West Indies, a shipload of
these miserable creatures was refused in the over-stocked market, and the
horrors of the slave-ship were prolonged across the Atlantic, till at
last Mr. Eliot traced the unhappy freight to Tangier. He at once wrote
to conjure the excellent Mr. Boyle to endeavour to have them redeemed and
sent home,--with what success, or if any were left alive, does not
appear.

He had the pleasure of seeing a son of good Major Gookin become the
minister of a district including Natick, and likewise of the ordination
at Natick of an Indian named Daniel Takawombgrait. Of his own six
children only one son and one daughter survived him. Benjamin, the
youngest son, was his coadjutor at Roxbury, and was left in charge there
while he circulated amongst his Indians, and would have succeeded him.
The loss of this son must have fallen very heavily on him; but "the good
old man would sometimes comfortably say, 'I have had six children, and I
bless God for His free grace; they are all either _with_ Christ or _in_
Christ, and my mind is now at rest concerning them.'"

When asked how he could bear the death of such excellent children, his
answer was, "My desire was that they should have served God on earth, but
if God will choose to have them rather serve Him in heaven, I have
nothing to object against it, but His will be done."

His last letter to Mr. Boyle was written in his eighty-fourth year, and
was a farewell but a cheerful one, and he had good hopes then of a
renewal of the spirit of missions among his people. But though his
Christians did not bely their name in his own generation, alcohol did its
work on some, consumption on others; and, in 1836, when Jabez Sparks
wrote his biography, there was one wigwam at Natick inhabited by a few
persons of mingled Indian and Negro blood, the sole living remnants of
the foundation he had loved so well. Nevertheless, Eliot's work was not
wasted. The spark he lit has never gone out wholly in men's minds.

His wife died in 1684, at a great age, and her elegy over her coffin were
these words from himself: "Here lies my dear faithful, pious, prudent,
prayerful wife. I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me."

He had become very feeble, and was wont to say, when asked how he did,
"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."