and religion, this great and good
man labored with constancy, faithfulness, and benevolence which place
his name not unworthily among those who are arranged immediately after
the apostles of our Divine Redeemer." Eliot translated the Holy
Scriptures into the Indian language. In 1661, the New Testament,
dedicated to Charles II., was printed at Cambridge, in New England, and
about three years afterward, it was followed by the Old Testament. This
was the first Bible ever printed in America; and, though the impression
consisted of 2000 copies, a second edition was required in
1685.--_Ibid._, p. 27.

"When at Harvard College, a copy of the Bible was shown me by Mr. Jared
Sparks, translated by the missionary, Father Eliot, into the Indian
tongue. It is now a dead language, although preached for several
generations to crowded congregations."--Lyell's _America_, vol. i., p.
260.

"Eliot had become an acute grammarian by his studies at the English
university of Cambridge. Having finished his laborious and difficult
work, the Indian grammar, at the close of it, under a full sense of the
difficulties he had encountered, and the acquisition he had made, he
said, 'Prayers and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, do any
thing.'"--_Life of Eliot_, p. 55.

"The Honorable Robert Boyle often strengthened Eliot's hands and
encouraged him in his work--he who was not more admirable among
philosophers for his discoveries in science, than he was beloved by
Christians for his active kindness and his pious spirit."--_Ibid._, p.
64.

"Nor was Eliot alone. In the islands round Massachusetts, and within the
limits of the Plymouth patent, missionary zeal and missionary enterprise
were active; and the gentle Mayhew, forgetting the pride of learning,
endeavored to win the natives to a new religion. At a later day, he took
passage for New England to awaken interest there, and the ship in which
he sailed was never more heard of. But such had been the force of his
example, that his father, though bowed down with the weight of seventy
years, resolved on assuming the office of the son whom he had lost, and
till beyond the age of fourscore years and twelve, continued to instruct
the natives, and with the happiest results. The Indians within his
influence, though twenty times more numerous than the whites in their
immediate neighborhood, preserved an immutable friendship with
Massachusetts."--Bancroft's _Hist of the United States_, vol. ii., p.
97. S