newly rising into a city over its harbour,
and there he found his services immediately required to conduct the
worship in the congregation during the absence of the pastor, who had
gone to England finally to arrange his affairs.

On his return, Mr. Eliot was found to be in such favour, that the
Bostonites strove to retain him as an assistant minister; but this he
refused, knowing that many friends in England wished to found a separate
settlement of their own; and in less than a year this arrangement was
actually carried out, a steep hill in the forest-land was selected, and a
staunch band of East Saxons, bringing with them the gracious Anne, came
forth. John Eliot was married, elected pastor, ordained, after
Presbyterian custom, by the laying on of the hands of the ministers in
solemn assembly, and then took possession of the abode prepared for him
and of the building on the top of the hill, where his ministrations were
to be conducted.

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