for him as a lost man, and brings us news that the prince, which had hitherto held him, was come to an untimely death, by which means he was now set at liberty."
"And to turn their hearts" was a form that did not occur to the earnest suppliant for his friend. But the "cruel prince" was far away out of sight, and there was no lack of charity in John Eliot's heart for the heathen who came into immediate contact with him. Indeed, he was the first to make any real effort for their conversion.
The colonists were as yet only a scanty sprinkling in easy reach of the coast, and had done little at present to destroy the hunting-grounds of the Red man who had hitherto held possession of the woods and plains.
The country was inhabited by the Pequot Indians, a tall, well-proportioned, and active tribe, belonging to the great Iroquois nation. They set up their wigwams of bark, around which their squaws cultivated the rapidly growing crop of maize while the men hunted the buffalo and deer, and returning with their spoil, required every imaginable service from their heavily-oppressed women, while they themselves deemed the slightest exertion, except in war and hunting, beneath their dignity. Their nature had much that was high and noble; and in those days had not yet been ruined either by the White man's vices or his cruelty. They were neither the outcast savages nor the abject inferiors that two hundred years have rendered their descendants, but far better realized the description in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," of the magnificently grave, imperturbably patient savage, the slave of his word, and hospitable to the most scrupulous extent. It was in mercy and tenderness that the character was the most deficient. The whole European instinct of forbearance and respect to woman was utterly wanting,-the squaws were the most degraded of slaves; and to the captive the most barbarous cruelty was shown. Experience has shown that there is something in the nature of the Red Indian which makes him very slow of being able to endure civilization, renders wandering almost a necessity to his constitution, and generally makes him, when under restraint, even under the most favourable conditions, dwindle away, lose all his fine natural endowments, and become an abject and often a vicious being. The misfortune has been that, with a few honourable exceptions, it has not been within the power of the better and more thoughtful portion of man to change the Red Indian's vague belief in his "Great Spirit" to a more systematic and stringent acceptance of other eternal verities and their consequent obligations, and at the same time leave him free to lead the roving life of the patriarchs of old; since, as Scripture itself shows us, it takes many generations to train the wandering hunter to a tiller of the soil, or a dweller in cities; and the shock to the wild man of a sudden change is almost always fatal both to mental and bodily health. This conclusion, however, has been a matter of slow and sad experience, often confused by the wretched effects of the vice, barbarity, and avarice of the settler and seaman, which in many cases have counteracted the effects of the missionary, and accelerated the extinction of the native.
In John Eliot's time, there was all to hope; and the community of Englishmen with whom he lived, though stern, fierce, intolerant, and at times cruel in their intolerance, did not embarrass his work nor corrupt the Indians by the grosser and coarser vices, when, in his biographer's words, "our Eliot was on such ill terms with the devil as to alarm him with sounding the silver trumpets of Heaven in his territories, and make some noble and zealous endeavours towards ousting him of his ancient possessions." The Pilgrim Fathers had obtained their land by fair purchase, i.e. if purchase could be fair where there was no real mutual understanding; and a good deal of interest had been felt in England in the religious state of the Red men. The charter to the colony had enforced their conversion on the settlers, and Dr. Lake, Bishop of Bath and Wells, declared that but for his old age and infirmities he would have headed a mission to America for the purpose. Had he done so, perhaps something systematic might have been attempted. As it was the new colonists had too severe a struggle with their own difficulties to attend to their heathen surroundings, even though the seal of their colony of Massachusetts represented an Indian with the label in his mouth, "Come over and help us." A few conversions had taken place, but rather owing to the interest in the White men's worship taken by individual Indians, than to any efforts on the part of the settlers.