likewise, how to pray. Hence
they were called 'praying Indians.' Finally, having spent the best years
of his life for their good, Mr. Eliot resolved to spend the remainder in
doing them a yet greater benefit."

"I know what that was!" cried Laurence.

"He sat down in his study," continued Grandfather, "and began a
translation of the Bible into the Indian tongue. It was while he was
engaged in this pious work that the mint-master gave him our great
chair. His toil needed it and deserved it."

"O Grandfather, tell us all about that Indian Bible!" exclaimed
Laurence. "I have seen it in the library of the Athenaeum; and the tears
came into my eyes to think that there were no Indians left to read it."

CHAPTER VIII. THE INDIAN BIBLE.

As Grandfather was a great admirer of the apostle Eliot, he was glad to
comply with the earnest request which Laurence had made at the close
of the last chapter. So he proceeded to describe how good Mr. Eliot
labored, while he was at work upon the Indian Bible.

My dear children, what a task would you think it, even with a long
lifetime before you, were you bidden to copy every chapter, and verse,
and word, in yonder family Bible! Would not this be a heavy toil? But
if the task were, not to write off the English Bible, but to learn a
language utterly unlike all other tongues, a language which hitherto
had never been learned, except by the Indians themselves, from their
mothers' lips,--a language never written, and the strange words of which
seemed inexpressible by letters,--if the task were, first to learn this
new variety of speech, and then to translate the Bible into it, and to
do it so carefully that not one idea throughout the holy book should
be changed,--what would induce you to undertake this toil? Yet this was
what the apostle Eliot did.

It was a mighty work for a man, now growing old, to take upon himself.
And what earthly reward could he expect from it? None; no reward on
earth. But he believed that the red men were the descendants of those
lost tribes of Israel of whom history has been able to tell us nothing
for thousands of years. He hoped that God had sent the English across
the ocean, Gentiles as they were, to enlighten this benighted portion of
his once chosen race. And when he should be summoned hence, he trusted
to meet blessed spirits in another world, whose bliss would have been
earned by his patient toil in translating the word of God. This hope and
trust wer