He was forced to give up the duties of his office to a new pastor, and
though often entreated to preach again, he would hardly ever do so, by
reason, he said, that it would be wronging the souls of his people, when
they had an able minister; and when he preached for the last time on a
fast day, on the 63rd Psalm, it was with an apology for what he called
the poorness, and meanness, and brokenness of his meditations.

"I wonder," he used to say, "for what the Lord lets me live. He knows
that now I can do nothing for Him."

Yet he was working for Him to the utmost of his power. A little boy in
the neighbourhood had fallen into the fire, and lost his eyesight in
consequence. The old minister took him into his house to instruct, and
first taught him to repeat many chapters in the Bible, and to know it so
thoroughly that when listening to readers he could correct them if they
missed a word; after which he taught him Latin, so that an "ordinary
piece" had become easy to him.

The importation of negro slaves had already begun, and Mr. Eliot
"lamented with a bleeding and a burning passion that the English used
their negroes but as their horses or oxen, and that so little care was
taken about their immortal souls. He look'd upon it as a prodigy, that
any bearing the name of Christians should so much have the heart of
devils in them, as to prevent and hinder the instruction of the poor
Blackamores, and confine the souls of their miserable slaves to a
destroying ignorance, merely through fear of using the benefit of their
vassalage." So, old as he was, he induced the settlers around to send
him their negroes on certain days of the week for instruction; but he had
not made much progress in the work before he became too feeble to carry
it on. He fell into languishments attended with fever, and this he
viewed as his summons. His successor, Mr. Nehemiah Walters, came to live
with him, and held a good deal of conversation with him.

"There is a cloud," he said, "a dark cloud upon the work of the Gospel
among the poor Indians. The Lord renew and prosper that work, and grant
it may live when I am dead. It is a work which I have been doing much
and long about. But what was the word I spoke last? I recall that word.
_My doings_. Alas! they have been poor and small, and lean doings, and
I'll be the man that shall throw the first stone at them all."

Mather relates that he spake other words "little short of oracles," and
l