l; but he was his own administrator; he made his
own hands his executors, and his own eyes his overseers. It has been
remarked that liberal men are often long-lived men; so do they after
many days find the bread with which they have been willing to keep
other men alive. The great age of our Eliot was but agreeable to this
remark; and when his age had unfitted him for almost all employments,
and bereaved him of those gifts and parts which once he had been
accomplished with, being asked, "How he did?" he would sometimes
answer, "Alas, I have lost everything; my understanding leaves me, my
memory fails me, my utterance fails me; but, I thank God, my charity
holds out still; I find that rather grows than fails!" And I make no
question, that at his death his happy soul was received and welcomed
into the "everlasting habitations," by many scores got thither before
him, of such as his charity had been liberal unto.

[Footnote 13: From the "Magnalia Christi Americana." This work
comprizes an ecclesiastical history of early New England, and has been
in much favor with collectors. John Eliot has commonly been called
"The Apostle of the Indians." He labored among them many years and
translated into their language the Bible. Copies of the "Eliot Bible"
are now among the most valuable of early American books.]

But besides these more substantial expressions of his charity, he made
the odors of that grace yet more fragrant unto all that were about
him, by that pitifulness and that peaceableness which rendered him yet
further amiable. If any of his neighborhood were in distress, he was
like a "brother born for their adversity," he would visit them, and
comfort them with a most fraternal sympathy; yea, 'tis not easy to
recount how many whole days of prayer and fasting he has got his
neighbors to keep with him, on the behalf of those whose calamities he
found himself touched withal. It was an extreme satisfaction to him
that his wife had attained unto a considerable skill in physick and
chirurgery, which enabled her to dispense many safe, good and useful
medicines unto the poor that had occasion for them; and some hundreds
of sick and weak and maimed people owed praises to God for the benefit
which therein they freely received of her. The good gentleman her
husband would still be casting oil into the flame of that charity,
wherein she was of her own accord abundantly forward thus to be doing
of good unto all; and he would urge her to b