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Pioneers and Founders

by Charlotte M. Yonge · English · Gutenberg #19308 · 790,318 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Pioneers and Founders

Author: Charlotte M. Yonge


        
Release date: September 17, 2006 [eBook #19308]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19308

Credits: Transcribed from the 184 Macmillan & Co. edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS ***




Transcribed from the 184 Macmillan & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org





PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS,
or
Recent Workers in the Mission field.


BY C. M. YONGE,

_Author of_ "_The Heir of Radclyffe_."

{i:Portrait of Reginald Heber: p0.jpg}

London:
MACMILLAN & CO
1874.




INTRODUCTION.


It has been my endeavour in the ensuing narratives to bring together such
of the more distinguished Missionaries of the English and American
nations as might best illustrate the character and growth of Mission work
in the last two centuries.  It is impossible to make it a real history of
the Missions of modern times.  If I could, I would have followed in the
track of Mr. Maclear's admirable volume, but the field is too wide, the
material at once too numerous and too scattered, and the account of the
spread of the Gospel in the distant parts of the earth has yet to be
written in volumes far exceeding the bulk of those allotted to the
"Sunday Library."

Two large classes of admirable Missions have been purposely
avoided,--namely, those of the Jesuits in Japan, China, and North and
South America, and those of the Moravians in Greenland, the United
States, and Africa.  These are noble works, but they are subjects apart,
and our narratives deal with men exclusively of British blood, with the
exception of Schwartz, whose toils were so entirely accepted and adopted
by the Church of England, that he cannot but be reckoned among her
ambassadors.  The object, then, has been to throw together such
biographies as are most complete, most illustrative, and have been found
most inciting to stir up others--representative lives, as far as
possible--from the time when the destitution of the Red Indians first
stirred the heart of John Eliot, till the misery of the hunted negro
brought Charles Mackenzie to the banks of the fever-haunted Zambesi.

We think it will be found that, so far from being the talking,
exaggerating, unpractical men that the critical and popular mind is apt
to suppose, these labourers were in general eminently practical and hard-
working.  They seem to us to range themselves into three classes: one,
stirred up by the sight of the destitution before their eyes, and quietly
trying to supply those needs; one, inspired by fervid zeal to devote
themselves; and one, selected by others, taking that selection as a call,
and toiling as a duty, as they would have toiled at any other duty set
before them.  Each and all have their place, and fulfil the work.  The
hindrances and drawbacks are generally not in the men themselves, nor in
the objects of their labour, but first and foremost in the almost uniform
hostility of the colonists around, who are used to consider the dark
races as subjects for servitude, and either despise or resent any attempt
at raising them in the scale; and next, in the extreme difficulty of
obtaining means.  This it is that has more than anything tended to bring
Mission work into disrepute.  Many people have no regular system nor
principle of giving--the much-needed supplies can only be charmed out of
their pockets by sensational accounts, such as the most really
hard-working and devoted men cannot prevail on themselves to pour forth;
and the work of collection is left to any of the rank and file who have
the power of speech, backed by articles where immediate results may be
dwelt upon to satisfy those who will not sow in faith and wait patiently.

And the Societies that do their best to regulate and collect the funds
raised by those who give, whether on impulse or principle, are
necessarily managed by home committees, who ought to unite the qualities
of men of business with an intimate knowledge of the needs and
governments of numerous young churches, among varied peoples, nations,
and languages, each in an entirely abnormal state; and, moreover, to deal
with those great men who now and then rise to fulfil great tasks, and
cannot be judged by common rules.  Thus it is that home Societies are
often to be reckoned among the trials of Missionaries.

But we will not dwell on such shortcomings, and will rather pass on to
what we had designed as the purpose of our present introduction; namely,
to supplement the information which the biographical form of our work has
necessitated us to leave imperfect, respecting the Missions as well as
the men.

Of the Red Indians who first stirred the compassion of John Eliot, there
is little that is good to tell, or rather there is little good to tell of
the White man's treatment of them.  Self-government by the stronger
people always falls hard on the weaker, and Mission after Mission has
been extinguished by the enmity of the surrounding Whites and the
corruption and decay of the Indians.  A Moravian Mission has been
actually persecuted.  Every here and there some good man has arisen and
done a good work on those immediately around him, and at the present time
there are some Indians living upon the reserves in the western part of
the continent, fairly civilized, settled, and Christianized, and only
diminishing from that law of their physical nature that forbids them to
flourish without a wilderness in which to roam.

But between the long-settled States of America and those upon the shores
of the Pacific, lies a territory where the Indian is still a wild and
savage man, and where hatred and slaughter prevail.  The Government at
Washington would fain act a humane part, and set apart reserves of land
and supplies, but the agents through which the transactions are carried
on have too often proved unfaithful, and palmed off inferior goods on the
Indians, or brought up old debts against them; and in the meantime mutual
injuries work up the settlers and the Red men to such a pitch of
exasperation, that horrid cruelties are perpetrated on the one side, and
on the other the wild men are shot down as pitilessly as beasts of prey,
while the travellers and soldiers who live in daily watch and ward
against the "wily savage" learn to stigmatize all pity for him as a sort
of sentimentalism sprung from Cooper's novels.

Still, where there is peace, good men make their way, and with blessed
effect.  We wish we had room for the records of the Bishopric of
Minnesota, and the details of the work among the Indians; more especially
how, when a rising was contemplated to massacre the White settlers all
along the border, a Christian Indian travelled all night to give warning;
and how, on another occasion, no less than four hundred White women and
children were saved by the interposition of four Christian Indian chiefs.
Perhaps the Church has never made so systematic an effort upon the
Indians as in Minnesota, and it is to be hoped that there may be some
success.

For the need of system seems to me one of the great morals to be deduced
from the lives I have here collected.  I confess that I began them with
the unwilling belief that greater works had been effected by persons
outside the pale of the Church than by those within; but as I have gone
on, the conviction has grown on me that even though the individuals were
often great men, their works lacked that permanency and grasp that Church
work, as such, has had.

The equality of rank in the ministry of other bodies has prevented the
original great founders from being invested with the power that is really
needed in training and disciplining inferior and more inexperienced
assistants, and produces a want of compactness and authority which has
disastrous effects in movements of emergency.  Moreover, the lack of
forms causes a deficiency of framework for religion to attach itself to,
and this is almost fatal to dealing with unintellectual minds.

On the whole, the East Indian Missions have prospered best.  Schwartz was
the very type of a founder, with his quiet, plodding earnestness, and
power of being generally valuable; and the impression he made had not had
time to die away before the Episcopate brought authority to deal with the
difficulties he had left.  Martyn was, like Brainerd before him, one of
the beacons of the cause, and did more by his example than by actual
teaching; and the foundation of the See of Calcutta gave stability to the
former efforts.  Except Heber, the Bishops of the Indian See were not
remarkable men, but their history has been put together as a whole for
the sake of the completion of the subject, as a sample of the
difficulties of the position, and likewise because of the steady progress
of the labours there recorded.

The Serampore brethren are too notable to be passed over, if only for the
memorable fact that Carey the cobbler lighted the missionary fire
throughout England and America at a time when the embers had become so
extinct that our Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had to borrow
workers from Denmark and Germany.  Indeed, Martyn's zeal was partly
lighted by Carey, though the early termination of his labours has forced
me to place his biography before that of the longer-lived Baptist
friends--both men of curious and wonderful powers, but whose history
shows the disadvantages of the Society government, and whose achievements
were the less permanent in consequence.  The Burmese branch of their work
is chiefly noticeable for the characters and adventures of Dr. Judson and
his three wives, and for the interesting display of Buddhism in contact
with Christianity.  According to the statistics in an American Missionary
Dictionary, the work they founded has not fallen to the ground either at
Moulmein or Rangoon; while there has also sprung up a hopeful English
Church Mission in the same quarter.  The last thing I saw about it was a
mention of the neatness and dexterity of Burmese girls as needlewomen.

Samuel Marsden may be called the patriarch of Australasian Christianity.
There is something grand in the bravery of the bullet-headed
Yorkshireman, now contending with the brutality of the convicts and their
masters, now sleeping among the cannibals of New Zealand.  His
foundations, too, have received a superstructure on which we cannot
dwell; because, happily, the first Bishop of New Zealand is not yet a
subject for biography, and the Melanesian Mission, which has sprung out
of it, has not yet seen its first generation.

The Polynesian work, of which John Williams was the martyr and the
representative man, has chiefly been carried on by the London Mission.  It
has always been a principle with the Missionaries of the Anglican Church,
whose centre has been first New Zealand, then Norfolk Island, never to
enter upon any islands pre-occupied by Christian teachers of any
denomination, since there is no lack of wholly unoccupied ground, without
perplexing the spirit of the natives with the spectacle of "our unhappy
divisions;" and thus while Melanesia is for the most part left to the
Church, Polynesia is in the hands of the London Mission.  Much good has
been effected.  The difficulty is that, for want of supervision,
individual Missionaries are too much left to themselves, and are in
danger of becoming too despotic in their islands.  At least such is the
impression they sometimes give to officers of the navy.  French
aggression has much disturbed them both in Tahiti and in the Loyalty
Islands, and the introduction of Roman Catholic priests into their
territory is bitterly resented.  On the whole, observers tolerably
impartial think that the civilization which these married teachers bring
with them has a happier effect as an example and stimulus to the natives
than the solitary ascetic priest,--a true, self-devoted saint indeed but
unable to win the attention of the people in their present condition.  In
India, where asceticism is the test of sanctity even among the heathen,
the most self-denying preacher has the best chance of being respected;
but in those luxurious islets, poverty and plainness of living, without
the power of showing the arts of life, get despised.  If the priests
could bring their pomp of worship, and large bands of brethren or sisters
to reclaim the waste, they might tell upon the minds of the people, but
at present they go forth few and poor, and are little heeded in their
isolation.  Unfortunately, too, the antagonism between them and the
London Mission is desperate.  The latter hold the tenets perhaps the most
widely removed from Catholicism of any Protestant sect, and are mostly
not educated enough to understand the opposite point of view, so that
each party would almost as soon see the natives unconverted as joining
the hostile camp: and precious time is wasted in warrings the one against
the other.

The most real enemies to Christianity in these seas are, however, the
lawless traders, the English and American whalers and sandal-wood
dealers, who bring uncontrolled vice and violence where they put in for
water; while they, on the one hand, corrupt the natives, on the other
they provoke them into reprisals on the next White men who fall in their
way.  That the Polynesians are good sailors and not bad workmen, has
proved another misfortune, for they are often kidnapped by unscrupulous
captains to supply the deficiency of labour in some of the Australasian
settlements.  Everywhere it seems to be the unhappy fact that Christian
men are the most fatal hinderers of God's word among the heathen.

Yet most of the more accessible of the isles have a resident missionary,
and keep up schools and chapels.  Their chiefs have accepted a Christian
code, and the horrid atrocities of cannibalism have been entirely given
up, though there is still much evil prevalent, especially in those which
have convenient harbours, and are in the pathway of ships.  The Samoan
islanders have a college, managed by an English minister and his wife,
where teachers are educated not only to much good discipline, but to much
real refinement, and go forth as admirable and self-devoted heralds of
the Gospel into other isles.  They have furnished willing martyrs, and
many have been far beyond praise.  One lack, however, seems to be of that
definite formularies, a deficiency which leaves the teaching to depend
over much on the individual impressions of the teacher.

The chief remnants of cannibalism are to be found in the New Hebrides.
The leader of the attack on John Williams is still alive at Erromango,
and the savage defiant nature of this people has never been subdued.  They
belong more to the Melanesian than the Polynesian races.  The first are
more like the Negro, the second more like the Malay.  The Melanesian
Missions are in the charge of the Missionary Bishop, John Coleridge
Patteson, who went out as a priest with the Bishop of New Zealand in
1855.

The New Zealand story, as I have said, cannot be told in the lifetime of
the chief actor in it.  It is a story of startling success, and then of
disappointment through colonial impracticability.  In some points it has
been John Eliot's experience upon a larger scale; but in this case the
political quarrel led to the rise of a savage and murderous sect among
the Maories, a sort of endeavour to combine some features of Christianity
and even Judaism with the old forgotten Paganism, and yet promoting even
cannibalism.  It is memorable, however, that not one Maori who had
received Holy Orders has ever swerved from the faith, though the "Hau-
Haus" have led away many hundreds of Christians.  Still, a good number
remain loyal and faithful, and hold to the English in the miserable war
which is still raging, provoked by disputes over the sale of land.

The Melanesian Mission was begun from New Zealand; but whereas the isles
are too hot for English constitutions, they can only be visited from the
sea, and lads are brought away to be educated for teachers.  New Zealand
proved too cold for these natives of a tropical climate, and the college
has been transplanted to Norfolk Island, where Bishop Patteson has fixed
his head-quarters.  One of his converts from Banks's Island has received
Holy Orders, and this latter group seems in good train to afford a supply
of native ministers to islands where few Englishmen could take up a
permanent abode.

The African Missions would afford much detail, but want of space has
prevented me from mentioning the Rev. George Leacock, the West Indian
clergyman, who gave up everything when already an old man to pave the way
of the Gospel in the Pongas.  And the Cape still retains its first
Bishop, so that it is only on the side of Natal and Zululand, where the
workers have passed away, that the narrative can be complete.  But the
African Church is extending its stakes in Graham's Town, Orange River,
Zululand, and Zanzibar; and while the cry from East, West, and South is
still "Come over and help us," we cannot but feel that, in spite of many
a failure, many a disappointment, many a fatal error, still the Gospel
trumpet is being blown, and not blown in vain, even in the few spots
whose history, for the sake of their representative men, I have here
tried to record.  Of the Canadian and Columbian Indian Missions, of the
Sandwich Isles, and of many more, I have here been able to say nothing;
but I hope that the pictures of these labourers in the cause may tend to
some understanding, not only of their toils, but of their joys, and may
show that they were men not easily deceived, and thoroughly to be trusted
in their own reports of their progress.

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.

_March_ 16_th_, 1871.




CHAPTER I.  JOHN ELIOT, THE APOSTLE OF THE RED INDIANS.


Since the great efforts that Britain had made between the years 500 and
1000 to bring the knowledge of the truth into the still heathen portions
of the Continent,--since the days of Columban and Gal, of Boniface and
Willibrord,--there had been a cessation of missionary enterprise.  The
known portions of the world were either Christian, or were in the hands
of the Mahommedans; and no doubt much of the adventurous spirit which,
united with religious enthusiasm, forms the missionary, found vent in the
Crusades, and training in the military orders.  The temper of the age,
and the hopelessness of converting a Mahommedan, made the good men of the
third 500 years use their swords rather than their tongues against the
infidel; and it was only in the case of men possessing such rare natures
as those of Francis of Assisi, or Raymond Lull, that the possibility of
trying to bring over a single Saracen to the faith was imagined.

It was in the revival from the Paganism with which classical tastes had
infected the Church, that the spirit of missions again awoke, stimulated,
of course, by the wide discoveries of fresh lands that were dawning upon
the earth.  If from 1000 to 1500 the progress of the Gospel was confined
to the borders of the Slavonic nation, the space of time from 1500
onwards has been one of constant and unwearied effort to raise the
standard of the Cross in the new worlds beyond the Atlantic.

Spain, Portugal, France, as nations, and the great company of the Jesuits
as one mighty brotherhood, were the foremost in the great undertaking;
but their doings form a history of their own, and our business is with
the efforts of our own Church and country in the same great cause.

Our work was not taken up so soon as theirs, partly because the spirit of
colonization did not begin amongst us so early as in Spain and Portugal,
and partly because the foundations of most of our colonies were laid by
private enterprise, rather than by public adventure, and moreover some of
the earlier ones in unsettled times.

It may be reckoned as one peculiarity of Englishmen, that their greatest
works are usually not the outcome of enthusiastic design, but rather grow
upon them by degrees, as they are led in paths that they have not known,
and merely undertake the duty that stands immediately before them, step
by step.

The young schoolmaster at Little Baddow, near Chelmsford, who decided on
following in the track of the Pilgrim Fathers to New England, went simply
to enjoy liberty of conscience, and to be free to minister according to
his own views, and never intended to become the Apostle of the Red
Indians.

Nothing is more remarkable than the recoil from neglected truths.  When,
even in the earliest ages of the Church, the Second Commandment was
supposed to be a mere enhancing of the first, and therefore curtailed and
omitted, there was little perception that this would lead to popular,
though not theoretical, idolatry, still less that this law, when again
brought forward, would be pushed by scrupulous minds to the most strange
and unexpected consequences, to the over-powering of all authority of
ancient custom, and to the repudiation of everything symbolical.

This resolution against acknowledging any obligation to use either symbol
or ceremony, together with the opposition of the hierarchy, led to the
rejection of the traditional usages of the Church and the previously
universal interpretation of Scripture in favour of three orders in the
ministry.  The elders, or presbytery, were deemed sufficient; and when,
after having for many years been carried along, acquiescing, in the
stream of the Reformation, the English Episcopacy tried to make a stand,
the coercion was regarded as a return to bondage, and the more ardent
spirits sought a new soil on which to enjoy the immunities that they
regarded as Christian freedom.

The _Mayflower_ led the way in 1620, and the news of the success of the
first Pilgrim Fathers impelled many others to follow in their track.
Among these was John Eliot.  He had been born in 1604 at Nasing in Essex,
and had been bred up by careful parents, full of that strong craving for
theological studies that characterized the middle classes in the reign of
James I.

Nothing more is known of his youth except that he received a university
education, and, like others who have been foremost in missionary labours,
had a gift for the comparison of languages and study of grammar.  He
studied the Holy Scriptures in the original tongues with the zeal that
was infused into all scholars by the knowledge that the Authorized
Version was in hand, and by the stimulus that was afforded by the promise
of a copy of the first edition to him who should detect and correct an
error in the type.

The usual fate of a scholar was to be either schoolmaster or clergyman,
if not both, and young Eliot commenced his career as an assistant to Mr.
John Hooker, at the Grammar School at Little Baddow.  He considered this
period to have been that in which the strongest religious impressions
were made upon him.  John Hooker was a thorough-going Puritan of great
piety and rigid scruples, and instructed his household diligently in
godliness, both theoretical and practical.  Eliot became anxious to enter
the ministry, but the reaction of Church principles, which had set in
with James I., was an obstacle in his way; and imagining all ceremonial
not observed by the foreign Protestants to be oppressions on Christian
liberty, it became the strongest resolution of the whole party to accept
nothing of all these rites, and thus ordination became impossible to
them, while the laws were stringent against any preaching or praying
publicly by any unordained person.  The instruction of youth was likewise
only permitted to those who were licensed by the bishop of the diocese;
and Mr. Hooker, failing to fulfil the required tests, was silenced, and,
although forty-seven clergy petitioned on his behalf, was obliged to flee
to Holland.

This decided Eliot, then twenty-seven years of age, on leaving England,
and seeking a freer sphere of action in the newly-founded colonies of New
England, which held a charter from Government.  He took leave of his
betrothed, of whom we only know that her Christian name was Anne
(gracious), and that her nature answered to her name, and sailed on the
3rd of November, 1631, in the ship _Lyon_, with a company of sixty
persons, among whom were the family of Governor Winthrop.

They landed at Boston, then 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 reference to the charge to St.
Peter, that "the care of the lambs is one-third part of the charge to the
Church of God."  An excellent free school was founded at Roxbury, which
was held in great repute in the time of Cotton Mather, to whom we owe
most of our knowledge of this good man.  The biography is put together in
the peculiar fashion of that day, not chronologically, but under heads
illustrating his various virtues, so that it is not easy to pick out the
course of his undertakings.  Before passing on to that which especially
distinguished him, we must give an anecdote or two from the "article"
denominated "His exquisite charity."  His wife had become exceedingly
skilful in medicine and in dealing with wounds, no small benefit in a
recent colony scant of doctors, and she gave her aid freely to all who
stood in need of help.  A person who had taken offence at something in
one of his sermons, and had abused him passionately, both in speech and
in writing, chanced to wound himself severely, whereupon he at once sent
his wife to act as surgeon; and when the man, having recovered, came to
return thanks and presents, he would accept nothing, but detained him to
a friendly meal, "and," says Mather, "by this carriage he mollified and
conquered the stomach of his reviler."

"He was also a great enemy to all contention, and would ring a loud
_Courfew Bell_ wherever he saw the fires of animosity."  When he heard
any ministers complain that such and such in their flocks were too
difficult for them, the strain of his answer was still: "Brother, compass
them;" and, "Brother, learn the meaning of those three little words,
'bear, forbear, forgive.'"

Once, when at an assembly of ministers a bundle of papers containing
matters of difference and contention between two parties--who, he
thought, should rather unite--was laid on the table, Eliot rose up and
put the whole upon the fire, saying, "Brethren, wonder not at that which
I have done: I did it on my knees this morning before I came among you."

But that "exquisite charity" seems a little one-sided in another anecdote
recorded of him, when "a godly gentleman of Charlestown, one Mr. Foster,
with his son, was taken captive by his Turkish enemies." {f:6}  Public
prayers were offered for his release: but when tidings were received that
the "Bloody Prince" who had enslaved him had resolved that no captive
should be liberated in his own lifetime, and the distressed friends
concluded, "Our hope is lost;" Mr. Eliot, "in some of his prayers before
a very solemn congregation, very broadly begged, 'Heavenly Father, work
for the redemption of Thy poor servant Foster, and if the prince which
detains him will not, as they say, release him so long as himself lives,
Lord, we pray Thee kill that cruel prince, kill him, and glorify Thyself
upon him.'  And now behold the answer.  The poor captiv'd gentleman
quickly returns to us that had been mourning for him as a lost man, and
brings us news that the prince, which had hitherto held him, was come to
an untimely death, by which means he was now set at liberty."

"And to turn their hearts" was a form that did not occur to the earnest
suppliant for his friend.  But the "cruel prince" was far away out of
sight, and there was no lack of charity in John Eliot's heart for the
heathen who came into immediate contact with him.  Indeed, he was the
first to make any real effort for their conversion.

The colonists were as yet only a scanty sprinkling in easy reach of the
coast, and had done little at present to destroy the hunting-grounds of
the Red man who had hitherto held possession of the woods and plains.

The country was inhabited by the Pequot Indians, a tall,
well-proportioned, and active tribe, belonging to the great Iroquois
nation.  They set up their wigwams of bark, around which their squaws
cultivated the rapidly growing crop of maize while the men hunted the
buffalo and deer, and returning with their spoil, required every
imaginable service from their heavily-oppressed women, while they
themselves deemed the slightest exertion, except in war and hunting,
beneath their dignity.  Their nature had much that was high and noble;
and in those days had not yet been ruined either by the White man's vices
or his cruelty.  They were neither the outcast savages nor the abject
inferiors that two hundred years have rendered their descendants, but far
better realized the description in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," of the
magnificently grave, imperturbably patient savage, the slave of his word,
and hospitable to the most scrupulous extent.  It was in mercy and
tenderness that the character was the most deficient.  The whole European
instinct of forbearance and respect to woman was utterly wanting,--the
squaws were the most degraded of slaves; and to the captive the most
barbarous cruelty was shown.  Experience has shown that there is
something in the nature of the Red Indian which makes him very slow of
being able to endure civilization, renders wandering almost a necessity
to his constitution, and generally makes him, when under restraint, even
under the most favourable conditions, dwindle away, lose all his fine
natural endowments, and become an abject and often a vicious being.  The
misfortune has been that, with a few honourable exceptions, it has not
been within the power of the better and more thoughtful portion of man to
change the Red Indian's vague belief in his "Great Spirit" to a more
systematic and stringent acceptance of other eternal verities and their
consequent obligations, and at the same time leave him free to lead the
roving life of the patriarchs of old; since, as Scripture itself shows
us, it takes many generations to train the wandering hunter to a tiller
of the soil, or a dweller in cities; and the shock to the wild man of a
sudden change is almost always fatal both to mental and bodily health.
This conclusion, however, has been a matter of slow and sad experience,
often confused by the wretched effects of the vice, barbarity, and
avarice of the settler and seaman, which in many cases have counteracted
the effects of the missionary, and accelerated the extinction of the
native.

In John Eliot's time, there was all to hope; and the community of
Englishmen with whom he lived, though stern, fierce, intolerant, and at
times cruel in their intolerance, did not embarrass his work nor corrupt
the Indians by the grosser and coarser vices, when, in his biographer's
words, "our Eliot was on such ill terms with the devil as to alarm him
with sounding the silver trumpets of Heaven in his territories, and make
some noble and zealous endeavours towards ousting him of his ancient
possessions."  The Pilgrim Fathers had obtained their land by fair
purchase, _i.e._ if purchase could be fair where there was no real mutual
understanding; and a good deal of interest had been felt in England in
the religious state of the Red men.  The charter to the colony had
enforced their conversion on the settlers, and Dr. Lake, Bishop of Bath
and Wells, declared that but for his old age and infirmities he would
have headed a mission to America for the purpose.  Had he done so,
perhaps something systematic might have been attempted.  As it was the
new colonists had too severe a struggle with their own difficulties to
attend to their heathen surroundings, even though the seal of their
colony of Massachusetts represented an Indian with the label in his
mouth, "Come over and help us."  A few conversions had taken place, but
rather owing to the interest in the White men's worship taken by
individual Indians, than to any efforts on the part of the settlers.

Sixteen years, however, passed without overt aggression, though already
was beginning the sad story that is repeated wherever civilized man
extends his frontiers.  The savage finds his hunting-ground broken up,
the White man's farm is ruined by the game or the chase, the luxuries of
civilization excite the natives' desires, mistrust leads to injury,
retaliation follows, and then war.

In 1634, only two years after Eliot's arrival, two gentlemen, with their
boat's crew, were killed on the Connecticut river, and some of the
barbarities took place that we shall too often have to notice--attacks by
the natives on solitary dwellings or lonely travellers, and increasing
anger on the part of the colonists, until they ceased to regard their
enemies as fellow-creatures.

However, the Pequots were likewise at war with the Dutch and with the
Narragansets, or river Indians, and they sent a deputation to endeavour
to make peace with the English, and secure their assistance against these
enemies.  They were appointed to return for their answer in a month's
time; and after consultation with the clergy, Mr. Dudley and Mr. Ludlow,
the Governor and Deputy-Governor, decided on making a treaty with them,
on condition of their delivering up the murderers of the Englishmen, and
paying down forty beaver and thirty otter skins, besides 400 fathoms of
wampum, _i.e._ strings of the small whelks and Venus-shells that served
as current coin, a fathom being worth about five shillings.

It surprises us that Eliot's name first appears in connection with the
Indians as an objector to this treaty, and in a sermon too, at Roxbury;
not on any grounds of injustice to the Indians, but because it had been
conducted by the magistrates without reference to the people, which was
an offence to his views of the republican rights to be exercised in the
colony.  So serious was his objection deemed, that a deputation was
appointed to explain the principles on which Government had acted, and
thus convince Mr. Eliot, which they did so effectually that he retracted
his censure in his next sermon.

Probably this was what first awakened John Eliot's interest in the Red-
skins; but for the next few years, in spite of the treaty, there was a
good deal of disturbance on the frontier, and some commission of
cruelties, until the colonists became gradually roused into fury.  Some
tribes were friendly with them; and, uniting with these the Mohicans and
river Indians, under the conduct of Uncas, the Mohican chief, seventy-
seven Englishmen made a raid into the Pequot country and drove them from
it.  Then, in 1637, a battle, called "the Great Swamp Fight," took place
between the English, Dutch, and friendly Indians on the one hand, and the
Pequots on the other.  It ended in the slaughter of seven hundred of the
Pequots and thirteen of their Sachems.  The wife of one of the Sachems
was taken, and as she had protected two captive English girls she was
treated with great consideration, and was much admired for her good sense
and modesty; but the other prisoners were dispersed among the settlers to
serve as slaves, and a great number of the poor creatures were shipped
off to the West India Islands to work on the sugar plantations.

Those who had escaped the battle were hunted down by the Mohicans and
Narragansets, who continually brought their scalps in to the English
towns, and at last they were reduced to sue for peace when only 200
braves were still living.  These, with their families, were amalgamated
with the Mohicans and Narragansets, and expelled from their former
territory, on which the English settled.  An annual tribute of a length
of wampum, for every male in the tribe, varying according to age and
rank, was paid to the English, and their supremacy was so entirely
established that nearly forty years of peace succeeded.

Eliot's missionary enterprise, Mather allows, was first inspired by the
"remarkable zeal of the Romish missionaries," by whom he probably means
the French Jesuits, who were working with much effect in the settlements
in Louisiana, first occupied in the time of Henri IV.  Another stimulus
came from the expressions in the Royal Charter which had granted licence
for the establishment of the colony, namely, "To win and incite the
natives of that country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true
God and Saviour of mankind and the Christian faith, in our Royal
intention and the Adventurers' free profession, is the principal end of
the Plantation."

That the devil himself was the Red men's master, and came to their
assistance when summoned by the incantations of their medicine men, was
the universal belief of the colonists, in corroboration of which the
following story is given:--"The Indians in their wars with us, finding a
sore inconvenience by our dogs, which would make a sad yelling if in the
night they scented the approaches of them, they sacrificed a dog to the
devil, after which no English dog would bark at an Indian for divers
months ensuing."

In the intended contest Mr. Eliot began by preaching and making
collections from the English settlers, and likewise "he hires a native to
teach him this exotick language, and, with a laborious care and skill,
reduces it into a grammar, which afterwards he published.  There is a
letter or two of our alphabet which the Indians never had in theirs;
though there were enough of the dog in their temper, there can scarce be
found an R in their language, . . . but, if their alphabet be short, I am
sure the words composed of it are long enough to tire the patience of any
scholar in the world; they are _Sesquipedalia verba_, of which their
linguo is composed.  For instance, if I were to translate our Loves, it
must be nothing shorter than _Noowomantamoonkanunonush_.  Or to give my
reader a longer word, _Kremmogkodonattootummootiteaonganunnnash_ is, in
English, our _question_."

The worthy Mr. Mather adds, with a sort of apology, that, having once
found that the demons in a possessed young woman understood Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew, he himself tried them with this Indian tongue, and "the
demons did seem as if they understood it."  Indeed, he thinks the words
must have been growing ever since the confusion of Babel!  The fact
appears to be, that these are what are now called agglutinate languages,
and, like those of all savage tribes, in a continual course of
alteration--also often using a long periphrastic description to convey an
idea or form a name.  A few familiar instances will occur, such as
_Niagara_, "thunder of water."

This formidable language Mr. Eliot--the anagram of whose name, Mather
appropriately observes, was _Toils_--mastered with the assistance of a
"pregnant-witted Indian," who had been a servant in an English family.  By
the help of his natural turn for philology, he was able to subdue this
instrument to his great and holy end,--with what difficulty may be
estimated from the sentence with which he concluded his grammar: "Prayer
and pains through faith in CHRIST JESUS will do anything."

It was in the year 1646, while Cromwell was gradually obtaining a
preponderating influence in England, and King Charles had gone to seek
protection in the Scottish army, that John Eliot, then in his
forty-second year, having thus prepared himself, commenced his campaign.

He had had a good deal of conversation with individual Indians who came
about the settlement at Roxbury, and who perceived the advantages of some
of the English customs.  They said they believed that in forty years the
Red and White men would be all one, and were really anxious for this
consummation.  When Eliot declared that the superiority of the White race
came from their better knowledge of God, and offered to come and instruct
them, they were full of joy and gratitude; and on the 28th of October,
1646, among the glowing autumn woods, a meeting of Indians was convoked,
to which Mr. Eliot came with three companions.  They were met by a chief
named Waban, or the Wind, who had a son at an English school, and was
already well disposed towards them, and who led them to his wigwam, where
the principal men of the tribe awaited them.

   "All the old men of the village,
   All the warriors of the nation,
   All the Jossakeeds, the prophets,
   The magicians, the Wabenos,
   And the medicine men, the medas,
   Came to bid the strangers welcome.
   'It is well,' they said, 'O brothers,
   That you came so far to see us.'
   In a circle round the doorway,
   With their pipes they sat in silence,
   Waiting to behold the strangers,
   Waiting to receive their message,
   Till the Black Robe chief, the pale face,
   From the wigwam came to greet them,
   Stammering in his speech a little,
   Speaking words yet unfamiliar."

Mr. Eliot prayed in English, and then preached on the 9th and 10th verses
of the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, where the prophet is bid to call the
Breath of God from the four winds of heaven to give life to the dry bones
around.  It so happened that the Indian word for breath or wind was
_Waban_, and this made a great impression, and was afterwards viewed as
an omen.

The preacher worked up from the natural religion, of which this fine race
already had an idea, to the leading Christian truths.

   Then the Black Robe chief, the prophet,
   Told his message to the people,
   Told the purport of his mission,
   Told them of the Virgin Mary,
   And her blessed Son, the Saviour:
   How in distant lands and ages
   He had lived on earth as we do;
   How He fasted, prayed, and laboured;
   How the Jews, the tribe accursed,
   Mocked Him, scourged Him, crucified Him;
   How He rose from where they laid Him,
   Walked again with His disciples,
   And ascended into heaven."

The sermon lasted an hour and a quarter, but the Indians are a dignified
and patient people, prone to long discourses themselves, and apt to
listen to them from others.  When he finally asked if they had
understood, many voices replied that they had; and, on his encouraging
them to ask questions, many intelligent inquiries were made.  The whole
conference lasted three hours, and Mr. Eliot was invited to come again,
which he did at intervals of about a fortnight, and again with good
promise.

In one of these meetings they asked, very reasonably, why the English
called them Indians, a question it could not have been easy to answer.
The Powaws, or priests, began to make some opposition, but Waban was
continually going about among the people, repeating portions of the
instructions he had received, and teaching his friends to pray--for some
had at first supposed that the English God might not be addressed in the
native tongue, but only in English.

After some little time, he thought the Indians ripe for being taught to
live a settled life, and obtained for his congregation--"the praying
Indians," as they were commonly called--a grant of the site of his first
instructions.  The place was named "Rejoicing,"--in Indian, a word that
soon got corrupted into Nonantum; and, under Mr. Eliot's directions, they
divided their grounds with trenches and stone walls, for which he gave
them tools to the best of his ability.  They built wigwams of a superior
construction, and the women learnt to spin; there was a continual
manufacture of brushes, eel-pots, and baskets, which were sold in the
English towns, together with turkeys, fish, venison, and fruits,
according to the season.  At hay and harvest times they would hire
themselves out to work for their English neighbours, but were thought
unable or unwilling to do what sturdy Englishmen regarded as a fair day's
work.

A second settlement of praying Indians followed at Neponset, around the
wigwam of a Sachem named Cutshamakin, a man of rank much superior to
Waban.  He had already been in treaty with the English, and had promised
to observe the Ten Commandments, but had unhappily learnt also from the
English that love of drink which was the bane of the Indian; and while
Mr. Eliot was formally instructing the family, one of the sons, a boy of
fifteen, when learning the fifth commandment, persisted in saying only
"honour thy mother," and, when admonished, declared that his father had
given him fire-water, which had intoxicated him, and had besides been
passionate and violent with him.  The boy had always been a rude,
contumacious fellow, and at the next lecture day Mr. Eliot turned to the
Sachem, and lamented over these faults, but added that the first step to
reforming him would be for his father to set the example by a confession
of his own sins, which were neither few nor light.

The Sachem's pride was subdued.  He stood up and openly declared his
offences, lamenting over them with deep sincerity.  The boy was so
touched that he made humble confession in his turn, and entreated
forgiveness.  His parents were so much moved that they wept aloud, and
the board on which Cutshamakin stood was wet with his tears.  He was
softened then, but, poor man, he said: "My heart is but very little
better than it was, and I am afraid it will be as bad again as it was
before.  I sometimes wish I might die before I be so bad again!"

Poor Cutshamakin! he estimated himself truly.  The Puritan discipline,
which aimed at acting on the conduct rather through the conscience and
feelings than by means of grace, never entirely subdued him, and he
remained a fitfully fierce, and yet repentant, savage to the end of his
life.  His squaw must have been a clever woman; for, being publicly
reprimanded by the Indian preacher Nabanton, for fetching water on a
Sunday, she told him after the meeting that he had done more harm by
raising the discussion than she had done by fetching the water.

Sunday was impressed upon the natives with all the strictness peculiar to
the British Calvinists in their reaction from the ale-feasts, juggleries,
and merry-makings of the almost pagan fifteenth century.  It is never
hard to make savage converts observe a day of rest; they are generally
used to keep certain seasons already, and, as Mr. Eliot's Indians
honestly said, they do so little work at any time that a weekly
abstinence from it comes very easily.  At Nonantum, indeed, they seem to
have emulated the Pharisees themselves in their strictness.  Waban got
into trouble for having a racoon killed to entertain two unexpected
guests; and a case was brought up at public lecture of a man who, finding
his fire nearly gone out, had violated the Sabbath by splitting one piece
of dry wood with his axe.

But the "weightier matters of the law" were not by any means forgotten,
and there was a continual struggle to cure the converts of their new vice
of drunkenness, and their old habit of despising and maltreating their
squaws, who in the Christian villages were raised to a state far less
degraded; for any cruelty or tyranny towards them was made matter of
public censure and confession in the assembly.

Several more distant journeys were taken by Mr. Eliot, some of them to
the Merrimac River to see a powerful old Sachem of a great age, named
Passaconaway, who his people believed to be able to make green leaves
grow in winter, trees dance, and water burn.

He was so much afraid of the Missionary that he fled away the first time
he heard he was coming, probably thinking him a great sorcerer; but the
next time he remained, listened eagerly, expressed his intention of
praying, and tried to induce Mr. Eliot to settle in his district.  He
lived to a great age, and left a charge with his children never to
contend with the English, having convinced himself that the struggle was
hopeless.  Several other Sachems gave a sort of attention: and it
appeared that the way had been in some degree prepared by a French
priest, who had been wrecked on Cape Cod, had been passed from one tribe
to another, and had died among them, but not without having left a
tradition of teaching which was by some identified with Eliot's.

Of one Sachem, Mather tells a story: "While Mr. Eliot was preaching of
Christ unto the other Indians, a demon appeared unto a Prince of the
Eastern Indians in a shape that had some resemblance of Mr. Eliot or of
an English minister, pretending to be the Englishman's God.  The spectre
commanded him 'to forbear the drinking of rum and to observe the Sabbath-
day, and to deal justly with his neighbours;' all which things had been
inculcated in Mr. Eliot's ministry, promising therewithal unto him that,
if he did so, at his death his soul should ascend into a happy place,
otherwise descend unto miseries; but the apparition all the while never
said one word about Christ, which was the main subject of Mr. Eliot's
ministry.  The Sachem received such an impression from the apparition
that he dealt justly with all men except in the bloody tragedies and
cruelties he afterwards committed on the English in our wars.  He kept
the Sabbath-day like a fast, frequently attending in our congregations;
he would not meddle with any rum, though usually his countrymen had
rather die than undergo such a piece of self-denial.  That liquor has
merely enchanted them.  At last, and not long since, this demon appeared
again unto this pagan, requiring him to kill himself, and assuring him
that he should revive in a day or two, never to die any more.  He
thereupon divers times attempted it, but his friends very carefully
prevented it; however, at length he found a _fair_ opportunity for this
_foul_ business, and hanged himself,--you may be sure without his
expected resurrection."

This story, grotesque as it sounds in the solemn simplicity of the worthy
Puritan, is really only an instance of what takes place wherever the
light of the Gospel is held up to men capable of appreciating its
standard of morality, but too proud to bend the spirit to accept the
doctrine of the Cross.  The Sachem was but a red-skinned "seeker after
God," an "ape of Christianity," like Marcus Aurelius, and like the many
others we shall meet with who loved darkness rather than light, not so
much because their deeds were evil as because their hearts were proud.

Like all practical men, Eliot found it absolutely necessary to do what he
called "carrying on civility with religion," _i.e._ instructing the
converts in such of the arts of life as would afford them wholesome
industry; but want of means was his great difficulty, and in the middle
of a civil war England was not very likely to supply him.

Still he made his Indians at Nonantum hedge and ditch, plant trees, sow
cornfields, and saw planks; and some good man in England, whose name he
never knew, sent him in 1648 ten pounds for schools among the natives,
half of which he gave to a mistress at Cambridge, and half to a master at
Dorchester, under whom the Indian children made good progress, and he
catechized them himself most diligently by way of teaching both them and
the parents who looked on.

He had by this time translated the Bible, but it remained in manuscript
for want of the means of printing it; and his favourite scheme of
creating an Indian city, with a scriptural government, well out of the
way of temptation from and interference by the English, was also at a
standstill, from his poverty.

He likewise sustained a great loss in his friend Mr. Shepard, who had
worked with him with equal devotion and enthusiasm, but this loss really
led to the fulfilment of his wishes, for Mr. Shepard's papers were sent
home, and aroused such an interest in Calamy and others of the devout
ministers in London, that the needs of the Indians of New England were
brought before Parliament, and an ordinance was passed on the 27th of
July, 1649, for the advancement of civilization and Christianity among
them.  Then a corporation was instituted, entitled the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in New England, of which Judge Street was the
first president, and Mr. Henry Ashurst the first treasurer, with powers
to receive the collections that the ministers in every parish were
exhorted to make by authority of Parliament, backed up by letters from
the two Universities.

There was a good deal of opposition; people fancied it a new plan of
getting money for Government, and were not at all interested about the
Indians, but money enough was collected to purchase lands worth about
500_l._ or 600_l._ a year, by way of foundation, at a time when the
property of Cavaliers was going cheap, and the Society was able to
undertake the cost of printing Eliot's Bible, as well as of building him
an Indian college, of paying his teachers, and of supplying the greatly
needed tools and other necessaries for his much-desired station.

Still there was a great deal of difficulty and opposition, from the
English dislike and contempt for the Indians, who were judged _en masse_
by the degraded ones who loitered about the settlements, begging and
drinking; as well as from the Powaws or medicine men who found their
dupes escaping, and tried to terrify them by every means by which it was
possible to work upon their superstition.  The Sachems, likewise, were
finding out that Christians were less under their tyranny since they had
had a higher standard, and many opposed Eliot violently, trying to drive
him from their villages with threats and menacing gestures, but he calmly
answered, "I am engaged in the work of God, and God is with me.  I fear
not all the Sachems in the country.  I shall go on with my work.  Touch
me if you dare;" nor did he ever fail to keep the most angry in check
while he was present, though they hated him greatly.  Uncas, the chief of
the Mohicans, made a regular complaint to Government that Eliot and his
colleagues prayed by name for the conversion of the Mohicans and
Narragansets.  Even Cutshamakin, when he heard of the project of an
Indian town, broke out against it with such fury, that all the men in
favour of it cowered and slunk away from his furious howls and
gesticulations.  Mr. Eliot was left alone to confront him, and looking
steadily at him told him that, as this was God's work, no fear of him
should hinder it.  The savage quailed before him, but afterwards came to
him and stated that his objection was that the praying Indians did not
pay him their tribute.  Eliot kindly answered that this had been
complained of before, and that he had preached a sermon enforcing this
duty upon the tribe.

The words were good, said Cutshamakin, but the Indians would not obey
them.  So Mr. Eliot, after consultation with the ministers and elders in
Boston, invited the Indians who understood English to hear a sermon
there, and in it the duty of rendering to all their due was fully
enforced.  Afterwards, however, the Indians came forward declaring
themselves much surprised and mortified at being accused of not paying
their just duty to their chief; and they specified the service and gifts:
each had rendered twenty bushels of corn, six bushels of rye, fifteen
deer, days spent in hunting, the building of a wigwam, reclaiming two
acres of land; and the amount when added up amazed Mr. Eliot.  At his
next lecture, then, he took for his text the rejection by the Saviour of
all the kingdoms of the world, and personally applied it to Cutshamakin,
reproaching him with lust of power and worldly ambition, and warning him
that Satan was tempting him to give up the faith for the sake of
recovering his arbitrary power.  The discourse and the conversation that
followed again melted the Sachem, and he repented and retracted, although
he continued an unsafe and unstable man.

At length, in 1651, Mr. Eliot was able to convene his praying Indians and
with them lay the foundation of a town on the banks of Charles River,
about eighteen miles to the south-west of Boston.  The spot, as he
believed, had been indicated to him in answer to prayer, and they named
it Natick, or the place of hills.  The inhabitants of Nonantum removed
thither, and the work was put in hand.  A bridge, eighty feet long and
nine feet wide, had already been laid across the river, entirely by
Indian workmen, under Mr. Eliot's superintendence; and the town was laid
out in three streets, two on one side of the river and one on the other;
the grounds were measured and divided, apple-trees planted, and sowing
begun.  The cellars of some of the houses, it is said, remain to the
present day.  In the midst was a circular fort, palisaded with trees, and
a large house built in the English style, though with only a day or two
of help from an English carpenter, the lower part of which was to serve
as a place of worship on Sunday, and for a school on other days, the
upper part as a wardrobe and storehouse for valuables, and with a room
partitioned off, and known as "the prophet's chamber," for the use of Mr.
Eliot on his visits to the settlement.  Outside were canopies, formed by
mats stretched on poles, one for Mr. Eliot and his attendants, another
for the men, and a third for the women.  These were apparently to shelter
a sort of forum, and likewise to supplement the school-chapel in warm
weather.  A few English-built houses were raised; but the Indians found
them expensive and troublesome, and preferred the bark wigwams on
improved principles.

The spot was secured to the Indians by the Council of Government, acting
under the Commonwealth at home; but the right of local self-government
was vested in each township; and Eliot, as the guide of his new settlers,
could lead them to what he believed to be a truly scriptural code, such
as he longed to see prevail in his native land.  "Oh!" he exclaimed, "the
blessed day in England, when the Word of God shall be their Magna Carta
and chief law book, and all lawyers must be divines to study the
Scripture."

His commencement in carrying out this system was to preach Jethro's
advice to Moses, and thence deduce that the Indians should divide
themselves into hundreds and into tens, and elect rulers for each
division, each tithing man being responsible for the ten under him, each
chief of a hundred for the ten tithings.  This was done on the 6th of
August, 1651; and Eliot declared that it seemed to him as if he beheld
the scattered bones he had spoken of in his first sermon to the Indians,
come bone to bone, and a civil political life begin.  His hundreds and
tithings were as much suggested by the traditional arrangements of King
Alfred as by those of Moses in the wilderness; and his next step was, in
like manner, partly founded on Scripture, partly on English
history,--namely, the binding his Indians by a solemn covenant to serve
the Lord, and ratifying it on a fast-day.  His converts had often asked
him why he held none of the great fast-days with them that they saw the
English hold, and he had always replied that there was not a sufficient
occasion, but he regarded this as truly important enough.  Moreover, a
ship containing some supplies, sent by the Society in England, had been
wrecked, and the goods, though saved, were damaged.  This he regarded as
a frown of Providence and a fruit of sin.  Poor Cutshamakin also was in
trouble again, having been drawn into a great revel, where much spirits
had been drunk; and his warm though unstable temper always made him ready
to serve as a public example of confession and humiliation.  So when, on
the 24th of September, 1651, Mr. Eliot had conducted the fast-day
service, it began with Cutshamakin's confession; then three Indians
preached and prayed in turn, and Mr. Eliot finally preached on Ezra's
great fast.  There was a pause for rest; then the assembly came together
again, and before them Mr. Eliot solemnly recited the terms of the
Covenant, by which all were to bind themselves to the service of the
Lord, and which included all their principal laws.  He asked them whether
they stood to the Covenant.  All the chiefs first bound themselves, then
the remainder of the people; a collection was made for the poor; and so
ended that "blessed day," as the happy apostle of the Indians called it.

When Governor Endicot shortly after visited the place, he was greatly
struck with the orderliness and civilization he found there.  "I account
this one of the best journeys I have made for many years," he says.  Many
little manufactures were carried on, in particular one of drums, which
were used for lack of bells in some of the American settlements, as a
summons to come to church.

There was a native schoolmaster, named Monequassum, who could write,
read, and spell English correctly, and under whom the children were
making good progress.  Promising lads were trained by Mr. Eliot himself,
in hopes of making them act as missionaries among their brethren.  All
this time his praying Indians were not baptized, nor what he called
"gathered into a Church estate."  He seems to have been determined to
have full proof of their stability before he so accepted them; for it was
from no inclination to Baptist views that he so long delayed receiving
them.  However, on the 13th of October, 1652, he convened his brother-
ministers to hear his Indians make public confession of their faith.  What
the converts said was perfectly satisfactory; but they were a long-winded
race, accustomed to flowing periods; and as each man spoke for himself,
and his confession had to be copied down in writing, Mr. Eliot himself
owns that their "enlargement of spirit" did make "the work longsome."  So
longsome it was, that while the schoolmaster was speaking every one got
restless, and there was a confusion; and the ministers, who had a long
dark ride through the woods before them, went away, and were hard to
bring back again, so that he had to finish hearing the declarations of
faith alone.

Still, he cut off the baptism and organization of a church till he had
sent all these confessions to be considered by the Society in England,
printed and published under the title of "Tears of Repentance," with a
dedication to Oliver Cromwell.  Then came other delays; some from the
jealousy and distrust of the English, who feared that the Indians were
going to ally themselves to the Dutch; some from the difficulty of
getting pastors to join in the tedious task of listening to the wordy
confessions; and some from the distressing scandal of drunkenness
breaking out among the Indians, in spite of the strict discipline that
always punished it.  It was not till 1660 that Mr. Eliot baptized any
Indians, and the next day admitted them to the Lord's Supper, nine years
after he had begun to preach.  The numbers we do not know, but there is
no doubt that he received no adults except well proved and tried persons
coming up to the Puritan standard of sincerity and devotion.

At this time the Society at home was in great danger; for, on the
Restoration, the charter had become void, and, moreover, the principal
estate that formed the endowment had been the property of a Roman
Catholic,--Colonel Bedingfield,--who resumed possession, and refused to
refund the purchase money, as considering the Society at an end.  It
would probably have been entirely lost, but for the excellent Robert
Boyle, so notable at once for his science, piety, and beneficence.  He
placed the matter in its true light before Lord Clarendon, and obtained
by his means a fresh charter from Charles II.  The judgment in the Court
of Chancery was given in favour of the Society, and Boyle himself
likewise endowed it with a third part of a grant of the forfeited
impropriations in Ireland which he had received from the king.  But all
the time there was a great disbelief in the efficacy of the work among
the Indians both at home and in New England.  It was the fashion to call
all the stories of Indian conversions mere devices for getting money, and
the unhappy, proud hostility that almost always actuated the ordinary
English colonist in dealing with natives, was setting in in full force.
However, at Massachusetts, the general court appointed an English
magistrate to hold a court of judicature in conjunction with the chiefs
of the Christian Indians, and to be in fact a sort of special member of
government on their behalf.  The first so appointed was Daniel Gookin, a
man of great piety, wisdom, and excellence, and a warm friend of Mr.
Eliot, with whom he worked most heartily, not only in dealing with the
Indians of Natick, but with all those who came under English
jurisdiction, providing schools, and procuring the observance of the
Sunday among them.  It was also provided that the Christian Indians
should set apart a tenth of all their produce for the support of their
teachers--a practice that Mr. Gookin defended from the charge of Judaism.
It seems as if these good men, who went direct to the Old Testament for
their politics, must have been hard set between their desire of
scriptural authority and their dread of Judaizing.

It was well for Eliot that he had friends, for in the first flush of the
tidings of the successes of the Puritans in England, he had written a set
of papers upon Government, entitled the "Christian Commonwealth," which
had been sent to England, and there lay dormant for nine or ten years,
until in the midst of all the excitement on the Restoration, this
speculative work, the theory of a scholar upon Christian democracy, was
actually printed and launched upon the world at home, whether by an enemy
or by an ill-advised friend does not appear, and without the author's
consent.  Complaints of this as a seditious book came out to New England,
and John Eliot was forced to appear before the court, when he owned the
authorship, but disowned the publication, and retracted whatever might
have declared the Government of England, by King, Lords, and Commons, to
be anti-Christian, avowing it to be "not only a lawful but eminent form
of government, and professing himself ready to conform to any polity that
could be deduced from Scripture as being of Divine authority."  The court
was satisfied, and suppressed the book, while publishing Mr. Eliot's
retractation.  Some have sneered at his conduct on this occasion as an
act of moral cowardice; but it would be very hard if every man were bound
to stand to all the political views expressed in an essay never meant for
the general eye, ten years old, and written in the enthusiasm of the
commencement of an experiment, which to the Presbyterian mind had proved
a grievous disappointment.

He had a much more important work in hand than the defence of old dreams
of the reign of the saints--for the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in New England had just finished printing his translation of the
New Testament, _Wusku Wuttestermentum_ as it was called, and in two years
more the Old Testament was finished.  A copy was presented to Charles
II., to the Chancellor Clarendon, and to the two Universities in England,
as well as to Harvard College.  It was in the Mohican dialect, which was
sufficiently like that of the neighbouring tribes to serve for them, and
had all the correctness that the scholarship and philology of the time
could furnish.  There is a story that Eliot wrote the whole with a single
pen.  It went through a good many editions, but is now very rare, and
with Eliot's Catechism, and translations of Baxter's chief works, and a
metrical version of the Psalms, remains the only vestige of the language
of the Mohicans.

There were now several Indian congregations, one in especial at the
island called Martha's Vineyard, under the charge of an Indian pastor,
John Hiacoomes, who is said to have been the first red-skinned convert,
and who had made proof of much true Christian courage.  Once in the act
of prayer he received a severe blow from a Sachem, and would have been
killed if some English had not been present; but all his answer was, "I
have two hands.  I had one hand for injuries, and the other for God.
While I did receive wrong with the one, the other laid the greater hold
on God."

When some of the Powaws, or medicine men, were boasting that they could,
if they would, destroy all the praying Indians at once, Hiacoomes made
reply: "Let all the Powaws in the island come together, I'll venture
myself in the midst among them all.  Let them use all their witchcrafts.
With the help of God, I'll tread upon them all!"

By which defiance he wonderfully "heartened" his flock, who, Christians
as they were, had still been beset by the dread of the magic arts, in
which, as we have seen, even their White teachers did not wholly
disbelieve.

Such a man as this was well worthy of promotion, and Mr. Eliot hoped to
educate his more promising scholars, so as to supply a succession of
learned and trained native pastors.  Two young men, named Joel and Caleb,
were sent to Harvard College, Cambridge, where they both were gaining
distinguished success, and were about to take their degree, when Joel,
who had gone home on a visit, was wrecked on the Island of Nantucket,
and, with the rest of the ship's company, was either drowned or murdered
by the Indians.  The name of Caleb, Chee-shah-teau-muck, Indus, is still
to be seen in the registers of those who took their degree, and there are
two Latin and Greek elegies remaining, which he composed on the death of
an eminent minister, bearing his signature, with the addition, Senior
Sophister.  How curiously do the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin proclaim
themselves the universal languages, thus blending with the uncouth
Mohican word!  Caleb's constitution proved unable to endure College
discipline and learning, and he died of decline soon after taking his
degree.  Consumption was very frequent among the Indians, as it so often
is among savages suddenly brought to habits of civilization, and it seems
to have mown down especially the more intellectual of the Indians;
Monequassum, the first schoolmaster at Natick, among them.  An Indian
College, which had been established at Cambridge, failed from the deaths
of some scholars and the discouragement of others, and had to be turned
into a printing house, and the energetic and indefatigable Eliot did the
best he could by giving courses of lectures in logic and theology to
candidates for the ministry at Natick, and even printed an "Indian logick
primer."  It was a wonderful feat, considering the loose unwieldy words
of the language.

From 1660 to 1675 were Eliot's years of chief success.  His own vigour
was unabated, and he had Major Gookin's hearty co-operation.  There had
been time for a race of his own pupils to grow up; and there had not been
time for the first love of his converts to wax cool.  There had been a
long interval of average peace and goodwill between English and natives,
and there seemed good reason to suppose that Christianity and
civilization would keep them friends, if not fuse them together.  There
were eleven hundred Christian Indians, according to Eliot and Gookin's
computation, with six regularly constituted "churches" after the fashion
of Natick, and fourteen towns, of which seven were called old and seven
new, where praying Indians lived, for the most part, in a well-conducted,
peaceable manner, though now and then disorderly conduct would take
place, chiefly from drunkenness.  Several Sachems had likewise been
converted, in especial Wanalanset, the eldest son of the famous old chief
Passaconnaway.  After four years of hesitation whether he should, as he
said, quit his old canoe and embark in a new one, he came to the
conclusion that the old canoe was floating down the stream of
destruction, and manfully embraced the faith, although at the cost of
losing many of his tribe, who deserted him on his profession of
Christianity.

But there is always a period of check and disappointment in every great
and holy work.  The tide of evil may be driven into ebb for a time, but
it always rallies and flows back upon the servant of God, and usually
when the prime of his strength is past, and he is less able to withstand.
Most good and great men have closed their eyes upon apparent failure and
disappointment in what is especially their own task, and, like the first
great Leader and Lawgiver, have had to cry, "Show Thy servants Thy work,
and their children Thy glory."  Often the next generation does see the
success, and gather the fruits; but the strong, wise, scholarly,
statesman-like Apostle of the Indians was destined to see his work swept
away like snow before the rage and fury of man, and to leave behind him
little save a great witness and example.  At least he had the comfort of
knowing that the evil did not arise among his own children in the faith,
but came from causes entirely external, and as much to be preferred as
persecution is better than corruption.

The Sachem nearest to Plymouth had been at the first arrival of the
Pilgrim Fathers, Massasoiet, chief of the Wampanongs, who had kept the
peace out of fear.  His son Alexander had followed his example, but it
was current among the English that he had died of "choler," on being
detected in a plot against them, and his successor, Philip, was a man of
more than common pride, fierceness, cunning, and ability.  These were
only names given them by the English; none of them were Christians.  Mr.
Eliot had made some attempts upon Philip, but had been treated with
scorn.  The Sachem, twisting a button upon the minister's coat, told him
he cared not _that_ for his Gospel; but Major Gookin had some hopes of
having touched his heart.

However, there were indications that he was endeavouring to unite all the
surrounding tribes in an alliance against the colony.  A murder of an
Englishman had taken place, and the Government at Plymouth required all
natives to surrender the fire-arms they had obtained from the English.
Even Philip consented to deliver them up until the English should see no
further cause for detaining them.  Upon this, in June 1671, Eliot wrote a
remarkable letter to Mr. Prince, the Governor of Plymouth, requiring him
not to detain the arms, especially of Philip.  "My reasons are," he says,
"first, lest we render ourselves more afraid of them and their guns than
indeed we are or have cause to be.  Alas! it is not the gun, but the man;
nor, indeed, is it the man, but our sin that we have cause to be afraid
of.  Secondly, your so doing will open an effectual door to the
entertainment of the Gospel."  Probably Mr. Eliot was right, and the
keeping the arms only irritated the high-spirited chief, who said to the
messenger of the Governor of Massachusetts, "Your governor is but a
subject.  I will not treat but with my brother, King Charles of England."

For four years enmity smouldered on.  The rights of the dispute will
never be known.  The settlers laid all upon Philip's machinations, except
those who lived near his wigwams and knew him best; and they said that so
far from entering into a conspiracy, he always deplored the war, but was
forced on by the rage and fury of the young braves, over whom the Sachems
had no real power, and who wanted to signalize their valour, and could
not fail to have their pride insulted by the demeanour of the ordinary
English.  One instance of brutality on the river Saco is said to have
been the immediate cause of the war in that district.  Some English
sailors, seeing a canoe with an Indian woman and her infant, and having
heard that a papoose could swim like a duck, actually upset the canoe to
make the experiment.  The poor baby sank, and the mother dived and
brought it up alive, but it died so soon after, that the loss was laid to
the charge of the cruel men by the father, who was a Sachem named
Squando, of considerable dignity and influence, a great medicine man.

On Philip's border to the southward, a plantation called Swawny was
attacked and burnt by the Indians in the June of 1675.  He is said to
have shed tears (impassible Indian as he was) at the tidings, foreseeing
the utter ruin of his people; and, twenty days after, Squando's influence
led to another attack 200 miles off, and this was viewed as a sign of
complicity with Philip.

There was deadly terror among the English.  The Indians swarmed down at
night on lonely villages and farmhouses, slew, scalped, burnt, and now
and then carried off prisoners to be tortured to death, and children to
tell by and by strange tales of life in the wigwams.  The militia were
called out, but left their houses unprotected.  At Newich-wannock, the
farmhouse of a man named Tozer was attacked by the Indians when only
tenanted by fifteen women and children.  A girl of eighteen, who was the
first to see the approach, bravely shut the door and set her back against
it; thus giving time for the others to escape by another door to a better
secured building.  The Indians chopped the door to pieces with their
hatchets, knocked the girl down, left her for dead, and hurried on in
pursuit of the others, but only came up with two poor little children,
who had not been able to get over the fence.  The rest were saved, and
the brave girl recovered from her wounds; but other attacks ended far
more fatally for the sufferers, and the rage and alarm of the New
Englanders were great.  A few of the recently taught and unbaptized
Indians from what were called the "new praying towns" had joined their
countrymen; and though the great body of the converts were true and
faithful, the English confounded them all in one common hatred to the Red-
skin.  The magistrates and Government were not infected by this blind
passion, and did all they could to restrain it, showing trust in the
Christian natives by employing them in the war, when they rendered good
and faithful service; but the commonalty, who were in the habit of
viewing the whole people as Hivites and Jebusites, treated these allies
with such distrust and contumely as was quite enough to alienate them.

In July 1675, three Christian Indians were sent as guides and
interpreters to an expedition to treat with the Indians in the Nipmuck
country.  One was made prisoner, but the two officers in command gave the
fullest testimony to the good conduct of the other two; nevertheless they
were so misused on their return that Mr. Gookin declared that they had
been, by ill-treatment, "in a manner constrained to fall off to the
enemy."  One was killed by a scouting party of praying Indians; the other
was taken, sold as a slave, and sent to Jamaica; and though Mr. Eliot
prevailed to have him brought back, and redeemed his wife and children,
he was still kept in captivity.

The next month, August, a number of the Christian Indians were arrested
and sent up to Boston to be tried for some murders that had been
committed at Lancaster.  Eliot and Gookin succeeded in proving their
perfect innocence, but the magistrates had great difficulty in saving
their lives from the fury of the mob, who thirsted for Indian blood, and
both minister and major were insulted and reviled, so that Gookin said on
the bench that it was not safe for him to walk in the streets; and when
Eliot met with a dangerous boat accident, wishes were expressed that he
had been drowned.

Natick was looked upon with so much distrust and aversion that
Government, fearing occasions of bloodshed, decided that the inhabitants
must be removed to Deer Island.  On the 7th of October a great fast-day,
with prayer and preaching, had been held, and fierce and bitter
entreaties had been uttered against the Indian Sachems, especially
Philip.  One wonders whether Eliot--now seventy-one years old--felt it
come home to him that he knew not what spirit he had been of when he had
prayed for the death of the Moorish prince.  It must have been a heart-
breaking time for the aged man, to see the spot founded in so much hope
and prayer, the fruit of so much care and meditation, thus broken up and
ruined, and when he was too old to do the like work over again.  At the
end of that month of October, Captain Thomas Prentiss, with a party of
horse and five or six carts, arrived at Natick, and made known the
commands of the Government.  Sadly but patiently the Indians submitted.
Two hundred men, women, and children were made to get together all they
could carry, and marched from their homes to the banks of the Charles
River.  Here, at a spot called the Pines, Mr. Eliot met them, and they
gathered round him to hear his words of comfort, as he exhorted them to
meek patience, resignation, and steadiness to the faith.  The scene was
exceedingly affecting, as the white-haired pastor stood by the river-side
beneath the tall pines, with his dark-skinned, newly reclaimed children
about him, clinging to him for consolation, but neither murmuring nor
struggling, only praying and encouraging one another.  Captain Prentiss
and his soldiers were deeply touched; but at midnight, when the tide was
high enough, three large boats bore the Indians over to Deer Island.  Here
they were, transplanted from their comfortable homes in the beginning of
a long and very severe winter; but, well divided by the river from all
suspicion of doing violence, they fared better than the praying Indians
of the new town of Wamesit.  A barn full of hay and corn had been burnt,
and fourteen men of Chelmsford, the next settlement, concluding it had
been done by the Wamesit Red-skins, went thither, called them out of
their wigwams, and then fired at them, killing a lad and five women and
children.  After all, the fire had been caused by some skulking heathen
Indians; but though the Government obtained the arrest of the murderers,
the jury would not find them guilty.  The Wamesit Indians fled into the
forest, and sent a piteous letter:--"We are not sorry for what we leave
behind, but we are sorry that the English have driven us from our praying
to God and from our teacher.  We did begin to understand praying to God a
_little_."  They were invited back, but were afraid to come till cold and
hunger drove them to their old abode, and then the indefatigable Eliot
and Gookin visited them, and did all in their power to bring about a
better feeling towards them in Chelmsford.

This whole autumn and winter--a terribly severe one--seems to have been
spent by these good men in trying to heal the strifes between the English
and the Indians.  Wanalanset had fled, true to his father's policy of
never resisting, and they were sent to invite him back again; but when he
returned, he found that the maize grounds of his settlement had been
ploughed up by the English and sown with rye, so that his tribe had most
scanty subsistence.

Several settlements of Christians were deported to Deer Island.  One
large party had been made prisoners by their heathen countrymen and had
managed to escape, but when met with wandering in the woods by a party of
English soldiers, were plundered of the little the heathens had left
them, in especial of a pewter cup, their communion plate, which Mr. Eliot
had given them, and which was much treasured by their native pastor.  The
General interfered in their behalf, but could not protect them from much
ill-usage.  The teacher was sent with his old father and young children
to Boston, where Mr. Eliot saw and cheered him before he was conveyed to
Deer Island.  There, in December, Eliot, with Gookin and other friends,
frequently visited the Indians, now five hundred in number, and found
them undergoing many privations, but patient, resigned, and unmurmuring.
The snow was four feet deep in the woods by the 10th of December that
year, and the exertion and exposure of travelling, either on snow-shoes
or sledges, must have been tremendous to a man of Mr. Eliot's age; but he
never seems to have intermitted his labours in carrying spiritual and
temporal succour to his people, and in endeavouring to keep the peace
between them and the English.

The hard winter had had a great effect in breaking the strength of the
enemy, and they were much more feeble on the renewal of the war in the
spring.  The good conduct of the praying Indians had overcome the popular
prejudice so much that it was decided to employ them to assist the scanty
forces of the English in hunting down the hostile tribes, and Gookin
boasts of their having taken and slain more than 400 foes in the course
of the summer of 1676, which one would scarcely think was very good for
their recent Christianity.  In the mean time, the absence of all the able-
bodied men and hunters reduced their families to such distress that
serious illness broke out among them, and Major Gookin caused them to be
brought to the neighbourhood of Cambridge, where there was good fishing,
and where he could attend to them, and provide them with food, clothing,
and medicine.

In August Philip was killed, the English believing themselves to "have
prayed the bullet straight into his heart;" and his head was carried
about on a pole, in a manner we should have called worthy of the Indians
themselves, did we not recollect that there were a good many city gates
at home with much the same kind of trophy, while his wife and
children--miserable fate!--were, like many others of the captives, sold
into slavery to the sugar planters in Jamaica.

After this the war did not entirely cease, but the Christian Indians were
allowed to creep back to their old settlements at Nonantum, and even at
Natick, where Mr. Eliot continued periodically to visit and instruct
them; but after this unhappy war there were only four instead of fourteen
towns of Christian Indians in Massachusetts, and a blow had been given to
his mission that it never recovered.

Still there was a splendid energy and resolution about this undaunted old
man, now writing a narrative of the Gospel History in his seventy-fourth
year, now sending Robert Boyle new physical facts, now protesting hard
against the cruel policy of selling captive Indians into slavery.  What
must not the slavery of the West Indian isles, which had already killed
off their native Caribbeans, have been to these free hunters of the North
American forest, too proud to work for themselves, and bred in a climate
of cold, dry, bracing air?  And even in the 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."

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
laments that they were not correctly recorded; but it appears that he
gradually sank, and died in his eighty-seventh year of age, at Roxbury,
in the year 1690.  His last words were, "Welcome joy."




CHAPTER II.  DAVID BRAINERD, THE ENTHUSIAST.


The Indian pastor of Natick, who had been trained by Mr. Eliot, died in
1716, and two years later was born one of the men who did all in his
power, through his brief life, to hold up the light of truth to the
unfortunate natives of America, as they were driven further and further
to the west before the advancing tide from Europe.

The fourth son among nine children, who lost both parents at a very early
age, David Brainerd, though born above the reach of want, had many
disadvantages to contend with.  Both his parents had, however, been
religious people, the children of ministers who had come out to America
in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers, and settling at Haddam in
Connecticut, trained up their families in the stern, earnest, and rigid
rules and doctrines of Calvinism, which certainly, where they are
accepted by an earnest and thoughtful mind, have a great tendency to
stimulate the intellect, and force forward, as it were, the religious
perceptions in early youth.  David was, moreover, a delicate child, with
the seeds of (probably) hereditary decline incipient, and at seven or
eight years old he drew apart from play, thinking much of death, and
trying to prepare by prayer and meditation.  His parents' death increased
these feelings, and while living at East Haddam, under the charge of his
brothers, and employed in farm work, the boy was continually struggling
with himself in silence, disliking all youthful mirth and amusement,
fasting, watching and praying, and groaning over the state of his soul.
At nineteen, the wish to become a minister came upon him, and he began to
study hard at all spare moments; and in another year, at twenty, he went
to reside with Mr. Fiske, the minister of Haddam, and in him found, for
the first time, a friend to whom he could open his heart, who could
understand the anxieties and longings within him, and who gave him advice
to withdraw himself from the young companions whose gay spirits were
uncongenial to him, and spend more time with the graver and more
religious.

Whether this were good advice we do not know, but a period of terrible
agony had to be struggled through.  It seems plain, from comparison of
different lives, that in the forms of religion which make everything
depend upon the individual person's own consciousness of the state of his
heart and feelings, instead of supporting this by any outward tokens for
faith to rest upon, the more humble and scrupulous spirits often undergo
fearful misery before they can attain to such security of their own faith
as they believe essential.  Indeed, this state of wretchedness is almost
deemed a necessary stage in the Christian life, like the Slough of
Despond in the Pilgrim's Progress; and with such a temperament as David
Brainerd's, the horrors of the struggle for hope were dreadful and lasted
for months, before an almost physical perception of light, glory, and
grace shone out upon him, although, even to the end of his life, hope and
fear, spiritual joy and depression alternated, no doubt, greatly in
consequence of his constant ill-health.

In 1739, in his twenty-first year, he became a student at Yale, and,
between hard work and his mental self-reproach for the worldly ambition
of distinction, his health broke down, haemorrhage from the lungs set in,
and he was sent home, it was supposed, only to die.  He was then in a
very happy frame of mind, and was almost sorry to find himself well
enough to return to what he felt to be a scene of temptation.  That same
year, his head was entirely turned by the excitement of George
Whitfield's preaching; he was carried away by religious enthusiasm, and
was in a state of indiscreet zeal, of which his better judgment
afterwards repented, so that he destroyed all the portion of his journal
that related to that year.  Indeed, his vehemence cost him dear, for, in
the heat of a discussion, he had the misfortune to say, "Mr. Whittlesey,
he has no more grace than this chair I am leaning upon."  Mr. Whittlesey
was one of the college tutors, and a gossiping freshman who overheard the
words thought proper to report this to a meddling woman, who immediately
walked off to the Rector of the college with the awful intelligence that
young Brainerd said that Mr. Whittlesey had no more grace than a chair!

The Rector had not the sense to silence the silly slander; he sent for
the freshman, took his evidence, and that of the young men with whom
Brainerd had been conversing, and then required him to make public
confession and amends to Mr. Whittlesey before the whole assembled
college,--a humiliation never previously required, except in cases of
gross moral misconduct.  The fact was, that the old-fashioned hereditary
Presbyterianism, which had had time to slacken in the hundred years since
the foundation of the colony, was dismayed at the new and vivid life
imported by Whitfield from the Wesleyan revival in the English Church.  It
was what always happens.  A mixture of genuine sober-minded dread of
extravagance, or new doctrine, and a sluggish distaste to the more
searching religion, combine to lead to a spirit of persecution.  This was
the true reason that the lad's youthful rashness of speech was treated as
so grave an offence.  Brainerd's spirit was up.  Probably he saw no cause
to alter his opinion as to Mr. Whittlesey's amount of grace, and he
stoutly refused to retract his words, whereupon he was found guilty of
insubordination, and actually expelled from Yale.  A council of ministers
who assembled at Hartford petitioned for his restoration, but were
refused, the authorities deeming themselves well rid of a dangerous
fanatic.

Still, as a youth of blameless life and ardent piety, he was encouraged
by his friends to continue his preparation for the ministry, and he
persisted in reading hard, and going out between whiles to meditate in
the depths of the glorious woods.  It is curious that while his homely
and rigid system precluded any conscious admiration of the beauties of
nature, it is always evident from his journal that the lightenings of
hope and joy which relieved his too frequent depression and melancholy,
were connected with the scenery and the glories of day and night.  Sunrise
and the aurora borealis seem to have filled him with spiritual bliss, and
he never was so happy as when deep in the woods, out of the sight of men;
but his morbid, sensitive, excitable nature never seems to have been
understood by himself or by others.

Just as John Eliot's missionary zeal was the outcome of the earnestness
that carried the Puritans to New England, so the fresh infusion of
religious life, brought by Whitfield, produced an ardent desire on the
part of David Brainerd to devote himself to the remainder of the Indians;
and in the year 1742, at twenty-five years old, he was examined by an
assembly of ministers at Danbury, and licensed to preach the Gospel, when
he began at once with a little settlement of Indians at Kent, with such a
sinking of heart at his own unworthiness that he says he seemed to
himself worse than any devil, and almost expected to have been stoned
rather than listened to.  Indeed, something of this diffidence and
sadness seems always to have weighed him down when he began to preach,
though the fervour of his subject and the responding faces of his
audience always exhilarated him and bore him up through his sermon.  To
learn the Indian language had not occurred to him as part of his
preparation, but probably these Kent Red men had been enough among the
English to understand him, for they seem to have been much impressed.

A Scottish Society for propagating Christian Knowledge had arisen, and
the delegates hearing of the zeal of David Brainerd, desired to engage
him at a salary.  The sense of his own unworthiness, and fear of keeping
out a better man, brought his spirits down to the lowest ebb;
nevertheless, he went to meet the representatives of the Society at New
York, and there, though between the hubbub of the town and his own
perpetual self-condemnation he was continually wretched, they were so
well satisfied with him as to give him the appointment, on condition that
he studied the language, intending to send him to the Red men between the
Susquehanna and the Delaware; but there was a dispute between these and
the Government, and it was decided to send him to a settlement called
Kanaumeek, between Stockbridge and Albany.

Before going, David Brainerd, having no thought beyond devotion to the
Indians, and thinking his allowance enough for his wants, gave up the
whole of his inheritance to support a scholar at the University, and set
forth, undaunted by such weakness of health as in ordinary eyes would
have fitted him for nothing but to be carefully nursed; for even then he
was continually suffering from pain and dizziness, and weakness so great
that he could often hardly stand.

In this state he arrived at Kanaumeek, with a young Indian to act as his
interpreter, and there spent the first night sleeping on a heap of straw.
It was a lonely, melancholy spot, where the Indians were herded together,
watched with jealous eyes by adventurers who were always endeavouring to
seize their lands, and sadly degenerated from the free, grave,
high-spirited men to whom Eliot had preached.  His first lodging was in
the log house of a poor Scotchman who lived among the Indians--a single
chamber, without so much as a floor, and where he shared the family meals
upon porridge, boiled corn, and girdle-cakes.  The family spoke Gaelic,
only the master of the house knowing any English, and that not so good as
the Indian interpreter's; and, moreover, the spot was a mile and a half
from the Indian wigwams, no small consideration to so weakly a man, thus
poorly fed.  However, the Indians were pleased with his addresses, and
seemed touched by them; but the evil habits of the White men were the
terrible stumbling-block.  Parties of them would come into the town, and
vex the missionary's ears with their foul tongues, making a scandalous
contrast to the grave, calm manners of the Indians.  More than ever did
he love solitude, and when with his own hands he had built himself a log
hut, where he could be alone when he pleased, his relief was great.

He was not the highly educated scholar and practical theorist that his
predecessor had been: he seems to have had no plans or systems, and
merely to have tried to fulfil immediate needs; but he soon found that he
could not hope to benefit his Red flock without a school, so he made a
journey to New Jersey to entreat for means to set one up, and this was
done, with his interpreter as master.  His journey was made on horseback,
and was no small undertaking, for even between Stockbridge and Kanaumeek
he had once lost his way, and had to sleep a night in the woods.

He had by this time thoroughly repented of the uncharitableness and
hastiness of his speech about Mr. Whittlesey, and he took a journey to
New Haven to send in a thoroughly humble and Christian-like apology,
requesting to be permitted to take his degree.  Twice he was refused, and
the third time was told that the only condition on which the degree would
be granted would be the making up his term of residence at Yale, which
was, of course, not possible to a licensed minister in full employment,
and in fact was an insulting proposal to a man of his standing and
character.

His journey cost him dear, for as he was riding home he was attacked with
violent pain in the face and shiverings, which forced him to halt at the
first shelter he could find, happily with kind friends, who nursed him
for a fortnight before he could return home.  He believed that had his
illness seized him in his log house at home, he must certainly have died
for want of care and attendance, although he was much beloved by his poor
Indians.

His life was indeed a frightfully hard one, and would have been so for a
healthy man; for he had to work with his own hands to store provisions
for his horse in the winter, and that when weak and suffering the more
for want of proper food.  He could get no bread but by riding ten or
fifteen miles to procure it, and if he brought home too much it became
mouldy and sour, while, if he brought home a small quantity, he could not
go for more if he failed to catch his horse, which was turned out to
graze in the woods; so that he was reduced to making little cakes of
Indian meal, which he fried in the ashes.  "And then," he says, "I
blessed God as if I had been a king."  "I have a house and many of the
comforts of life to support me," he says with great satisfaction; and the
solitude of that house was so precious to him that, however weary he was,
he would ride back twenty miles to it at night rather than spend an
evening among ungodly men.  By this terrible stinting of what we should
deem the necessaries of life, he was actually able, in fifteen months, to
devote a hundred pounds to charitable purposes, besides keeping the young
man at the University.

So much, however, did he love his solitude, that he counted it as no
relief, but an affliction, to have to ride to Stockbridge from time to
time to learn the Indian language from Mr. Sergeant, the missionary there
stationed.  Something of this must have been morbid feeling, something
from the want of energy consequent on the condition of his frame.  For a
man in confirmed decline such an entry in a journal as this is no
trifle:--"December 20.--Rode to Stockbridge.  Was very much fatigued with
my journey, wherein I underwent great hardship; was much exposed, and
very wet by falling into a river."  Mr. Sergeant could hardly have been
profane company, but Brainerd never enjoyed these visits, thinking that
intercourse with the world made him less familiar with heaven.

Another inconvenience was the proximity of Kanaumeek to the frontier, and
these were the days of that horrid war between England and France in
America, when the native allies of each nation made savage descents on
the outlying settlements, inflicting all the flagrant outrages of their
wild warfare.  A message came one evening to Kanaumeek from Colonel
Stoddart, warning all in exposed situations to secure themselves as well
as possible, since an attack might come at any moment; and this Brainerd
quietly records as a salutary warning not to attach himself too much to
the _comforts of life_ he enjoyed.

The attack was never made, but he came to the conclusion that his small
congregation of Indians would be much better with their fellows at
Stockbridge under the care of Mr. Sergeant, and that this would leave him
free to go to more wild and untaught tribes.  It was carried out, and the
Indians removed.  There was much mutual love between them and their
pastor, and the parting was very affectionate, though even after two
years he was still unable to speak the language, and never seems to have
troubled himself about this trifling obstacle.  Several English
congregations entreated him to become their minister, but he refused them
all, and went to meet the Commissioners of the Scottish Society at New
Jersey.  They arranged with him for a mission to the Delaware Indians, in
spite of his being laid up for some days at the time; and when he went
back to Kanaumeek to dispose of his books and other "comforts," the
effects of being drenched with rain showed themselves in continued
bleeding from the lungs.  He knew that he was often in an almost dying
state, and only wished to continue in his Master's service to the end he
longed for.  He owns that his heart did sometimes sink at the thought of
going alone into the wilderness; but he thought of Abraham, and took
courage, riding alone through the depths of the forest, so desolate and
lonely day after day, that it struck terror even into his soul.  There
were scanty settlements of Dutch and Irish, where he sometimes spent a
night, but the Sunday he passed among some Irish was so entirely unmarked
by them, that he felt like a "creature banished from the sight of God."

At last he reached his destination on the fork of the river Delaware, and
being within moderate distance of Newark, there received ordination as a
minister on the 11th of June, 1744.  Severe illness followed the exertion
of preaching and praying before the convened ministers; but as soon as he
could walk, he set forth on his return, though he was so weak that he
could hardly open his numbed hand, but his heart and hopes had begun to
revive, and the little settlement of Whites with whom he lived were
willing to listen to him.

The Indians were in the midst of preparing for an idolatrous feast and
dance.  Brainerd spent a day in the woods in an anguish of prayer, and
then went to the place of meeting, where, stranger as he was, he
prevailed on them to cease their revels and attend to him.

His biographer, President Jonathan Edwards, provokingly leaves out his
method of teaching, "for the sake of brevity," and from his own diary
little is to be gathered but accounts of his state of feeling through
endless journeyings and terrible prostrations of strength.  He was always
travelling about--now to the Susquehanna, now back to New
England--apparently at times with the restlessness of disease, for this
roving about must have prevented him from ever deepening the impression
made by his preaching, which after all was only through an interpreter,
for he never gave himself time to learn the language.

Yet after some months he did find a settlement of Indians, about eighty
miles from the fork of Delaware, at a place called Crossweeksung, who
were far more disposed to attend to him.  They listened so eagerly, that
day after day they would travel after him from village to village, hardly
taking any heed to secure provisions for themselves.  The description of
their conduct is like that of those touched by Wesleyan preaching.  They
threw themselves on the ground, wept bitterly, and prayed aloud, with the
general enthusiasm of excitement, though, he expressly says, without
fainting or convulsions, and even the White men around, who came to
scoff, were deeply impressed.

David Brainerd had at last his hour of bliss!  He was delivered from his
melancholy by the joy of such results, and in trembling happiness
baptized his converts in the river beside their wigwams before leaving
them to proceed to a village on the Susquehanna, where he hoped for an
interview with the chief Sachem of the Delawares.

The place, however, was in the wildest confusion and uproar, it being the
period of a great festival, when every one was too tipsy to attend to
him.  At an island called Juneauta, he met a very remarkable personage, a
Powaw, who bore the reputation of a reformer, anxious to restore the
ancient religion of the Red man, which had become corrupted by
intercourse with the White and his vices.

His aspect was the most dreadful thing Brainerd had ever seen.  He wore a
shaggy bearskin coat, hood, and stockings, and a hideous, painted mask,
so that no part of his person was visible, not even the hand in which he
held an instrument made of the shell of a tortoise, with dry corn within,
and he came up rattling this, and dancing with all his might, and with
such gesticulations that, though assured that he intended no injury, it
was impossible not to shrink back as this savage creature came close.

Yet he was a thoughtful man, such as would have been a philosopher in
ancient Greece or Rome.  He took the missionary into his hut, and
conversed long and earnestly with him.  He had revolted in spirit from
the degradation of his countrymen, and had gone to live apart in the
woods, where he had worked out a system of natural religion for himself,
which he believed the Great Spirit had taught him, and which had at last
led him to return to his people and endeavour to restore them to that
purity which of course he believed to have once existed.  He believed
there were good men somewhere, and he meant to wander till he found them;
meantime, he was kindly to all who came near him, and constantly uplifted
his testimony against their vices, especially when the love of strong
drink was brought among them.  When all was in vain, he would go weeping
away into the woods, and hide himself there till the hateful fire-water
was all consumed and the madness over.  Brainerd was greatly touched by
this red-skinned Epictetus, who, he said, had more honesty, sincerity,
and conscientiousness than he had ever met with in an Indian, and more of
the temper of true religion; and he expounded to him the Christian
doctrine with great carefulness and double earnestness.  The self-taught
philosopher broke in now and then with "Now that I like,"--"So the Great
Spirit has taught me;" but when the missionary came to the regions where
faith surpasses the power of the intellect and the moral sense, the
Indian would not follow him, and rejected his teaching.  It was curious
that he particularly denied the idea of a devil, declaring that there was
no such being, according to the ancient Indians.  Now, the incantations
of the Powaws were generally supposed to be addressed to evil spirits,
and probably the perception of the falsehood of these pretended rites led
to his disclaiming the Christian doctrine.

Whether time and further teaching would have overpowered his belief in
his own inspiration does not appear, for Brainerd found the Indians too
vicious and hardened to pay the least heed either to him or to their own
reformer; and he went back to Crossweeksung, where his flock was still
increasing, and in a most satisfactory condition, renouncing their
heathen customs and their acquired vice of drunkenness, and practising
some amount of industry.  A school was set up, old and young learnt
English, the children in three or four months could read the Bible in
English, and Brainerd's sermons and prayers were understood without an
interpreter.

This improved condition of the Indians destroyed the shameful profits of
the nearest settlement of Whites, whose practice it had hitherto been to
entice them to drink, and then run up a heavy score against them for
liquor.  Finding that all endeavours to seduce them into drunkenness were
now vain, these wretches first tried to raise the country against
Brainerd, by reporting that he was a Roman Catholic in disguise; and when
this failed, they laid claim to the lands of Crossweeksung, in discharge
of debts that they declared to have been previously contracted.
Fortunately, Brainerd had it in his power to advance 82_l._ from his
private means, so as to save his people from this extortion; but he
afterwards thought it best to remove them from these dangerous neighbours
to a new settlement, fifteen miles off, called Cranberry.  He remained
himself in his little hut at Crossweeksung, after they had proceeded to
raise wigwams and prepare the ground for maize; but, whenever he rode
over to visit them, his approach was notified by the sound of a conch
shell, and they all gathered round for his prayers and instruction.

His success with them seems to have greatly cured his depression of
spirits, but his mind was balancing between the expedience of remaining
among them as their permanent pastor, protector, and guide, and that of
striving to extend the kingdom of faith.  Sometimes he liked the prospect
of a settled home and repose, study and meditation; but, at the thought
of gaining souls to Christ, all these considerations melted before him,
and he believed that he was marked out for the life of a pilgrim and
hermit by his carelessness about hardships.

He had not, however, taken leave of his flock when he set forth on
another expedition to the obdurate Indians of the Susquehanna, in the
September of 1746.  It was without result; he could obtain no attention,
and the hardships of the journey, the night exposure, and the frequent
drenchings completed the wreck of his health.  He came back with night
perspirations, bleeding from the lungs, and suffering greatly, feverish
and coughing, and often in pain; yet, whenever he could mount his horse,
riding the fifteen miles to attend to the Indians at Cranberry, or
sitting in a chair before his hut, when they assembled round him.

On Sunday he persisted in preaching, till generally at the end of half an
hour he fainted, and was carried to his bed; and at the administration of
the Lord's Supper he was carried to the place where he had forty Indian
communicants, and likewise some Whites, who had learnt to reverence him,
and who supported him back to his bed.  He was quite happy now, for he
felt he had done all he could to the utmost of his strength; but, soon
becoming totally unable to speak at all, he felt that he must do what he
called "consuming some time in diversions," and try to spend the winter
in a civilized place.

After riding his first short stage, however, his illness increased so
much, that he was quite incapable of proceeding or returning, and
remained in a friend's house at Elizabethtown, suffering from cough,
asthma, and fever the whole winter.  In March 1747 he had rallied enough
to ride to Cranberry, where he went from hut to hut, giving advice to and
praying with each family, and parting with them with great tenderness.
Tears were shed everywhere; for, though he still hoped to return, all
felt that they should see his face no more!  But, to his great comfort
and joy, his poor people were not to be abandoned to themselves and their
tempters.  His younger brother--John--relieved his mind by offering to
assume the care of them, and under his pastorship he could thankfully
leave them.

In April he set out again on his journey, at the rate of about ten miles
a day, riding all the way, and on the 28th of May arrived at Northampton,
where Jonathan Edwards, afterwards President of the College of New
Jersey, was then minister.  They were like-minded men, both disciples of
Whitfield, and the self-devoted piety of the young missionary was already
so well known to Mr. Edwards by report, that it was most gladly that he
received him into his house and family.  There the impression Brainerd
made was of a singularly social, entertaining person, meek and
unpretending, but manly and independent.  Probably rest and brightness
had come when the terrible struggle of his early years had ceased, and
morbid despondency had given way to Christian hope, for he became at once
a bright and pleasant member of any society where he formed a part, and
to the Edwards family he was like a son or brother.  When he was able,
Mr. Edwards wished him to lead the family devotions, and was always
greatly impressed by the manner and matter of his prayers, but one
petition never failed, _i.e._ "that we might not outlive our usefulness."
Even in saying grace there was always something about him that struck the
attention.

His purpose in coming to Northampton had been to consult Dr. Mather,
whose verdict was that he was far gone in decline, and who gave him no
advice but to ride as much as possible.  So little difference did this
sentence make to him that he never noted it in his diary, though he spoke
of it cheerily in the Edwards family--a large household of young
people--where he was so much beloved, that when he decided to go to
Boston, Jerusha, the second daughter, entreated to be allowed to
accompany him, to nurse him as his sister would have done.

The pure, severe simplicity of those early American manners was such,
that no one seems to have been surprised at a girl of eighteen becoming
the attendant of a man of twenty-nine.  Jerusha had the full consent and
approbation of her parents, and she was a great comfort and delight to
him.  He told her father that she was more spiritual, self denying, and
earnest to do good, than any young person he had ever known; and on doubt
their communings were far above earth, hovering, as he was well known to
be, upon the very borders of the grave.

They took four days to reach Boston, and there he was received with the
greatest respect by all the ministers; but, a week after his arrival, so
severe an attack of his illness came on that he became delirious, and was
thought to be at the point of death.  Again, however, he came back enough
to life to sit up in bed and write ardent letters of counsel to the
brother who had succeeded him among his Indians, and likewise to give his
friends the assurance of his perfect peace and joy.  He said that he had
carefully examined himself, and though he had found much pride,
selfishness, and corruption, he was still certain that he had felt it his
greatest happiness to glorify and praise God; and this certainty,
together with his faith in the Redeemer, had calmed all the anguish he
had suffered for years.

Whenever he was able to converse he had numerous visitors, especially
from the deputies of the Society in London which had assisted Eliot.  A
legacy for the support of two missionaries had newly been received, and
his counsel on the mode of employing it was asked.  He was able to strive
to imbue others with the same zeal as himself, and to do much on behalf
of his own mission, although he often lay so utterly exhausted that he
said of himself that he could not understand how life could be retained.
One of his brothers, a student at Yale, came to see him, and to tell him
of the death of his favourite sister, of whose illness he had not even
heard, but it was no shock to him, for he felt far more sure of meeting
her again than if she had been left on earth.

The summer weather, to the surprise of all, brought back a slight revival
of strength, and some of his friends began to hope he might yet recover,
but he knew his own state too well, and told them he was as assuredly a
dead man as if he had been shot through the heart; still he was resolved
to profit by this partial restoration to return to Northampton, chiefly
because the rumour had reached him that the Bostonians had intended to
give him such a funeral as should testify their great esteem; and being
disappointed in this, they intended to assemble and escort him publicly,
while still alive, out of their city, but the bare idea naturally made
him so unhappy that they were forced to give it up.

Five days were spent in the journey, and again the Edwardses
reverentially opened their doors to a guest so near heaven.  For some
time he rode out two or three miles daily, and sat with the family,
writing or conversing cheerfully when not engaged in prayer.  His brother
John came from Crossweeksung and cheered him with a good account of his
Indians; and hearing of the great need of another school, he wrote to the
friends who had shown themselves so warmly interested in him at Boston,
and was gratified by their reply, with a subscription of 200_l._ for the
purpose, and of 75_l._ for the mission to the Six Nations.  His answers
were written with his own hand; but he had become so much weaker that he
felt this his last task.  He had been one who, in his short life, had
sown in tears to reap in joy.

He was sinking fast as the autumn cold came on, often talking tenderly to
the little ones of the house, but suffering terribly at times, and
sighing, "Why is His chariot so long coming?" then blaming himself for
over-haste to be released.

He had a smile for Jerusha as she came into his room on Sunday morning.
"Are you willing to part with me?  I am willing to part with you, though
if I thought I could not see you and be happy with you in another world,
I could not bear to part.  I am willing to leave all my friends.  I am
willing to leave my brother, though I love him better than any creature
living.  I have committed him and all my friends to God, and can leave
them with God!"

Presently, looking at the Bible in her hands, he said, "Oh that dear
Book! the mysteries in it and in God's providence will soon be unfolded."

He lingered in great agony at times till the 9th of October, 1747, when
came a cessation of pain, and during this lull he breathed his last, then
wanting six months of his thirtieth birthday.  He had told Jerusha that
they should soon meet above, and, in effect, she only lived until the
next February.  She told her father on her death-bed, that for years past
she had not seen the time when she had any wish to live a moment longer,
save for the sake of doing good and filling up the measure of her duty.

David Brainerd's career ended at an age when John Eliot's had not begun.
It was a very wonderful struggle between the frail suffering body and the
devoted, resolute spirit, both weighed down by the natural morbid temper,
further depressed by the peculiar tenets of the form of doctrine in which
he had been bred.  The prudent, well-weighed measures of the ripe
scholar, studious theologian, and conscientious politician, formed by
forty-two years' experience of an old and a new country, could not be
looked for in the sickly, self-educated, enthusiastic youth who had been
debarred from the due amount of study, and started with little system but
that of "proclaiming the Gospel"--even though ignorant of the language of
those to whom he preached.  And yet that heart-whole piety and patience
was blessed with a full measure of present success, and David Brainerd's
story, though that of a short life, over-clouded by mental distress,
hardship, and sickness, fills us with the joyful sense that there is One
that giveth the victory.




CHAPTER III.  CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH SCHWARTZ, THE COUNCILLOR OF TANJORE.


We must turn from America to the warmer regions of the East, from the
patriarchal savage to complicated forms of society, and from the Red-skin
to the Hindoo--a man of far nearer affinity to ourselves, being, like us,
of the great Indo-European race, speaking a language like our own, an
altered, corrupted, and intermingled dialect of the same original tongue,
and his ancestors originally professing a religion in which the same
primary ideas may be traced as those which were held by our ancient
northern forefathers, and which are familiar to us in the graceful dress
imposed on them by the Greeks.  The sacred writings of the Hindoos form
the earliest storehouse of the words of our common language, and the
thoughts therein found, though recorded after the branches had parted
from the common stock, are nearer the universal germ than those to be
found anywhere else, and more nearly represent the primary notion of
religion held by the race of Japheth, after that of Shem, to which God
revealed Himself more distinctly, had parted from it.  These oldest
writings are quaint, pure, and simple, but on them the fancies of a race
enervated by climate engrafted much that was hideous, monstrous, and
loathsome, leading to gross idolatry, and much vice perpetrated in the
name of religion.  Mythology always degenerates with the popular
character, and then, so far as the character is formed by the religious
faith, the mythology helps to debase it further, until the undying moral
sense of conscience awakens again in some man, or band of men, and a new
morality arises; sometimes grafted upon philosophic reasoning, sometimes
upon a newly-invented or freshly introduced religion.

Thus, when Hindooism had become corrupt, the deeply meditative system of
Buddha was introduced into many parts of India, and certainly brought a
much higher theory and purer code than that founded on the garbled nature-
worship of ancient India; but both religions co-existed, and, indeed,
Buddhism was in one aspect an offshoot of the Hindoo faith.

Christianity--planted, as is believed, by St. Thomas, on the Malabar
coast--never became wholly extinct, although tinged with Nestorianism,
but it was never adopted by the natives at large, and the learning and
philosophy of the Brahmins would have required the utmost powers of the
most learned fathers of the Church to cope with them, before they could
have been convinced.

The rigid distinctions of caste have made it more difficult for the
Church which "preaches the Gospel to the poor," to be accepted in India
than anywhere else.  Accounting himself sprung from the head of Brahma,
the Brahmin deems himself, and is deemed by others, as lifted to an
elevation which has no connection either with moral goodness, with
wealth, or with power; and which is as much the due of the most poverty-
stricken and wicked member of the caste as of the most magnificent
priest.  The Sudras, the governing and warlike class, are next in order,
having sprung from the god's breast, and beneath these come infinite
grades of caste, their subdivisions each including every man of each
trade or calling which he pursues hereditarily and cannot desert or
change, save under the horrible penalty of losing caste, and becoming
forsaken and despised of every creature, even the nearest kindred.  The
mere eating from a vessel used to contain food for a person of a
different caste is enough to produce contamination; the separation is
complete, and the whole constitution of body and mind have become so
inured to the distinction, that the cost of becoming a convert is
infinitely severer in India than ever it could have been even in Greece
or Rome, where, though the Christian might be persecuted even to the
death, he was not thrust out of the pale of humanity like a Hindoo
convert who transgresses caste.

The Christians of Malabar are a people living to themselves, and the
great Bengalee nations never appear to have had the Gospel carried to
them.  The Mahometan conquest filled India with professors of the faith
of the Koran; but these were a dominant race, proud and separate from the
mass of people, whom they did not win to their faith, and thus the Hindoo
idolatry had prevailed untouched for almost the whole duration of the
world, when the wealth of India in the early days of naval enterprise
first began to tempt small mercantile companies of Europeans to form
factories on the coast merely for purposes of traffic, without at first
any idea that these would lead to possession or conquest, and, in
general, without any sense of the responsibility of coming as Christians
into a heathen world.

The Portuguese did indeed strive earnestly to Christianize their
territory at Goa; and they promoted by all means in their power the
labours of Francisco Xavier and his Jesuit companions, so effectually
that the fruits of their teaching have remained to the present day.

Neither were the Dutch, who then held Ceylon, entirely careless of the
duty of instructing their subjects; and the Danes, who had obtained the
town of Tranquebar on the Coromandel coast, in 1746, sent out a mission
which was vigorously conducted, and met with good success.  Hitherto,
however, the English at Madras and Calcutta had been almost wholly
indifferent, and it must be remembered that theirs was not a Government
undertaking.  The East India Company was still only a struggling
corporation of merchants and traders, who only wanted to secure the
warehouses and dwellings of those who conducted their traffic, and had as
yet no thought of anything but the security of their trade; often,
indeed, considering themselves pledged to no interference with the
religion of the people around, and too often forgetting their own.
However, the Danish mission received grants of money and books from the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; and the first Indian
missionary of any note, a German by birth, was equally connected with
both England and Denmark.

Sonnenburg in Brandenburg, still an electorate at the time, was the
native home of Christian Friedrich Schwartz, of whose parents it is only
known that they appear to have been in easy circumstances, and that his
mother, who died before he could remember, told her husband and her
pastor on her death-bed, that she had dedicated her infant to the service
of God, imploring them to cherish and forward any inclination towards the
ministerial office that might be visible in him.  It was, of course, the
Lutheran form in which the child of this pious woman was bred up, and in
1734 he was sent to the grammar school of Sonnenburg, where his piety was
first excited by a religious master, then cooled by an indifferent one;
and he was then taken by his father, walking on foot the whole way, to
pursue his studies at Custrin.  There he became beset by the temptations
that surrounded young students, and after giving way to them for a time,
was saved from further evil by the influence of the daughter of one of
the Syndics.  It does not appear to have been a matter of sentiment, but
of honest friendship and good counsel, aiding the young man to follow his
better instead of his worse impulses; and thus giving a labourer to the
vineyard.

Before residing at Custrin, this lady had lived for a time at Halle, and
what she told the young Schwartz of the professors at that university,
inspired him with the desire of completing his course under them,
especially August Hermann Francke, who had established an admirable
orphan house, with an excellent grammar school.

In his twentieth year, Schwartz entered at Halle, but lodged at the
orphan house, where he became teacher to the Latin classes, and was put
in charge of the evening devotions of the household.  At Halle, he met a
retired Danish missionary, named Schultz, who had come thither to
superintend the printing of a version of the Bible in Tamul, the language
of Ceylon and of the Coromandel coast; and this it was that first turned
his mind to the thought of offering himself as a worker in the great
field of India.

He was the eldest of the family, and his friends all declared that it was
impossible that his father should consent to part with him; but when he
went home, and earnestly stated his desire, the elder Schwartz, instead
of at once refusing as all expected, desired to take three days to
consider; and when they were passed, he came gravely down from his
chamber, called his son Christian, gave him his blessing, and told him to
depart in God's name, charging him to forget his own country and his
father's house, and to win many souls to Christ.

And certainly that good old German's blessing went forth with his son.
Christian Schwartz next resigned his share in the family property to his
brothers and sisters; and after completing his studies at Halle, went to
Copenhagen, since it was by the Danish government that he was to be
authorized.  Two other young Germans, named Poltzenheigen and Hutteman,
went with him.  The Danes, though Lutherans in profession, have an
Episcopal hierarchy, and the three students were ordained by the Danish
Bishop Horreboa on the 6th of September, 1749; Christian Schwartz being
then within a month of twenty-three.

Their first stage was to England, where they had to learn the language,
and were entertained at the cost of the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge.  Mr. Ziegenhagen, German chaplain to George II., was very kind
to his countrymen, helped them in all their difficulties, and gave them
directions for which they were very grateful.  He made them preach in the
Chapel Royal on Christmas Day.  No doubt the language was German, which
must have been acceptable to the Hanoverian ears.

Their English studies were not greatly prolonged, for they arrived on the
8th of December, 1749, and sailed on the 29th of January, 1750, in an
East India Company's ship, where they were allowed a free passage, and
were treated with respect and friendliness.  The voyage lasted long
enough to improve them in English, for they did not cast anchor at
Tranquebar till the 8th of October.

At this considerable Danish factory, they were received into the mission-
house of the Danes, and there remained while studying the language, in
which Schwartz made so much progress that he preached his first Tamul
sermon only four months after his arrival, and by the spring was able to
catechize the children who attended the school.  This station at
Tranquebar formed the home of seven or eight missionaries, who lived
together, attended to the services and schools, prepared candidates for
baptism, and made excursions by ones and twos into the villages that
stood thickly on the coast, where they talked and argued with the
natives, hoping to incite them to inquire further.  The two greatest
obstacles they met with here were the evil example of Europeans and the
difficulty of maintenance for a convert.  One poor dancing girl said, on
hearing that no unholy person could enter into the kingdom of heaven,
"Ah! sir, then no European will;" but, on the whole, they must have met
with good success, for in 1752 there were three large classes of
catechumens prepared and baptized at the station.  In the district around
there were several villages, where congregations of Christians existed,
and, of all those south of the river Caveri, Schwartz was after two more
years made the superintendent.

The simple habits of these German and Danish clergy eminently fitted them
for such journeys; they set out in pairs on foot, after a farewell of
united prayer from their brethren, carrying with them their Hebrew
Bibles, and attended by a few Christian servants and coolies; they
proceeded from village to village, sometimes sleeping in the house of a
Hindoo merchant, sometimes at that of one the brother ministers they had
come to see, and at every halt conversing and arguing with Hindoo or
Mahometan, or sometimes with the remnants of the Christians converted by
the Portuguese, who had been so long neglected that they had little
knowledge of any faith.

The character of Christian Schwartz was one to influence all around him.
He seems to have had all the quiet German patience and endurance of
hardship, without much excitability, and with a steadiness of judgment
and intense honesty and integrity, that disposed every one to lean on him
and rely on him for their temporal as well as their spiritual
matters--great charity and warmth of heart, and a shrewdness of
perception that made him excellent in argument.  He had also that true
missionary gift, a great facility of languages, both in grammar and
pronunciation, and his utter absence of all regard for his own comfort or
selfish dignity, yet his due respect to times and places made him able to
penetrate everywhere, from the hut to the palace.

The Carnatic war was at this time an impediment, by keeping the minds of
all the natives in a state of excitement and anxiety, from dread of
Mahratta incursions; but Schwartz never intermitted his rounds, and was
well supported by the Danish Governor, a good man, who often showed
himself his friend.  Some of the missionaries were actually made
prisoners when the French took Cuddalore, but Count Lally Tollendal was
very kind to them, and sent them with all their property and converts
safely away to Tranquebar.

The Dutch missionaries in Ceylon had been in correspondence with those of
Tranquebar, and had obtained from them copies of their Tamul Bible, and
in 1760 Schwartz was sent on a visit to them.  He was very well received
by both clergy and laity; and though he was laid up by a severe illness
at Colombo, yet he was exceedingly well contented with his journey and
his conferences with his brethren.

Christian Schwartz had been more than sixteen years in India, and was
forty years of age, before his really distinctive and independent work
began, after his long training in the central station at Tranquebar.

The neighbouring district of Tanjore had at different times been visited,
and the ministers of the Rajah had shown themselves willing to bestow
some reflection on what they heard from the missionaries.  Visits to this
place and to Trichinopoly became frequent with him, and in 1766 the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge having decided on planting a
mission station in the latter place, he was appointed to take the charge
of it.

About this time he seems to have accommodated his name to English
pronunciation, and to have always written it Swartz.  It was now that he
became acquainted with William Chambers, Esq., brother to the Chief
Justice of Bengal,--not a Company's servant, but a merchant, and an
excellent man, who took great interest in missionary labours, and himself
translated a great part of St. Matthew's Gospel into Persian, the court
language of India.  From a letter of this gentleman, we obtain the only
description we possess of Swartz's appearance and manners.  He says that,
from the descriptions he had heard, he had expected to see a very austere
and strict person, but "the first sight of him made a complete revolution
on this point.  His garb, indeed, which was pretty well worn, seemed
foreign and old-fashioned, but in every other respect his appearance was
the reverse of all that could be called forbidding or morose.  Figure to
yourself a stout well-made man, somewhat above the middle size, erect in
his carriage and address, with a complexion rather dark though healthy,
black curled hair, and a manly engaging countenance, expressive of
unaffected candour, ingenuousness, and benevolence, and you will have an
idea of what Mr. Swartz appeared to be at first sight."  Mr. Chambers
adds that Swartz's whole allowance at Trichinopoly was ten pagodas a
year, that is, about 48_l._ (as Mr. Chambers estimates it).  The
commanding officer of the English garrison was ordered to supply him with
quarters, and gave him a room in an old native building, where "there was
just room for his bed and himself, and in which few men could stand
upright."  With this lodging he was content.  His food was rice and
vegetables dressed native fashion, and his clothes were made of black
dimity.  The little brass lamp which he had used for his studies at the
University went with him to India, and served him all his life, often
late at night, for he never preached even to the natives without much
study.

He found the English without church or chaplain, and had very little
knowledge of their language, having lived almost entirely among Germans,
Danes, and natives; but he quickly picked it up among the soldiers, to
whom his kindly simple manners commended him; and, as soon as he could
speak it to any degree, he began to read the Church Service every Sunday
to the garrison, with a printed sermon from an English divine, until he
had obtained sufficient fluency to preach extempore.  At first, the place
of meeting was a large room in an old building, but he afterwards
persuaded them to build themselves a church capable of holding from 1,500
to 2,000.  His facility in learning languages must have been great, for
the English of his letters is excellent, unless his biographer, Dean
Pearson, has altered it.  It is not at all like that of a German.  His
influence with the soldiers was considered as something wonderful, in
those times of neglect and immorality, and the commandant and his
wife--Colonel and Mrs. Wood--were his warmest friends; and when the
Government at Madras heard of his voluntary services as chaplain, they
granted him, unsolicited, a salary of 100_l._ a year, of which he devoted
half to the service of his congregation.  He was thus able to build a
mission-house, and an English and a Tamul school, labour and materials
being alike cheap.  But, in spite of all his care of the English
soldiery, the natives were his chief thought; and he was continually
among them, reading and arguing home with the most thorough knowledge and
experience of their difficulties.  He made expeditions from Trichinopoly
to Tanjore, then under the government of a Rajah, under the protection of
the British Government.  The principal worship of the place was directed
to an enormous black bull, said to be hewn out of a single block of
granite, and so large that the temple had been built round it.

The Brahmins conversed with him a good deal, and often were all _but_
converted.  One plainly said that love of money and pleasure alone kept
them from accepting Christianity.  In 1769 he had a personal interview
with the Rajah Tuljajee, a man of the dignity, grace, and courtesy usual
in Hindoo princes, but very indolent, not even rising in the morning if
he was told that it was not an auspicious day, though he was more
cultivated than most men of his rank and period.

Swartz found him seated on a couch suspended from pillars, and was placed
opposite to him, on a seat.  The interpreter addressed him in Persian,
and Swartz replied in the same; but, perceiving that the man omitted part
of his speech, he asked leave to speak Tamul.

The Rajah asked questions, which led to an exposition of the Christian
doctrine, and he listened with interest; and he likewise was struck when
Swartz uttered a thanksgiving before partaking of the sweets that were
carried round on trays.  He showed himself so much disappointed when he
learnt that the Padre had left Tanjore, that it was resolved that Swartz
should return thither again; and for some days there were out-of-door
preachings on the glacis of the fort, where, in spite of clouds of dust
brought by the land wind, the people collected in crowds to hear him, and
expressed ardent wishes that the Rajah would become a Christian, when
they all could do the same.  The Prince himself was much drawn towards
the missionary; but it was the old story,--he was surrounded with
ministers and courtiers who feared any change, above all any
plain-speaking truth, and therefore did their best to keep the new light
at a distance.  However, Tuljajee called Swartz "_his padre_," and gave
him free entrance to his fort at Tanjore, where his arguments made a wide
impression, and still more his example.  "Padre," said a young Nabob, "we
always regarded you Europeans as ungodly men, who knew not the use of
prayers, till you came among us."

He continued to go backwards and forwards between Trichinopoly and
Tanjore, in both which places he began to gather catechumens round him.
Unfortunately his Protestant principles brought him into collision with
the Roman Catholics at the former place.  A young Hindoo, of good birth,
seems to have had one of those remarkable natures that cannot rest
without truth.  He had for seven years wandered to all the most famous
pagodas and most sacred rivers, seeking rest for his soul, but in vain.
Some Roman Catholics had given him a little brass crucifix, which he used
to set up before him as he prayed; but he had learnt little more of them,
and he was mournfully gazing at "the pagodas of Sirengam" (in his own
words), and thinking, "What is all this? what can it avail?" when some of
Swartz's catechists began to speak.  "Will this be better than what I
have found?" he said to himself.  He listened, was asked to remain a
fortnight at the station, and soon had given his whole soul to the faith.
He was baptized by the name of Nyana Pracasam, or Spiritual Light, and
became a catechist.  His father and mother were likewise led to
Christianity by him, but the Roman Catholics, having begun his
conversion, considered that they had a right to him, and on one occasion,
when he was found reading to a sick relative, probably a member of their
Church, he was severely beaten, and was rescued by the heathen neighbours
when nearly killed.

Swartz seems to have regarded the Roman Catholics as in almost as much
need of reconversion as the Hindoos and Mahometans; and as in those days
their Church shared in that universal religious torpor that had crept
over the world, it is most likely that he found them in a very debased
condition.

With the Mahometans he had some success, though he found, like all other
missionaries, that their faith, being rather a heresy than a paganism,
had truth enough in it to be much harder to deal with than the Hindoo
polytheism.  Besides, they accepted the Persian proverb, "Every time a
man argues, he loses a drop of blood from his liver."  He was impeded
also by the want of a Persian translation of the entire Bible, having no
more than the Gospels to give the inquirers, and these badly translated;
and with Mahometans the want of the real history of the Patriarchs was
very serious.  Some, however, were convinced and baptized, though by far
the greater number of his converts were Hindoos.

In 1776, a coadjutor, either German or Danish-trained, named Christian
Pohle, joined him at Trichinopoly, and thus he became free to reside more
constantly at Tanjore, where the Rajah always protected him, though
continually fluctuating in feeling towards Christianity, according to the
influences of his ministers and the Brahmins who surrounded him, and the
too frequent offences given by the godless officers of the European
garrison which was stationed in the fort.

Mr. Swartz was anxiously soliciting for means to build a church for the
use of this garrison, when he was summoned to Madras, to the governor,
Sir Thomas Rumbold, who promised him a grant for his church; but, at the
same time, informed him that he was to be sent on a mission to visit the
formidable Hyder Ali in Mysore, in order to judge how far his intentions
towards the English were pacific.  He was selected for the purpose on
account of his perfect knowledge of Hindostanee, the simplicity of his
manner of travelling, and his perfect immunity from any of the ordinary
influences of interest or ambition; and he undertook it, as he tells the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, because he regarded it as
conducing to peace, as opening fresh doors to the Gospel, and as a token
of gratitude to the Honourable Company for kindness he had received; "but
at the same time," he says, "I resolved to keep my hands undefiled from
any presents, by which determination the Lord enabled me to abide, so
that I have not accepted a single farthing save my travelling expenses."

On the 1st of July, 1779, he set out from Trichinopoly on this journey,
taking one of his catechists, named Sattianadem, with him.  He travelled
in a palanquin, and took six days to reach Caroor, on the Mysore
frontier, forty miles off, where he stayed a month with a young Ceylonese
Dutchman in Hyder Ali's service, while sending to ask the Nabob's
permission to proceed.  All this time he and his catechist preached and
gave instruction in the streets.  It is curious to find him, on his
journey, contrasting the excellent state of Hyder Ali's roads and bridges
with the careless disorganization of the public works under the Company.
An epidemic fever was raging in Seringapatam, and Swartz pitched his tent
outside, where he could conveniently visit the many-pillared palace of
the sovereign.  He was much struck with the close personal supervision
that Hyder Ali kept up over his officers, and with the terrible severity
of the punishments.  Two hundred men were kept armed with whips, and not
a day passed without many being scourged, no rank being exempt, the
Nabob's two sons and sons-in-law being liable to be whipped like the
meanest groom.  Swartz was the unwilling spectator of the punishment of
the collector of a district who was flogged with whips armed with nails.

A few hundreds of Europeans, English, German, and French, were in Hyder's
pay, encamped about the town, and a German captain lent his tent for
public worship.  No molestation was offered to any instructions that
Swartz attempted to give, and he was very courteously entreated by the
Prince himself.  The conferences with him were generally held in a hall
of marble columns, open to a garden adorned with fruit trees, rows of
cypresses, and fountains.  Hyder Ali sat on rich carpets, covering the
floor, and the Padre was placed next to him.  He spoke in general terms
of his desire to keep the peace, though the British had violated their
engagements, referring to an attempt that had newly been made to march
troops through his territory without his permission.  To Swartz he was
gracious in speech, but the letter he entrusted to him was full of
threatening for this and other acts which he considered aggressive; and
the general impression brought back by the missionary was that a war was
to be expected.

Hyder Ali had presented him with a bag of three hundred rupees for
travelling expenses, which it would have been a great affront to return.
He, however, made it over to the Government at Madras, and when they
would not take it, asked leave to use it as the foundation for a
collection for an English orphan school at Tanjore.  This was granted,
and proved a success.  Finding that there was an intention of voting a
present to him, he begged instead that a salary might be given to Mr.
Pohle at Trichinopoly; and, in consequence, both were enabled to maintain
catechists and schoolmasters; for of making a home for themselves, these
devoted men never thought.  Moreover, Swartz obtained bricks and lime for
the building of his English church within the fort; and he bought and
enlarged a house half a mile from it, for his Malabar Christians to
worship in.  His own observations of Hyder Ali's warlike intentions led
also to his purchasing 12,000 bags of rice as a provision against the
scarcity that too surely attends upon Indian warfare.

In the summer of 1780, these apprehensions were realized.  Hyder crossed
the Ghauts, and passed down into the Carnatic with 100,000 men, directed
by a staff of French officers, and plundered up to the very gates of
Madras.  Everything was in the greatest confusion; the English troops
were dispersed in garrisons, and could not easily be brought together;
and one small detachment under Colonel Baillie, who were made prisoners
at Conjiveram, suffered a frightful captivity.  Sir Eyre Coote did,
indeed, keep the enemy in check, and defeat him in several battles, but
had not at first sufficient numbers or stores effectually to drive him
back; and the whole province of Tanjore was horribly wasted.  The
irrigation of the district had been broken up by the invaders; there was
for three years neither seed-time nor harvest, and the miserable peasants
crawled into the towns to perish there, often with their sons carried off
to form a regiment of youths whom Hyder Ali was bringing up as a sort of
Janissaries.

The unhappy creatures lay dying along the sides of the road, and among
them moved from one to another that homely figure in the black dimity
dress, and his catechists with him, feeding those who could still
swallow, and speaking words of comfort to those who could hear.  Some of
the English sent a monthly subscription, which enabled Swartz to keep up
the supply, so that a hundred and twenty a day were fed; but often in the
morning he found the dead lying in heaps, and in one of his letters he
mentions that his catechists are alive, as though he regarded it as a
wonder and a mercy.  Indeed he seems to have been a very Joseph to the
Rajah, and even to the English garrison.  There was absolutely no
magazine for provisions, either for the Sepoys or the Rajah's own troops,
and twice he was implored, both by Tuljajee and the Company, to purchase
supplies and get them brought in, since they were unable to do so, "for a
want of good understanding with the natives who still possessed either
rice or oxen to transport it."  He was enabled to procure the supply, and
then there was no place to store it in but his own new English church, so
that he was obliged to hold three services on a Sunday in the other: from
eight till ten in English, from ten till twelve in Tamul, and from four
till five in Portuguese!  About a hundred converts were gained during the
famine; but he was forced to teach them very slowly, their mental
faculties were so weakened by their state of exhaustion.  The whole of
the towns of Tanjore and Trichinopoly were, he says, filled with living
skeletons, there was hardly an able or vigorous man to be found, and in
this distress it was necessary to relax the ordinarily wise rule of never
giving any assistance to a person under preparation for baptism, since to
withhold succour would have been barbarous cruelty.

When the whole country was overrun by the troops of Mysore, the respect
paid to the good Padre was such that he travelled from end to end of it
without hindrance, even through the midst of the enemy's camp, and on the
only occasion when he was detained, the sentinel politely put it that "he
was waiting for orders to let him proceed."  It was on one of these
journeys that a little lad, named Christian David, the son of one of the
converts, was attending him one evening, when, halting at a native
village, the supper was brought, of rice and curry.  The Padre made so
long a grace out of the fulness of his heart, that at last the boy broke
in with a murmur that the curry would be cold!  He never forgot the
reproof: "What! shall our gracious God watch over us through the heat and
burden of the day, and shall we devour the food which He provides for us
at night, with hands which we have never raised in prayer, and lips which
have never praised Him?"  The missionaries were always safe throughout
the war, and, when Cuddalore capitulated to the French and Mysoreans, Mr.
Gericke, who was then at the head of the station, concealed some English
officers in his house, and likewise, by his representations to the French
general, saved the town from being delivered up to be plundered by
Hyder's native troops.

In the end of 1782, Hyder Ali died; his son, Tippoo Sahib, assuming the
title of Sultan, continued the war, with the same fierceness, but without
the assistance of the French, who were withdrawn, in consequence of the
peace that had been concluded at home.

This, together with the numerous victories that had been obtained by the
English forces, led to hopes that Tippoo would consent to terms of peace,
and two Commissioners were appointed, whom Swartz was requested to join
as interpreter.  He had no taste for political missions, but he thought
it a duty to do all in his power for peace, and set off for the purpose,
but the Mysoreans complained that the English promises had not been kept,
and he was turned back again by the enemy's troops.  Colonel Fullarton,
who was in command of the army about to invade Mysore, writes, "The
knowledge and the integrity of this irreproachable missionary have
retrieved the character of Europeans from _imputations of general
depravity_!"  He went back to Tanjore, and there, for the first time,
experienced some failure in health.  He was requested again to join the
Commissioners, but would not again attempt it, partly from the state of
his health, and partly because Tippoo was far more averse to Christianity
than Hyder had been.  All the 12,000 Tanjoreen captive boys--originally
Hindoos--were bred up Mahometans, and he tolerated nothing else but
Hindooism, persecuting the Roman Catholics in his dominions till no one
dared make an open profession.

A treaty was, however, concluded in 1784, and there was for a time a
little rest, greatly needed by Swartz, who had been suffering from much
weakness and exhaustion; but a journey into Tinnevelly, with his friend
Mr. Sullivan, seems to have restored him.

There were already some dawnings of Christianity in this district.  As
long before as 1771, one of the Trichinopoly converts, named
Schavrimutta, who was living at Palamcotta, began to instruct his
neighbours from the Bible, and a young Hindoo accountant, becoming
interested, went to an English sergeant and his wife, who had likewise
been under Swartz's influence, and asked for further teaching.  The
sergeant taught him the Catechism and then baptized him, rather to the
displeasure of Swartz, who always was strongly averse to hasty baptisms.
Afterwards, a Brahmin's widow begged for baptism.  She, it appeared, was
living with an English officer, and Swartz was obliged to refuse her
while this state of things continued, but he found that the Englishman
had promised to marry her, and had begun to teach her his language and
his faith.  He died without performing his promise, but Christianity had
become so dear to her, that she again entreated for baptism, and was then
admitted into the Church by the name of Clarinda.  She afterwards was the
chief means of building a church at Palamcotta, to which Sattianadem
became the catechist; and thus was first sown a seed which has never
ceased growing, for this district of Tinnevelly has always been the
stronghold of Christianity in India.

Meantime Swartz's poor friend, the Rajah Tuljajee at Tanjore, was in a
deplorable state.  He had suffered great losses during Hyder Ali's
invasion of his country, and, moreover, was afflicted with an incurable
disease, and had lately lost, by death, his only son, daughter, and
grandson: He shut himself up in the depths of his palace, and became
harsh and moody, heaping all the treasure together that he could collect,
and employing a dean or minister, named Baba, whose exactions on the
famished population were so intolerable that the people fled the country,
and settled in the neighbouring districts, so that no less than 65,000
were said to have deserted the province.

Sir Archibald Campbell, Governor of Madras, remonstrated, but the Rajah
was affronted, and would not dismiss his minister, and as the peasants
refused to sow their land without some security that the crops should not
be reaped by Baba's emissaries before their very eyes, the Madras
authorities decided on taking the management of Tanjoreen affairs into
their hands and appointing a committee to watch over the government.  Sir
Archibald wished to place Mr. Swartz on this committee as the person best
able to deal both with Rajah and people, and he accepted a seat, only
stipulating that he was not to share in any violent or coercive measures.

When the "good Padre" assured the fugitives in the Rajah's name and his
own that oppression was at an end, 7,000 at once returned; and when he
reminded them that the season for planting their corps was nearly past,
they replied that in return for his kindness they intended to work night
and day.

In 1787, the childless Rajah decided on--after the fashion of many Hindoo
princes--adopting an heir, who might perform the last duties which were
incumbent on a son.  His choice fell upon the son of a near kinsman, a
child ten years of age, whom he named Serfojee.  A day or two after he
sent for Mr. Swartz, and said, "This is not my son, but yours.  Into your
hand I deliver him."  "May the child become a child of God," was the
answer of Swartz.  The Rajah was too ill to continue the interview, but
he sent for Swartz the next day, and said, "I appoint you guardian to
this child; I put his hands into yours."

Swartz, however, did not think it right to undertake the state
guardianship of the lad, and the administration of the province.  Indeed,
he knew that to do so would be absolutely to put the child's life in
danger, from the cabals and jealousies which would be excited, and he
induced Tuljajee to confide the charge to his brother, Rama Swamey,
afterwards called Ameer Singh.

This was done, and the Rajah soon after died, in the year 1787, leaving
the boy and Ameer Singh under the protection of the Company.  He had
always listened to Swartz willingly, and treated him affectionately, and
the result of the influence of the missionary extended so far that no
Suttee took place at his funeral, but he had never actually embraced
Christianity, though protecting it to the utmost of his power.

The brother, Ameer Singh, was not contented merely to act as regent, but
complained that injustice was done to him, and that Tuljajee was too much
enfeebled in mind to judge of his own measures when he adopted the boy
Serfojee.  Sir Archibald Campbell, acting for the Company, came to
Tanjore, and, after an examination into the circumstances, decided in
favour of Ameer Singh, and confirmed him in the Rajahship, binding him
over to be the faithful protector of poor little Serfojee, who, putting
the adoption apart, was still his near relation.

Ameer was not a better manager of his province than his brother had been,
and he was far from kind to Serfojee, whom Swartz had not been allowed to
see for months, when the widows of the late Rajah made complaints that
the boy was closely shut up and cruelly treated.  On this Swartz applied
to Government, and obtained an order to go with another gentleman to
inquire into his condition.  The Rajah was much offended; but as he
reigned only by the protection of the English, he could not refuse, and
the Padre was conducted to a large but dark room, where he found the poor
child sitting by lamp-light.  This had been his condition for almost two
years, ever since his adopted father's death, and on seeing the Padre, he
asked piteously if it were the way in Europe to prevent children from
seeing the sun and moon.  Mr. Swartz comforted him, and asked him if he
had any one to teach him.  The Rajah's minister replied that he had a
master, but was too idle to learn; but Serfojee looked up and said, "I
have none to teach me, therefore I do not know a single letter."  The
Rajah was only offended at remonstrance, and at last Government sent
orders that could not be resisted, and a Sepoy guard to take charge of
the lad.  Then, as a great favour, the Rajah entreated that the guard
would not enter his palace, but that for the night before Serfojee could
be removed, the Padre would remain with him to satisfy them that he was
safe.  To this Swartz consented, and the guard disappeared, whereupon the
Rajah told him "he might go home."

"What! and be guilty of a breach of faith?" was his resolute answer.
"Even my father should not be permitted to make me such a proposal!"

They were ashamed, and left him to remain that night with Serfojee, whom
he probably thus saved from foul play, since the jealous and vindictive
passions of Ameer Singh had been thoroughly excited.  The captivity must
have been very wretched, for he observed that the poor boy walked lame,
and found that the cause was this:--"I have not been able to sleep," said
poor Serfojee, "from the number of insects in my room, but have had to
sit clasping my knees about with my arms.  My sinews are a little
contracted, but I hope I shall soon recover."

When taken out, the poor little fellow was delighted once more to see the
sun, and to ride out again.  A Brahmin master selected by Mr. Swartz was
given to him, and he very rapidly learnt both to read his own language
and English.  Swartz also interfered on behalf of the late Rajah's
minister, Baba, who had indeed been extortionate and severe, but scarcely
deserved such a punishment as being put into a hole six feet long and
four feet broad and high.

For two years Serfojee was unmolested; but, in 1792, the husband of Ameer
Singh's only child died without children, and this misfortune was
attributed by the Rajah to witchcraft on the part of the widows of
Tuljajee.  He imagined that they were contriving against his own life,
and included Serfojee in his hatred.  By way of revenge, he caused a pile
of chilis and other noxious plants to be burnt under Serfojee's windows,
and thus nearly stifled him and his attendants.  He prevented the
Prince's teachers from having access to him, shut up his servants, and
denied permission to merchants to bring their wares to him.  Mr. Swartz
was absent at the time, and Serfojee wrote a letter to him, begging that
the English Government would again interfere.  It was found that any
remonstrance put the Rajah into such a state of fury that the lives of
the youth and the ladies we're really unsafe while they remained within
his reach, and it was therefore decided that they should be transplanted
to Madras.  It was a wonderful step for Hindoo princesses to take, and
was only accomplished by the influence of Mr. Swartz, backed by a guard
of soldiers, under whose escort all safely arrived at Madras, where
Serfojee's education could at length be properly carried on.

The youth was so entirely the child of Swartz and of the Government, that
it is disappointing to find that he did not become a Christian.  No
stipulation to the contrary seems to have been made by Tuljajee; but,
probably, the missionary refrained from a sense of honour towards the
late Rajah, and because to bring the boy up in the Church would have
destroyed all chance of his obtaining the provinces, and probably have
deprived him of the protection of the Company, who dreaded the suspicion
of proselytizing.  Still it is very disappointing, and requires all our
trust in Swartz's judgment and excellence to be satisfied that he was
right in leaving this child, who had been confided to him, all his life a
heathen.  Serfojee learnt the theory of Christianity, was deeply attached
to Mr. Swartz, and lived a life very superior to that of most Hindoo
princes of his time.  His faith in his hereditary paganism was probably
only political, but he never made the desperate, and no doubt perilous,
plunge of giving up all the world to save his own soul.  Was it his
fault, or was it any shortcoming in the teaching that was laid before
him, and was that human honour a want of faith?  It puzzles us!  Here was
Swartz, from early youth to hoary hairs unwavering in the work of the
Gospel, gathering in multitudes to the Church, often at great peril to
himself, yet holding back from bringing into the fold the child who had
been committed to him, and, as far as we can see, without any stipulation
to the contrary.  Probably he thought it right to leave Serfojee's
decision uninfluenced until his education should be complete, and was
disappointed that the force of old custom and the danger of change were
then too strong for him; and thus it was that Serfojee was only one of
the many half-reclaimed Indian princes who have lived out their dreary,
useless lives under English protection, without accepting the one pearl
of great price which could alone have made them gainers.

It is just possible that there may have been too much of a certain sort
of acquiescence in Swartz's mind, missionary as he was.  He did not
attack the system of caste, with its multitudinous separations and
distinctions.  Of course he wished it to be abolished, but he accepted
converts without requiring its renunciation, allowed high-caste persons
to sit apart in the churches, and to communicate before Pariahs, and did
not interfere with their habits of touching no food that the very finger
of a person of a different caste had defiled.  He no doubt thought these
things would wither away of themselves, but his having permitted them,
left a world of difficulty to his successors.

He lived, however, the life of a saint, nearly that of an ascetic.  His
almost unfurnished house was shared with some younger missionary.
Kohloff, who was one of these, related in after years how plain their
diet was.  Some tea in a jug, with boiling water poured over it and dry
bread broken into it, formed the breakfast, which lasted five minutes;
dinner, at one, was of broth or curry; and at eight at night they had
some meal or gruel.  If wine were sent them, it was reserved for the
communions or for the sick.  Swartz only began, very late in life, to
take a single glass in the middle of his Sunday services.

Every morning he assembled his native catechists at early prayer, and
appointed them their day's work.  "You go there."  "You do this."  "You
call on such and such families."  "You visit such a village."  About four
o'clock they returned and made their report, when their master took them
all with him to the churchyard or some public place, or to the front of
the Mission-house, according to the season of the year, and there sat
either expounding the Scriptures to those who would come and listen, or
conversing with inquirers and objectors among the heathen.  His manner
was mild, sometimes humorous, but very authoritative, and he would brook
neither idleness nor disobedience.

Over his Christian flock his authority was as complete as ever that of
Samuel could have been as a judge.  If any of them did wrong, the
alternative was--

"Will you go to the Rajah's court, or be punished by me?"

"O Padre, you punish me!" was always the reply.

"Give him twenty strokes," said the Padre, and it was done.

The universal confidence in the Padre, felt alike by Englishmen and
Hindoos, was inestimable in procuring and carrying out regulations for
the temporal prosperity of the peasantry at Tanjore, under the Board
which had pretty well taken the authority out of the hands of the
inefficient and violent Ameer Singh.  Districts that, partly from misery,
had become full of thieves, were brought into order, and the thieves
themselves often became hopeful converts, and endured a good deal of
persecution from their heathen neighbours.  His good judgment in dealing
with all classes, high and low, English or native, does indeed seem to
have been wonderful, and almost always to have prevailed, probably
through his perfect honesty, simplicity, and disinterestedness.

The converts in Tinnevelly became more and more numerous, and Sattianadem
had been ordained to the ministry, Lutheran fashion, by the assembly of
the presbytery at Tranquebar, there being as yet no Bishop in India; and
thus many, the very best of his catechists, served for many years, at
Palamcotta, the first Christian minister produced by modern India.  On
the whole, Swartz could look back on the half-century of his mission with
great joy and thankfulness; he counted his spiritual children by
hundreds; and the influence he had exerted upon the whole Government had
saved multitudes of peasants from oppression and starvation, and had
raised the whole tone of the administration.  He was once or twice
unkindly attacked by Englishmen who hated or mistrusted the propagation
of Christianity.  One gentleman even wrote a letter in a newspaper
calling a missionary a disgrace to any nation, and raking up stories of
the malpractices of heathens who had been preached to without being
converted, which were laid to the charge of the actual Christians; but
imputations like these did not meet with faith from any one whose good
opinion was of any real consequence to Swartz.

His strong health and the suitability of his constitution to the climate
brought him to a good old age in full activity.  He had become the
patriarch of the community of missionaries, and had survived all those
with whom he had at first laboured; but he was still able to circulate
among the churches he had founded, teaching, praying, preaching and
counselling, or laying any difficulty before the Government, whose
attention he had so well earned.  His last care was establishing the
validity of the adoption of Serfojee, who had grown up a thoughtful,
gentle, and upright man, satisfactory on all points except on the one
which rendered him eligible to the throne of Tanjore, his continued
heathenism.  The question was referred to the Company at home, and before
the answer could arrive, by the slow communication of those days, when
the long voyage, and that by a sailing vessel, was the only mode of
conveyance, the venerable guardian of the young Rajah had sunk into his
last illness.

This was connected with a mortification in his left foot, which had been
more or less painful for several years, but had probably been neglected.
His Danish colleague, Mr. Gericke, was with him most of the time, and it
was one of his subjects of thankfulness that he was permitted to depart
out of the world in the society of faithful brethren.  He suffered
severely for about three months, but it was not till the last week that
his departure was thought to be near.  He liked to have the English
children brought in to read to him chapters of the Bible and sing Dr.
Watts's hymns to him; and the beautiful old German hymns sung by Mr.
Gericke and Mr. Kohloff were his great delight.  Indeed, when at the very
last, as he lay almost lifeless, with closed eyes, Mr. Gericke began to
sing the hymn,

   "Only to Thee, Lord JESUS CHRIST,"

he joined in with a clear melodious voice, and accompanied him to the
end.  Two hours later, about four o'clock in the afternoon of the 13th of
February, 1798, Christian Friedrich Swartz breathed his last, in the
seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-eighth of his mission
service in India.

The cries and wailings of the poor resounded all night around the house,
and Serfojee Rajah came from a distance to be present at his burial.  It
had been intended to sing a funeral hymn, but the cries and lamentations
of the poor so overcame the clergy, that they could scarcely raise their
voices.  Serfojee wept bitterly, laid a gold cloth over the bier, and
remained present while Mr. Gericke read the Funeral Service,--a most
unusual departure from Hindoo custom, and a great testimony of affection
and respect.

A few months later arrived the decision of the East India Company, that
the weak and rapacious Ameer Singh should be deposed, and Serfojee placed
on the throne.  He conducted himself excellently as a ruler, and greatly
favoured Christians in his territory, always assisting the various
schools, and giving liberal aid whenever the frequently-recurring famines
of India brought them into distress.

Three years later, in 1801, Serfojee wrote to the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, to beg them to order a "monument of marble" at his
expense, to the memory of the late Rev. Father Swartz, to be affixed to
the pillar nearest the pulpit.  Accordingly, a bas-relief in white marble
was executed by Flaxman, representing the death of Swartz, Gericke behind
him, two native Christians and three children standing by, and Serfojee
clasping his hand and receiving his blessing.  It was not exactly fact,
but it was the monumental taste of the day; and it so much delighted the
Rajah, that he kept it in his palace, among the portraits of his
ancestors, for two years before he could resolve on parting with it to
the church.  The Prince likewise composed the epitaph which was carved on
the stone which covers the grave of Swartz, the first instance of English
verse by a Hindoo:--

   "Firm wast thou, humble and wise,
   Honest, pure, free from disguise;
   Father of orphans, the widow's support,
   Comfort in sorrow of every sort:
   To the benighted dispenser of light,
   Doing and pointing to that which is right.
   Blessing to princes, to people, to me,
   May I, my father, be worthy of thee,
   Wisheth and prayeth thy Sarabojee."

Swartz had always been striving to be poor, and never succeeding.  Living
and eating in the humblest manner, and giving away all that came to him,
still recognitions of services from English and natives had flowed in on
him; and, after all the hosts of poor he had fed, and of churches and
schools he had founded, he was an instance of "there is that scattereth
and yet increaseth;" for the property he bequeathed to the Mission was
enough to assist materially in carrying it on after his death.  Moreover,
Serfojee maintained the blind, lame, and decrepit members of his church,
and founded an asylum for the orphan children; so that the good men,
Gericke, Kohloff, Pohle, and the rest, were not absolutely dependent on
Europe for assistance; and this was well, since the Orphan-house at Halle
and the Society at Copenhagen had in this long course of years ceased to
send out funds.

But Swartz's work under their hands continued to prosper.  He had a sort
of apotheosis among the heathen, such as he would have been the last to
covet; for statues were raised to him, lights burnt before him, and
crowns offered up.  But about Palamcotta and throughout Tinnevelly there
was one of those sudden movements towards Christianity that sometimes
takes place.  The natives were asking instruction from their friends, and
going eagerly in search of the catechists and of Sattianadem, and even
burning their idols and building chapels in preparation for the coming of
more fully qualified teachers.  Mr. Gericke made a tour among them in
1803, and found their hearts so moved towards the Gospel, that he
baptized 1,300 in the course of his journey, and the work of Sattianadem
and the catechists raised the number of converts to 4,000.  This was,
however, this good man's last journey.  On his return, he found that his
only son, an officer in the Company's service, was dying, and, under the
weight of this and other troubles, his health gave way, and he died in
the thirty-eighth year of his mission.  Others of the original Danish and
German missionaries likewise died, and scarcely any came out in their
stead.  Their places were, therefore, supplied by ordinations, by the
assembly of ministers, of four native catechists, of whom was
Nyanapracasem, a favourite pupil of Swartz.  No Church can take root
without a native ministry.  But the absence of any central Church
government was grievously felt, both as concerned the English and the
Hindoos.  There were more than twenty English regiments in India, and not
a single chaplain among them all.




CHAPTER IV.  HENRY MARTYN, THE SCHOLAR-MISSIONARY.


Again do we find the steady, plodding labourer of a lifetime contrasted
with the warm enthusiast, whose lot seems rather to awaken others than to
achieve victories in his own person.  St. Stephen falls beneath the
stones, but his glowing discourse is traced through many a deep argument
of St. Paul.  St. James drains the cup in early manhood, but his brother
holds aloft his witness to extreme old age.

The ardent zeal of the Keltic character; the religious atmosphere that
John Wesley had spread over Cornwall, even among those who did not enrol
themselves among his followers; the ability and sensitiveness hereditary
in the Martyn family, together with the strong influence of a university
tutor,--all combined to make such a bright and brief trail of light of
the career of Henry Martyn, the son of the head clerk in a merchant's
office at Truro, born on the 18th of February, 1781.  This station sounds
lowly enough, but when we find that it was attained by a self-educated
man, who had begun life as a common miner, and taught himself in the
intervals of rest, it is plain that the elder Martyn must have possessed
no ordinary power.  Out of a numerous family only four survived their
infancy, and only one reached middle age, and in Henry at least great
talent was united to an extreme susceptibility and delicacy of frame,
which made him as a child unusually tender and gentle in manner when at
his ease, but fretful and passionate when annoyed.

Of course he fared as ill with his fellow-scholars at Truro Grammar
School as he did well with the masters; but an elder boy took him under
his protection, and not only lessened his grievances at the time, but
founded a lasting friendship.

In 1795, when only fourteen, Henry Martyn was sufficiently advanced to be
sent up as a candidate for a scholarship at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, and passed a very creditable examination, though he failed in
obtaining the election.  Eight years later, we find him congratulating
himself in his journal on thus having escaped the "scenes of debauchery"
to which his "profligate acquaintances" might have introduced him.  Was
Corpus very much changed, when, only eleven years after, John Keble
entered it at the same age?  Was it that Martyn's Cornish schoolfellows
were a bad set, or does this thanksgiving proceed from the sort of pious
complacency which religious journalizing is apt to produce in the best of
men?

The failure sent Henry back to work for two years longer at the Truro
Grammar School, and when at sixteen he was entered at St. John's,
Cambridge (most peculiarly the college of future missionaries), he
immediately made proof of his remarkable talent.  Strange to say,
although his father's rise in life had begun in his mathematical ability,
Henry's training in this branch had been so deficient, and the study
appeared so repugnant to him, that his first endeavour at Cambridge was
to learn the proportions of Euclid by heart, without trying to follow
their reasoning.  This story is told of many persons, but perhaps of no
one else who in four years' time, while still a month under twenty, was
declared Senior Wrangler.

This was in 1801, and the intervening time had been spent in hard study
and regular habits, but neither his sister at home, nor a
seriously-minded college friend, were satisfied with his religious
feelings during the first part of the time, and he himself regarded it
afterwards as a period of darkness.  Indeed, his temper was under so
little control that in a passion he threw a knife at a companion, but
happily missed his aim, so that it only pierced the wall.  The shock of
horror no doubt was good for him.  But the next step he recorded in his
life was his _surprise_ at hearing it maintained that the glory of God,
not the praise of man, should be the chief motive of study.  After
thinking it over his mind assented, and he resolved to maintain this as a
noble saying, but did not perceive that it would affect his conduct.

However, the dearest, almost the only hallowed form of the praise of man,
was taken from him by the death of his father in 1799, immediately after
the delight of hearing of his standing first in the Christmas
examination.  The expense of a return home was beyond his means, but he
took to reading the Bible, as a proper form to be complied with in the
days of mourning; and beginning with the Acts, as being the most
entertaining part, he felt the full weight of the doctrine of the
Apostles borne in on him, and was roused to renew his long-neglected
prayers.  When next he went to chapel, with his soul thus awakened, he
was struck by perceiving for the first time how joy for the coming of our
Lord rings through the _Magnificat_.

The great religious influence of the day at Cambridge emanated from the
pulpit and the rooms of the Reverend Charles Simeon, who did a truly
remarkable work in stirring up young men to a sense of the
responsibilities of the ministry.  Henry Martyn regularly attended his
sermons, and the newly lighted sparks were also fanned by anxious letters
from the good sister at home; but until the strain, pressure, and
excitement of preparing for the final examination were over, he had
little time or attention for any other form of mental exertion.

When, however, he found himself in possession of the highest honours his
University could award, he was amazed to discover how little they
satisfied him, and that he felt as if he had grasped a shadow instead of
a substance.

This instinctive longing, the sure token of a mind of the higher pitch,
was finding rest as he became more and more imbued with the spirit of
religion, and ventured upon manifesting it more openly.  He had hitherto
intended to apply himself to the law, but the example and conversation of
Charles Simeon brought him to such a perception of the greatness of the
office of the ministry that he resolved to dedicate himself thereto.
During the term after this decision was made, while he was acting as a
tutor at his college, he heard Mr. Simeon speak of William Carey and his
self-devotion in India; he read the Life of that kindred spirit, David
Brainerd, and the spark of missionary zeal was kindled in his ardent
nature.  The commission "Go ye and teach all nations" was borne in on his
mind, and, with the promptness that was a part of his nature, he at once
offered himself to the "Society for Missions to Africa and the East,"
which had been established, in the year 1800, by members of the English
Church who wished to act independently of the elder Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel.  The name has since been altered to the
"Church Missionary Society."

However, Martyn was only just twenty-one, and not of an age to take Holy
Orders, and he had therefore to wait, while studying divinity, and acting
as a tutor at Cambridge.  All through his life he kept copious journals
of his sensations and resolutions, full of the deepest piety, always
replete with sternness towards himself and others, and tinged with that
melancholy which usually pervades the more earnest of that school which
requires conscious feeling as the test of spiritual life.

In October 1803, he went to Ely for ordination as a deacon, though still
wanting five months of twenty-three.  Those were lax days, there was
little examination, and a very low standard of fitness was required.
Henry Martyn was so much scandalized by the lightness of demeanour of one
of his fellow candidates that he spoke to him in strong reproof--with
what effect we do not know, but he records that he never ventured to
speak in rebuke, "unless he at the same time experienced a peculiar
contrition of spirit."

He became Mr. Simeon's curate, and at the same time took charge of the
neighbouring parish of Lolworth.  People then had small expectations of
clerical care, if a parish could be entrusted to a young deacon,
non-resident, acting as tutor and examiner, and with an assistant curacy
besides!  His whole mind was, however, intensely full of his duties, and
so unworthy did he consider all other occupations that he prayed and
struggled conscientiously against the pleasure he could not but feel, in
getting up Thucydides and Xenophon for the examinations.  Everything not
actually devotional seemed to him at these times under a ban, and it is
painful to see how a mind of great scope and power was cramped and
contracted, and the spirits lowered by incessant self-contemplation and
distrust of almost all enjoyment.  When, at another time, he had to
examine on "Locke on the Human Understanding," the metaphysical study
acting on his already introspective mind produced a sense of misery and
anguish that he could hardly endure.  It is pleasant, however, to find
him in another mood, writing, "Since I have known God in a saving manner,
painting, poetry, and music have had charms unknown to me before; I have
received what I suppose is a taste for them, for religion has refined my
mind, and made it susceptible of impressions from the sublime and
beautiful."

This, no doubt, was true, but another influence had awakened his heart,
earthly perhaps in itself, but so noble and so holy that it bears a
heavenly light.  He had become attached to a young lady in Cornwall,
named Lydia Grenfell, like-minded enough to return his affection.  His
intention of volunteering for the Church Missionary Society was
overthrown by a disaster in Cornwall which deprived himself and his
unmarried sister of all the provision that their father had made for
them, thus throwing her upon him for maintenance, and making it necessary
that he should obtain a salary that would support her.  It was suggested
by some of his friends that one of the chaplaincies founded by the old
East India Company, before the jealousy of religious teaching had set in,
would both give him opportunities for missionary work and enable him to
provide for his sister at home.  Application was accordingly made, and a
man of his talent and character could not fail of being accepted; he was
promised the next vacant post, and went down to spend the long vacation
in Cornwall, and bid farewell to all whom he loved there, for the journey
was long and expensive, and he had resolved not to trust himself among
them again.

He writes in his journal, "Parted with Lydia for ever in this life with a
sort of uncertain pain, which I knew would increase to violence."  And so
it was, he suffered most acutely for many days, and, though calmness and
comfort came after a time, never were hopes and affections more
thoroughly sacrificed, or with more anguish, than by this most truly
devoted disciple of his Master.

He worked on at Cambridge till he received his appointment in the January
of 1805, and he then only waited to receive Priests' Orders before going
to London to prepare for his embarkation.

In those times of war, a voyage to India was a perilous and lengthy
undertaking.  A whole fleet was collected, containing merchant, convict,
and transport vessels, all under the convoy of the ships of war belonging
to the Company; and, as no straggler might be left behind, the progress
of the whole was dependent on the rate of sailing of the slowest, and all
were impeded by the disaster of one.  The _Union_, in which a passage was
given to the chaplain, contained, besides the crew, passengers, the 59th
Regiment, some other soldiers, and young cadets, all thrown closely
together for many months.  She sailed from Portsmouth on the 17th of
July; but in two days' time one of the many casualties attendant on at
least sixty vessels made the fleet put into Falmouth, where it remained
for three weeks.  This opportunity of intercourse with his family might
well seem an especial boon of Providence to the young missionary, who had
denied himself a last visit to them, and he carried away much comfort
from this meeting.  His sister was engaged to be suitably married, so
that he was relieved from care on her account, and some hope was
entertained that Lydia would be able to come out to him in India.  A
correspondence likewise began, which has been in great part preserved.
Two days after weighing anchor, the _Union_ still lingered on the coast,
and the well-known outline, with Mount's Bay, the spire of St. Hilary's
church, and all the landmarks so dear and familiar to the young
Cornishman's eye and heart, were watched from morning to night with keen
pain and grief, but with steadfast resolve and constant inward prayer.

Then he addressed himself to the duties of the voyage.  Private study of
Hebrew and of Hindostanee was of course a part; but he hoped to be useful
to his companions as a friend and as a minister.  He could only obtain
permission to hold one service every Sunday, but he hoped to do much by
private conversations and prayers, and he tried to gain over the cadets
by offering to assist them in their studies, especially mathematics.  Some
of them had the sense to see that the teaching of a senior wrangler was
no small advantage, and these read with him throughout the voyage; but in
general they were but raw lads, and followed the example of their
superiors, who for the most part were strongly set against Mr. Martyn.
Those were the times when sailors were utterly uncared for, and when
_mauvais sujets_ at home were sent out to India to the corruptions of a
luxurious climate and a heathen atmosphere.  Men of this stamp would
think it bad enough to have a parson on board at all, and when they found
that he was a faithful priest, who held himself bound not to leave them
unchecked in their evil courses, they thought themselves aggrieved.  Nor
was his manner likely to gain them.  Grave and earnest, he had never in
his life known sportiveness, and his distress and horror at the profanity
and blasphemy that rang in his ears made him doubly sad and stern.  From
the first his Sunday service was by most treated as an infliction, and
the officers, both of the ship and of the military, had so little sense
of decency as to sit drinking, smoking, and talking within earshot.  The
persons who professed to attend showed no reverence of attitude; and when
he endeavoured to make an impression on the soldiers and their wives
between-decks, he was met with the same rude and careless inattention.

With very little experience of mankind, he imagined that these hardened
beings could be brought to repent by terror, and his discourses were full
of denunciations of the wrath of God.  He was told that, if he threatened
them thus, they would not come to hear him, and his reply was an
uncompromising sermon on the text, "The wicked shall be turned into hell,
and all the people that forget God."  The bravery of the thing, and the
spirit of truth and love that pervaded all he said on this solemn verse,
was not lost upon all: some of the cadets were moved to tears, and an
impression was made upon several persons.  Indeed, there was much that
should have induced serious thought, for, after having touched at Madeira
and the Azores, it was made known that the 59th was to be disembarked at
the Cape, to assist in the struggle then going on between the English and
Dutch.  Moreover, there was much sickness on board, and the captain
himself, who had been always bitterly opposed to Mr. Martyn, anxiously
called for him to attend upon his death-bed.

The 59th were landed in Table Bay just in time to take part in Sir David
Baird's victory.  Martyn went on shore the next day to do his best for
the wounded; but they were mostly in hospital, and, being Dutch, he could
do little for them.  He found congenial spirits among the Dutch clergy in
Cape Town, and spent a happy month there, but the latter part of his
voyage was not more satisfactory than the first.  The educated portion of
the passengers continued to set their faces against him, treating him
with increased contempt, and even turning into ridicule the farewell
sermon, in which he took an affectionate leave of all who had sailed with
him.

It may be that his manner was ill-judged, but it is a fearful thing to
find that it was possible for so many Christian people to have been in
daily contact with as true a saint as ever lived, and yet make him their
mock!  Perhaps some of his words, and far more his example, may have
borne fruit in after years, such as he never knew of.

The whole voyage had lasted nearly ten months before entering the
Hooghly.  While ascending the stream, the lassitude produced by the
climate was so great that Martyn's spirits sank under it: he thought he
should "lead an idle, worthless life to no purpose.  Exertion seemed like
death; indeed, absolutely impossible."  Yet at the least he could write,
"Even if I should never see a native converted, God may design, by my
patience and continuance, to encourage future missionaries."

This feeling of exhaustion was the prelude to a severe attack of fever,
which assailed him almost immediately after his arrival; but happily not
till he was safely lodged at Aldeen, in the kindly house of the Rev.
David Brown, where he was nursed till his recovery.  His friends wanted
to keep him among the English at Calcutta, but his heart was set on
ministering to the heathen, and the sights and sounds of idolatry that
constantly met him increased his

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