Chapter III

John Eliot. Birth and Education. Associated with Rev. Thomas
Hooker. Arrives at Boston. Settles in Roxbury. Anecdote.
Discovery of Spot Pond. Marriage. Christian and Ministerial
character. His zeal for common School Education. Notices of his
personal character. His Congregational Sentiments. Remarks upon
them. Mr. Eliot’s children. His prayers. His preaching. Infant
Baptism.

John Eliot was born in Nasing, Essex, England, in the year 1604. All that is known of his parents is, that they were eminently pious, to which Mr. Eliot bore testimony, when he wrote in after life these words: “I do see that it was a great favor of God unto me to season my first years with the fear of God, the word, and prayer.”

He was educated in England at the University of Cambridge, and was distinguished for his love of the languages, in which he attained uncommon skill, especially in Hebrew and Greek. There is a connection between this fact and his labors in New England in acquiring the Indian tongue and translating the Bible and other books into it.

The Rev. Thomas Hooker, afterwards the first Pastor of the Church in Cambridge, New England, who afterwards removed with his Church to Hartford, Connecticut, had been silenced for his conscientious scruples at certain rites and observances in the Church of England, after exercising the ministry four years. At the suggestion and request of distinguished individuals, he established a school in the town of Little Braddow, near Chelmsford, in the county of Essex, England. Mr. Eliot was an usher in this school. In this school several individuals were trained up who became eminently useful. Mr. Eliot wrote an account of this school; and says of it, and of his connection with the family of Mr. Hooker, “To this place was I called through the infinite riches of God’s mercy in Christ Jesus to my poor soul; for here the Lord said unto my dead soul, Live; and, through the grace of Christ, I do live, and I shall live forever. When I came to this blessed family, I then saw, and never before, the power of godliness in its lively vigor and efficacy.”

By the influence of Mr. Hooker, Mr. Eliot was led to devote himself to the Christian ministry. Seeing the corruptions of the Church of England, and the oppressive spirit of those in authority towards all who would not conform to the ceremonies and practices of the Established Church, he resolved that he would go to America, that he might preach the gospel without restraint.

He came to Boston in November, 1631, in the ship “Lyon,” with Governor Winthrop’s lady and children, and sixty others. There was then no minister at the Church in Boston, Rev. Mr. Wilson, their pastor, having gone to England to settle his affairs. Mr. Eliot joined the Church at Boston, and preached to them a part of a year, till the return of Mr. Wilson, when the Church wished to make him colleague and teacher with Mr. Wilson. But he had engaged with several individuals, in England, that if they should remove to America, he would be their minister. They came the year after his arrival, and settled at Roxbury; and having formed a Church there, secured the services of Mr. Eliot. He was then twenty-eight years old, and he continued as Pastor of the Church in Roxbury nearly sixty years. His meeting-house was on the hill where the present meeting-house of the First Church in Roxbury (unitarian) now stands. Cotton Mather has preserved an anecdote connected with this hill, illustrating the art which Mr. Eliot had at spiritualizing. Going up the hill to his meeting-house, in his old age, with much feebleness and weariness he said to the one who led him, “This is very like the way to heaven, ’tis up hill; the Lord by his grace fetch us up.” Spying a bush near him he instantly added, “And truly there are thorns and briars in the way too!” which instance, Mather says, “I would not have singled out from the many thousands of his occasional reflections, but only that I might suggest unto the good people of Roxbury something for them to think upon when they are going up to the house of the Lord.”[11]

In February of the year after his arrival, Mr. Eliot is mentioned as one of the company who, with the governor, made an excursion into the vicinity of Boston, and discovered a pond to which they gave its present name of “Spot Pond.”[12] This pond has of late been a prominent candidate for the privilege of supplying this city with water.

In 1632, Mr. Eliot was married to the pious young lady to whom he was betrothed in England, and who came to America by appointment the year after Mr. Eliot’s arrival. We shall have occasion to speak of her in the sequel of this history.

In the exercise of the Christian ministry, Mr. Eliot was remarkable for a deep sense of the great responsibleness of his work. It made him humble; he seemed to have a peculiar fear of the temptations incident to his profession, and to be deeply impressed with the weight of its duties. His brethren in the ministry were struck with this characteristic of his ministerial deportment.

He bestowed much labor and diligence upon his preparations for the pulpit. It is said that when he listened to a discourse which seemed to have had care and attention bestowed upon it, he was accustomed to express his approbation and thanks to the preacher. But while his discourses showed him to be a student, he placed a higher value on spiritual gifts in preaching than upon the greatest accomplishments of art or labor. He frequently exhorted young preachers to make Christ prominent in their discourses and in all their ministrations.

He had an elevated sense of the meaning and privilege of church-membership. With affection, but also with plain and faithful words, he never ceased to rebuke the inconsistencies of professors of religion. Mather says of him, “He would sound the trumpet of God against all vice with a most penetrating liveliness, and make his pulpit another Mount Sinai, for the flashes of lightning therein displayed against the breaches of the law given from that burning mountain. There was usually a special fervor in the rebukes which he bestowed on carnality. When he was to brand the earthly mindedness of Church members and the allowance and indulgence which they often give themselves in sensual delights, he was a right Boanerges. He spoke as many thunderbolts as words!”

He paid particular attention to the young people of his charge, gave them instruction in public and private with the help of catechisms composed by him especially for their use. It was his familiar habit, when he visited a family, to call the young around him and lay his hands on their heads with words of kindness and prayer.

He showed his love of learning in his zeal for the establishment of common schools. The grammar School at Roxbury owed much to his care. At the meeting of a Synod in Boston, he made the schools of the country a special subject of prayer, beseeching God that he would cause them to be established everywhere, that schools might flourish, that every member of the Synod might go home to procure and encourage a good school in his town; and that before they should die, they might be so happy as to see a good school established in every part of the country.

“God so blessed his endeavors that Roxbury could not live quietly without a free school in the town, and the issue of it has been one thing that has almost made me put the title of Schola Illustris upon that little nursery; that is, that Roxbury has afforded more scholars first for the College and then for the public than any town of its bigness, or, if I mistake not, of twice its bigness in all New England. From the spring of the school at Roxbury, there have run a large number of the streams which have made glad the whole city of God. I persuade myself that the good people of Roxbury will forever scorn to begrudge the cost, or to permit the death of a school which God has made such an honor to them; and thus the rather because their deceased Eliot has left them a fair part of his own estate for the maintaining of the school in Roxbury; and I hope, or at least I wish that the ministers of New England may be as ungainsayably importunate with their people as Mr. Eliot was with his for schools which may seasonably tinge the young souls of the rising generation. A want of education for them is the blackest and saddest of all the bad omens that are upon us.”[13]

One result of his interest in schools was that many individuals were raised up under his eye who became ministers of the gospel, and some of them were eminently useful.

He was so engrossed in the affairs of his ministry that he hardly paid sufficient attention to his worldly affairs, never being anxious about his support, depending wholly on the temporary and voluntary offerings of his people, which varied with the times. Dr. Dwight, in his Travels in New England and New York,[14] relates an anecdote to illustrate his generous and somewhat improvident disposition and habits. “The parish treasurer having paid him his salary, put it into a handkerchief, and tied it into as many hard knots as he could make to prevent him from giving it away before he reached his own house. On his way he called on a poor family, and told them that he had brought them some relief. He then began to untie the knots, but finding it a work of great difficulty, he gave it to the mistress of the house, saying, ‘Here, my dear, take it, I believe the Lord designs it all for you.’”

Like many other ministers, he owed much to the care which his wife took of him and his worldly affairs. She of course did not commend him for such reckless acts of charity as the one just named. One day some cattle stood before their door. His wife, to try him, asked him to whom they belonged, and though they were his own, he did not know them.

His influence upon his brethren in the ministry seems to have been eminently spiritual. He once said in a company of them, “The Lord Jesus takes much notice of what is said and done among his ministers when they are together. Let us pray before we depart.” His advice to some who complained of the conduct of Church members towards them, was, “Bear, forbear, forgive.” On one occasion he came into a meeting of ministers who had met as referees on some difficulties between two parties. A large bundle of papers lay on the table, containing the correspondence and other documents relating to the quarrel. He put them all into the fire, and said, “You need not be astonished at what I have done, for I did it on my knees before I came here.”

He loved to attend upon the ministry of his brethren when they lectured during the week. It used to excite surprise, that, with his many labors and studies, he could find so much time to do this. His appearance in the house of God as a hearer was noticeable, being always wakeful and watchful, turning the pages of a Bible to find the texts referred to by the preacher, and on returning to his home, he would preach the sermon over again to those who walked with him.

He is mentioned as remarkable for the value which he seemed to set on the Sabbath, and for the high spiritual enjoyment which its return brought with it. Of every Sabbath it might almost be said with regard to his enjoyment of the sacred hours, “That Sabbath was a high-day.”

He was eminently a man of prayer, setting apart whole days for special supplication and communion with God, to which he frequently added fasting. When he had any special difficulty in his private, or in public affairs, he devoted himself to special, secret prayer for some time together, on the principle related of another, “That when we would have any great things to be accomplished, the best policy is to work by an engine which the world sees nothing of.” When he heard any special news he would sometimes say, “Brethren, let us turn all this into prayer.” When he paid a visit to a family with which he was familiar, he would sometimes say, “Come, let us not have a visit without a prayer; let us pray down the blessing of heaven on your family before we go.”

A pious woman, afflicted with a wicked husband, complained to him that she was greatly troubled by the bad company which her husband brought with him into the house, and asked him what she should do. He said to her, “Take the holy Bible into your hands when they come, and you will soon drive them away.” The experiment is said to have been successful.

One day walking in his garden with a friend, he began to pluck up the weeds. His friend pleasantly said to him, “Sir, you tell us we must be heavenly-minded,” as though he would draw from Mr. Eliot some remarks on the consistency of heavenly-mindedness with attention to things about us. Mr. Eliot replied, “It is true; and this is no impediment unto that; for were I sure to go to heaven tomorrow, I would do what I do to-day.”

He went into a merchant’s counting room, where he saw his mercantile books on the table, and some books of devotion on the shelf. Upon which he said, “Sir, here is earth on the table, and Heaven on the shelf. Pray don’t sit so much at the table as altogether to forget the shelf.”

Preaching once on holiness in all manner of conversation, he said, “In the morning if we ask, Where am I to be to-day? our souls must answer, In heaven. In the evening if we ask, Where have I been to-day, our souls may answer, In heaven. If thou art a believer thou art no stranger to Heaven while thou livest; and when thou diest, Heaven will be no strange place to thee: no, thou hast been there a thousand times before.”

He would say to students, “I pray look to it that you be morning birds.”

A few years before his death, he pressed his people to obtain another pastor, and said, “’Tis possible you may think the burden of maintaining two ministers may be two heavy for you; but I deliver you from that fear; I do here give back my salary to the Lord Jesus Christ, and now, brethren, you may fix that upon any man that God shall make a pastor for you.” But his Church kindly and generously told him that they should count his very presence worth a salary, when he should be so superannuated as to do no further service for them.

He was an abstemious man, and yet far from being morose or censorious, but when invited to a large dinner, it is said that while he eat but very little he would indulge in pleasant and grateful remarks with respect to the plenty with which God had furnished his people in this wilderness. Having been invited at a stranger’s house to take some drink, which he was told was wine and water, he replied, “Wine! ’tis a noble, generous liquor, and we should be humbly thankful for it; but, as I remember, water was made before it,” and water was his drink, to a degree which was far from being common even in those days.

He was greatly displeased with the increasing attention in his day among the men to the wearing of the hair, the length of it growing to effeminacy, and false hair frequently being added, when there was no necessity for it to cover the head. He finally despaired of changing or checking the custom, and said, “The lust is become insuperable.”

It is said of him that no man ever had fewer enemies than he, but still there were those who privately disliked him, and he charged his wife in her visits among the people to do good in a special manner to any whom she found disposed to speak against him, or to entertain unkind feelings towards him. Having once displeased a hearer by something in a sermon, the man abused him publicly by words and by printing something to his injury. The man soon after was wounded. Mrs. Eliot had considerable skill in medicine and the treatment of wounds, and Mr. Eliot sent her to cure the man, which she did, and upon his recovery the man called to thank her, but she took no reward, and Mr. Eliot kept him to dine, and took no notice of his evil conduct, whereupon the man was deeply affected and subdued.

He had much tact and wit in suiting his benedictions to the conditions and circumstances of different people.

In the days of affliction he showed exemplary resignation to the will of God. He followed to the grave two or three of his sons, who were ministers of the Gospel. But his patience and submission under these trials are spoken of with great commendation.

His love for the Hebrew tongue is seen in the following enthusiastic words: “O that the Lord would put it into the heart of some of his religious and learned servants to take such pains about the Hebrew language as to fit it for universal use! Considering that above all languages spoken by the lip of man, it is most capable to be enlarged, and fitted to express all things, and motions, and notions that our human intellect is capable of in this mortal life, considering also that it is the invention of God himself; and what one is fitter to be the universal language, than that which it pleased our Lord Jesus to make use of when he spake from heaven unto Paul!”

In the government of his family, it is said that there might have been seen a perpetual mixture of a Spartan and a Christian discipline, and that whatever decay there might have been in family religion generally, the people ‘knew how that he would command his children and his household after him, that they should keep the way of the Lord.’

He was remarkable for the efforts he employed to instruct the children, making catechisms for them having reference to any prevailing errors. The effect of this is certified in a remark of Cotton Mather, that it is a well-principled people that he has left behind him. “As when certain Jesuits were sent among the Waldenses to corrupt their children, they returned with much disappointment and confusion, because the children of seven years old were well-principled enough to encounter the most learned of them all; so, if any seducers were let loose to wolve it among the good people of Roxbury, I am confident they would find as little prey in that well instructed place as in any part of the country. No civil penalties would signify so much to save any people from the snares of busy heretics, as the unwearied catechising of our Eliot has done to preserve his people from the gangrene of ill opinion.”[15]

It is said of Mr. Eliot that he was not only an evangelical minister, but a Protestant and a Puritan. “He was a modest, humble, but very reasonable non-conformist unto the ceremonies which have been such unhappy apples of strife in the Church of England; otherwise the dismal thickets of America had never seen such a person in them.”

Mr. Eliot was strongly attached to the Congregational form of Church order. He spoke of it as the special gift of Christ to his people who followed him into the wilderness with an earnest zeal for communion with Him in a pure worship. He regarded Congregationalism as a happy medium to “rigid Presbyterianism” on the one hand, and “leveling Brownism” on the other, the liberties of the people not being disregarded, nor the authority of the elders rendered insignificant, but a due balance kept between them both. He regarded the Platform of Church Discipline “as being the nearest of what he had yet seen to the directions of heaven.”

By this it is not to be understood that Mr. Eliot as a true Congregationalist, supposed that any form of Church government was imposed by Christ or the Apostles upon the Christian Church, as being in any way essential to the existence of a true Church of Christ. With regard to the appointment of any special form of Church Government, it would seem that there is a wise silence in the New Testament. The genius of Christianity forbids an adherence to any form of ecclesiastical order as essential to the existence of a Church of Christ. This truth was declared by Christ at Jacob’s well to the Samaritan woman. The Jews insisted on Jerusalem as the place where men ought to worship. The Samaritans as strenuously maintained that acceptable worship could be performed only in their mountain.

Christ said, The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father; that is, no place in preference to another shall be essential to acceptable worship. God is a Spirit, and they that worship him need not restrict themselves to any hallowed place, but may worship him any where acceptably, if they worship Him in spirit and in truth.

But if so great a change was allowed as the abolition of sacred places, which once were essential to acceptable worship, and notwithstanding all that had been done to make men feel that Jerusalem and the Temple were the places to which the true worshipers must of necessity resort, it follows that no forms, any more than places, are essential to the true worship of God. We may infer what form of Church government prevailed under the Apostles, though different readers of the New Testament will draw different inferences. This shows that no form is prescribed as being essential, otherwise we should not have been left in the dark in so important a subject. The body of Moses and the place of his sepulchre were hidden, because as we generally suppose the Israelites would have paid an idolatrous reverence before such a shrine as the tomb of their illustrious leader, and in the Jewish Church the solemn farce of a Holy Sepulchre would have been enacted, in anticipation and in countenance of the subsequent follies which have been connected with the Sepulchre of Christ. We may say of any supposed form of Church government as being in any way essential, as is said of the body of Moses, and for a similar reason, “The Lord buried it,” and “no man knoweth of its sepulchre to this day.”

Our preference for the Congregational form of Church government is not properly founded on any prescriptions in the New Testament, but on our convictions that this form is most accordant with the genius of Christianity and of republican institutions. But so surely as we insist on Congregationalism as having any “divine right,” or authority, and we seek to propagate Congregationalism with such convictions, we are as surely High Churchmen and Puseyites as can any where be found. To insist on the absence of all forms and on the perfect simplicity of worship, with a sectarian spirit, shows as great an attachment to _a form of worship_ as though we urged the adoption of all the ceremonies of the Cathedral. We may be as bigoted in favor of simplicity as of any thing else, and a Quaker and a Congregationalist may be as much a formalist and a Churchman as any other. At the same time we may believe that the Congregational form of government is nearer to the Spirit of the New Testament than any other, and this is what Mr. Eliot probably meant when he said that Congregationalism was nearest in his view to the directions of heaven.

The influence which was exerted upon the mind of Thomas Jefferson, and which he exerted in the framing of the Constitution, by observing, as he did, an illustration of democracy in a Congregational Baptist Church in Virginia, is well known.[16]

We ought to carry out the true Puritan doctrine of liberty of conscience by not despising any who choose to worship under a different form and order from our own. It is an interesting illustration of the noble spirit in our Puritan institutions that all sects have liberty here to worship God with any forms or in any manner they please; and he who tries to hinder them any further than by convincing them, or feels sourly towards them in the enjoyment of their liberty of conscience and religious preferences, has not yet learned all that he may of the nature and spirit of religious liberty. But if we profess to be in the true succession from the Puritans and Pilgrims as to doctrine and Church order, let us not mix any of those things with our worship from which the Pilgrims fled to this wilderness, that they might be rid of them. We can live peaceably and freely in the midst of such corruptions and not be persecuted. They could not. Let us not abuse our liberty, by turning again to those beggarly elements of human appointments in Church government and worship which corrupt the religion of Christ. Let us not begin to do so by cultivating the spirit of bigoted attachment to our simple order and forms, for thereby we as truly violate the spirit of Christianity as though we insisted on a multitude of ceremonies and a hierarchy, as essential to a Church. He who says “No Church without simplicity in worship,” and he who says, “No Church without a Bishop,” are two extremes which meet. At the same time, we shall be the degenerate sons of men who made such sacrifices for purity in worship as did the Pilgrims, unless we adhere to our simple and beautiful mode of Church government and worship as preferable to any other.

The practice of examining persons who seek admission to the Church, was much insisted on by Mr. Eliot. The relation of their experience he says, “is an ordinance of wonderful benefit. The devil knows what he does when he thrusts so hard to get this custom out of our churches. For my part I would say in this case, Get thee behind me Satan; thou givest an horrible offence to the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us keep up this ordinance with all gentleness; and where we see the least spark of grace held forth, let us prize it more than all the wit in the world.”

Mr. Eliot had six children, a daughter and five sons. The daughter became exemplary for her piety and matronly deportment. His first son, John, was “a lively, zealous, acute preacher, not only to the English at New Cambridge,[17] but also to the Indians thereabout.” He died early, and upon his death-bed uttered many remarkable things. The third child, Joseph, was pastor of the Church in Guilford, Conn. The fourth child, Samuel, was a candidate for the ministry, but died young. The fifth was Aaron, who also died very young. The last was Benjamin, who became his father’s assistant in the ministry at Roxbury, but died before his father. Of these six children, Mr. Eliot said, “THEY ARE ALL EITHER WITH CHRIST, OR IN CHRIST.”

Mather speaks of the singular and surprising successes of Mr. Eliot’s prayers; ‘for they were such that in our distresses we still repaired to him under that encouragement.’ “He is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shall live.” He mentions the following fact. They who are displeased at David’s imprecations against his enemies, may see in it that a good man may pray for the destruction of the incorrigibly wicked, when great and good ends will be accomplished by it, leaving it submissively to the appointments of the all-wise God. A good man never ventures to pray in this manner, except when he is under a strong influence, drawing him very near to God with holy freedom and boldness. At such times his feelings are eminently pure; and it is in such times that good men feel impelled to pray for the removal of those who oppose God, and hinder others in their salvation. No doubt if there were more of ardent piety, there would be more of righteous indignation against the obstinate opposers of religion, and we should find ourselves better able to understand the feelings and language of David, when praying against the enemies of his throne and of the God who ruled by him. That language will come into more familiar use by the people of God, in their nearest approaches to him, as they go forth with their King and Saviour in his conflicts with his enemies.

The fact to which the allusion has been made was this:

There was a pious gentleman of Charlestown by the name of Foster, who, with his son, was taken prisoner by the Turks. The news being spread in this vicinity, the good people offered up many prayers for his deliverance. But it was reported that the prince, within whose authority he was a prisoner, had resolved that during his reign, no captive should be set free. The friends and acquaintances of this man then concluded that his captivity was hopeless. Soon after, Mr. Eliot on some public and solemn occasion, used these direct and forcible petitions. “Heavenly Father! work forth deliverance of thy poor servant, Foster; and if the prince which detains him, will not, as they say, dismiss him so long as himself lives, Lord, we pray thee to kill that cruel prince; kill him, and glorify thyself upon him.” Soon after the prisoners returned and brought news that in consequence of the untimely death of the prince they had been set at liberty.

There was one thing which seems to have pressed very heavily on the mind and heart of Mr. Eliot in his ministerial office. It was the care of a Church. “He looked upon it,” says one, “as a thing no less dangerous than important, and attended with so many difficulties, temptations, and humiliations, as that nothing but a call from the Son of God could have encouraged him unto the susception of it. He saw that it was no easy thing to feed the souls of such a people, to bear their manners with all patience, not being by any of their infirmities discouraged from teaching of them, and from watching and praying over them, to value them highly as the flock of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood, notwithstanding all their miscarriages, and in all to examine the rule of Scripture for the warrant of whatever shall be done, and to remember the day of judgment wherein an account must be given of whatever shall be done, having in the meantime no expectation of the riches and grandeurs which accompany a worldly domination.” This seemed to be characteristic of the spirit with which Mr. Eliot discharged his duties as the pastor of a Church.

An observation of Rev. Samuel Ward has been quoted as applicable to him: “In observing I have observed and found that divers great clerks have had but little fruit of their ministry, but hardly any truly zealous men of God, though of lesser gifts, but have had much comfort of their labors in their own and bordering parishes, being in this likened by Gregory to the iron on the smith’s anvil, sparkling round about.”

Mather says, “The Lord Jesus Christ was the load-stone which gave a touch to all the sermons of our Eliot; a glorious, precious, lovely Christ, was the point of heaven to which they still verged unto.” It is said, that though he printed many books or pamphlets, his heart seemed to be in none of them so much, as in his ‘Harmony of the Gospels, in the holy History of Jesus Christ.’ It was a standing piece of advice with him to young ministers, “Pray let there be much of Christ in your ministry.” On hearing a sermon in which the Saviour had been made prominent, he would say, O, blessed be God, that we hear Christ so much and so well preached in poor New England.

On coming out of the meeting-house where he had been listening to a sermon, he said to the preacher, “Brother, there was oil required for the service of the sanctuary; but it must be beaten oil; I praise God that I saw your oil so well beaten to-day; the Lord help us always by good study to beat our oil that there may be _no knots in our sermons left undissolved_, and that there may a clear light be thereby given in the house of God.” Still it is observed that he looked for something more than mere study in a sermon; he required those things in it which would make the hearer feel that the Spirit of God was in the sermon and with the preacher, and he was once heard to complain, “It is a sad thing when a sermon shall have that one thing, The Spirit of God, wanting in it.”

He had eminently spiritual views of the duty and privilege of infant baptism. On giving the Rev. Cotton Mather the Right Hand of Fellowship at his ordination, he said to him, “Brother, art thou a lover of the Lord Jesus Christ? Then I pray, feed his lambs.” He was careful to have the lambs pass under the “Lord’s tything rod.” One Mr. Norcott, a truly pious man, published a book against the baptism of infants, which being circulated in Boston and the vicinity, Mr. Eliot answered it in a brief publication, beginning with these words: “The book speaks with the voice of a lamb, and I think the author is a godly though erring brother; but he acts the cause of a roaring lion, who by all crafty ways, seeketh to devour the poor lambs of the flock of Christ.” He then speaks “in the behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.”

On one occasion, speaking of the Saviour’s directions to Peter, John 21:15, he observed, That _the care of the lambs is one third part of the charge over the house of God_.

The title of one of Mr. Eliot’s publications, “The Divine Management of Gospel Churches, by the Ordinance of Councils, constituted in order according to the Scriptures, which may be a means of uniting those two holy and eminent parties, the Presbyterians and the Congregational,” shows that a plan of union between these two sister denominations is not wholly of modern origin.

But reserving many things respecting Mr. Eliot’s character and opinions for another place in this book, let us now look at him in that remarkable work to which God appointed him among the Indians of this vicinity.