Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 54:215 (Jul 1897)
Article: John Eliot, The Apostle To The Indians
Author: Ezra Hoyt Byington

BSac 54:215 (July 1897) p. 563

John Eliot, The Apostle To The Indians

Ezra Hoyt Byington

Newton, Mass.

Special. attention has been called to the life and work of the Apostle Eliot, by the observance last October of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his first preaching to the Indians. Some new facts have been brought to light by recent investigations. It is possible to form a more intelligent idea of his missions, and of their results, than it was a few years ago.

He was one of the first generation of the Puritan ministers in New England. Born in Widford, a small parish, twenty-five miles north from London, in 1604; the third child in a Nonconformist family of seven, brought up in Nasing, Essex County, from which so many of the Colonists of Massachusetts came; educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he received the degree of A.B. in 1623; employed as a teacher in the Grammar School at Little Baddow, under Thomas Hooker,—he was abundantly prepared for his work in New England. He sailed from England in the “ninth month,” 1631, in the good ship Lyon, and was landed in Boston, November 3d of that year. He was at once employed to preach in the First Church in Boston, in the absence of their pastor, Mr. Wilson, in England. He was married the next year to that “beautiful Puritan maiden,” Hannah Mumford, and was settled as pastor in Roxbury, November 5, 1632. His ministry, of almost sixty years, in that church, was much like that of the other Puritan pastors of the Colony. He was a very able and a well-read man, a careful student of the Bible and of the theology of the Reformers. He was an earnest and faithful preacher. He had a special interest in young people. His conversation was “sprinkled with wit.” “His manner,” we are told,” was commonly gentle and winning; but when sin was to be rebuked, his voice swelled into solemn and powerful energy. On such occasions there were as many thunderbolts as words.”

Why was it that this earnest pastor of the church in Roxbury became the missionary to the Indians? Because the Pilgrims and the Puritans had crossed the sea as missionary colonies. Governor Bradford says that one reason for coming to New England was the “great hope and inward zeal of laying some foundation for propagating the kingdom of Christ in the remote ends of the earth.” The Massachusetts charter states that the

BSac 54:215 (July 1897) p. 564

principal end of the plantation was to “winn and incite the natives of the country to the knowledge of the true God and the Saviour of mankinde.” The seal of the Colony had the figure of an Indian, with the words, “Come over and help us.”

In the earlier years they were not able to carry out their missionary plans in any...