Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/461

Rh as correspondents with the English Society, in overseeing the work and distributing and accounting for the funds, as they were thus brought into delicate relations with Eliot. The Commissioners preferred that he should make report of his work through them, and not by any private letters; and that all gifts to him should pass through their hands, or be within their knowledge. He began his labors and accomplished some of the most difficult parts of them unaided and at his own charges. He afterwards received a salary, first of £20, then of £40, and finally of £50, from the funds of the Society.

An illustration here presents itself of the mighty solvent power of that faith, common so far to the Puritan and the Jesuit missionary, which could so readily distribute the alternations of promise and disappointment in the stages of their work, assigning the encouragements to God and the discouragements to Satan. Thus, in connection with the active and costly enterprise at Natick, the English Society had been enlisted to send over large quantities of farming tools and implements of industry and household thrift, clothing, etc. A vessel laden with these was on its way, and Eliot had quickened the hearts of the Indians by telling them what warm and generous friends God had raised up for them across the sea. The vessel was wrecked with great losses on Cohasset rocks, though some of its freight was saved in a damaged condition. “Satan wrecked the vessel, but God rescued some of its contents.” Again, on the eve of the occasion appointed for instituting a church at Natick, “three Indians of the unsound sort had got several quarts of strong water.” The natural consequences followed. Of this Eliot says: “There fell out a very great discouragement, which might have been a scandal to them, and I doubt not but Satan intended it so; but the Lord improved it to stir up faith and prayer, and so turned it another way.” Mighty indeed is that assuring trust which can thus allot the bane and the blessing of human life!