“How to Live in the World, so as to Live in Heaven.”
[The following letter was written to his brother by the Rev. John Eliot, the apostolic missionary to the Red Indians. He was born at Nasington, in Essex. His parents were eminently godly, so that, to use his own words, “his first years were seasoned with the fear of God, the Word, and prayer.” He studied at Cambridge, and showed special ability in the Greek and the Hebrew languages. He emigrated to New England, and became pastor of the church in Roxbury, where he continued until his death. His missionary work among the Indians earned for him the honourable title of “The Apostle to the Indians,” though he himself deprecated it. The Indians had the greatest respect for him, and his influence over them was extraordinary. The sachems and powwows or juggling priests bitterly opposed him, but, nothing daunted, he continued his good work with apostolic zeal and fervour, until villages of praying Indians began to appear in different parts of the colony. His missionary labours have rendered his name illustrious throughout Christendom, and are one of the romances of missions. He died on 20th May 1690, in the 86th year of his age.]
YOURS I received, and thought on. The question is, How so to live in this world as yet to live in heaven? It is one of the common-places of my heart that I have often occasion to study, and therefore takes me not unprovided. It is hard to keep the helm up among so many cross winds, and eddies, and out-lands, and boarding of creatures, as we meet withal upon this sea of glass and fire. And truly that man knoweth not his own heart who finds it not difficult to break through the entanglements of the world. Creature smiles stop and entice away the affections from Jesus Christ. Creature frowns discompose and tempestuate the spirit, that it thinks it doth well to be angry. Both ways grace is a loser. We had all need to watch and pray, lest we enter these temptations. The greatest of our conflicts and causes of your complaints, seem here to have their original. Temptations follow tempers. As there are two predominant qualities in the temper of every body, so there are two predominant sins in the temper of every heart; and pride is one in all men in the world; the other is care about futurities.
I will tell you familiarly what God hath done for my soul, and in what track my soul keeps towards Himself. 1. I am come to a conclusion to look for no great matters in the world, but to know Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I make best way in a low gale. A high spirit and a high sail together will be dangerous; and therefore I prepare to live low. I desire not much; I pray against it. My study is my calling; so much as to attend that without distraction, I am bound to plead for; and more I desire not. By my secluded retirements, I have advantages to observe how every day’s occasions insensibly wear off the heart from God, and bury it in itself; which they that ever live in the noise and lumber of the world cannot be sensible of. 2. I have learned to see a need of everything that God gives me; and to need nothing that He denies me. There is no dispensation, though cross and afflictive, but, either in or after it, I find I could not be without it; and nothing that I am without, whether it be taken from me or not given to me, but sooner or later God quiets me in Himself without it. 3. I cast all my care on the Lord, and live securely on the wisdom and care of my heavenly Father. My ways are, you know, in some sense hedged up with thorns, and grow darker and darker daily; but yet I mistrust not my good God in the least, and live more quiet in the absence of all by faith, than I should do, I am persuaded, if I possessed them. I think the Lord deals kindly with me to make me believe for all my mercies, before I have them; they will then be Isaacs—sons of laughter. For the less reason hath to work upon, the more freely faith casts itself upon the faithfulness of God. I find that, while faith is steady, nothing can disquiet me; and when faith totters, nothing can establish me. If I ramble out among means and creatures, I am presently lost, and can come to no end; but if I stay myself on God, and leave Him to work in His own way and time, I am at rest, and can lie down and sleep in a promise, though a thousand rise up against me. Therefore my way is not to cast beforehand, but to work with God by the day. Sufficient to the day is the work thereof. I find so much to do continually with my calling and my heart, that I have no time to puzzle myself with peradventures and futurities.
As for the state of the times, it is very gloomy and tempestuous. But why do the heathen rage? Faith lies at anchor in the midst of the waves, and believes the accomplishment of the promise through all these overturnings, confusions, and seeming impossibilities. Upon this God do I live, who is our God for ever, and will guide us to death. Methinks I lie becalmed in His bosom, as Luther in such a case. I am not much troubled; let Christ see to it. I know prophecies are now dark, the books are sealed, and men have all been deceived, and every vision fails; yet God doth continue faithful; it is He that promiseth who will also do it. I believe these dark times are the womb of a bright morning.
Many things more I might have added; but enough. O brother, keep close to God! and then you need fear nothing. Maintain secret and intimate acquaintance with Him; and then a little of the creature will go a great way. Take time for duties in private. Crowd not religion into a corner of the day. There is a Dutch proverb, Nobody will get by thieving, or lose by praying. Lay up all your good in God; so as to overbalance the sweetness and bitterness of all creatures. Spend no time in forehand contrivances for this world; they never succeed; God will run His dispensations another way. Self-contrivances are the effects of unbelief; I can speak by experience. Would men spend those hours they wear out in plots and devices, in communion with God, and leave all on Him by venturesome believing, they would have more peace and comfort. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit! Pray for your own soul, pray for Jerusalem, and pray hard for your poor brother.