REV. JOHN ELIOT.
THE apostle Eliot was pastor of the church at Roxbury nearly sixty years. Cotton Mather records some of his dying sayings. Relative to the work of God among the Indians he said—”There is a cloud, a dark cloud, upon the work of the gospel among the poor Indians. The Lord revive and prosper that work, and grant that 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 that I spoke last? I recall the 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.” His last words were, “Welcome joy.” He feared that the old saints, especially those devout neighbours of his, Cotton of Boston and Mather of Dorchester, who had got safe to heaven before him, would suspect that he had gone the wrong way because he stayed so long behind them. He said that he should have a good deal of news to carry to heaven to the founders of New England. That church work was yet carried on among us; that the number of our churches was continually increasing; and that the churches were still kept as big as ever they were by the daily addition of those who shall be saved. When any person brought him tidings of the death of any individual eminent for usefulness, he would answer, “Well, but God lives, Christ lives, the old Saviour of New England yet lives, and He will reign till all His enemies are made His footstool.” Eliot took unwearied pains in the instruction of the children of his congregation. Mather says—”As when certain Jesuits were sent among the Waldenses to corrupt their children, they returned with disappointment and confusion, because the children of seven years old were well instructed enough to encounter the most learned of them all; so if any seducers were let loose as wolves among the good people of Roxbury, they would find, I am confident, as little prey in that well-instructed place as in any other part of the country.”
MOFFAT THE MISSIONARY AND HIS MINISTER.
Dr A. and the excellent Moffat had been engaged in a missionary service in the North of England, and returned for repose to the house of a friend. They met in the room an aged minister named Caldwell. In the course of conversation, Moffat adverted to his mother, for whom he entertained the most devoted regard. Mr C., whom Moffat did not know, not even his name, mentioned that he perceived that he was a Scotchman. “Yes,” said the missionary, “the scenes of my boyhood and youth in my native land are dear to me. I often think of them when far away among the heathen. I often think of my excellent mother leading me when a little fellow from Carron Shore to Falkirk to the Independent meeting-house to hear an excellent minister, Mr Caldwell.” He then spoke with enthusiasm of his mother, of the minister, and of the impressions he had received then and there. The venerable listener rose up with tears coursing down his cheeks, and exclaimed, “Can it be! Are you little Bobby Moffat? Is Moffat the missionary the little fellow whom his mother used to lead to my meeting-house in Falkirk when, many years ago, I was minister there?” The mutual recognition, and embrace, and rapture may be better conceived than described. The venerable Caldwell had not till then identified the little boy with the man who had done so much for Africa. May there not be many such blessed surprises when the Christian minister enters his rest and “his works do follow him”?
CALVIN’S INDUSTRY.
What! shall I speak of his indefatigable industry almost beyond the power of nature, which, paralleled with our loiterings, will, I fear, exceed all credit? It may be the truest object of admiration how one lean, worn, spent, and wearied body could hold out. He read, every week of the year, three divinity lectures; every other week, over and above, he preached every day; so that (as Erasmus said of Chrysostom) I know not whether more to admire his constancy or theirs that heard him. Some have reckoned his yearly lectures to be one hundred and eighty-six, and his yearly sermons two hundred and eighty-six. Every Thursday he sat in the Presbytery; every Friday, when the ministers met to consult upon difficult texts, he made as good as a lecture. Besides all this, there was scarce a day that exercised him not in answering, either by word of mouth or writing, the doubts and questions of different churches and pastors; yea, sometimes more at once; so that he might say with Paul, “The care of all churches lieth upon me.” Scarcely a year wherein, over and above all these former employments, some great volume in folio, or other, came not forth.
—Biographica Evangelica, by Dr Hoyle.
GEORGE WISHART’S SERMON IN THE FIELDS.
The parish church of Mauchline was shut against him by the sheriff of the county. Some of Wishart’s zealous friends would have forced it open, but Wishart objected to violence. “Brother,” said he to one of his supporters, “Christ Jesus is as mighty upon the fields as in the church; He Himself preached oftener in the desert, at the seaside, and other places judged profane, than in the Temple of Jerusalem.” He then went to a wall, near a moor, on the south-west of the village, and standing there, he preached, the multitude standing and sitting round him. “God gave the day” (says the old historian) “pleasant and hot. He continued in preaching more than three hours. In that sermon God wrought so wonderfully with him that Lawrence Rankene, laird of Shaw, one of the most wicked men in that country, was converted. The tears ran from his eyes in such abundance that all men wondered.”
JOHN KNOX’S SATURDAYS.
Writing to an inquiring and troubled friend, Knox thus speaks of his Saturday’s retirement:—”This day ye know to be the day of my study and prayer unto God; yet, if your trouble be intolerable, or if you think my presence may release your pain, do as the Spirit shall move you, for ye know that I will be offended with nothing that ye do in God’s name. And oh, how glad would I be to feed the hungry and give medicine to the sick! Your messenger found me in bed, after a sore trouble and most dolorous night; and so doleur may complain to doleur when we two meet.”
TROUBLES NEEDED.
Mr Berridge, in a characteristic letter to Lady Huntington, says:—”The sensible comfort will not last always, nor long. In the present state of things, a winter is as much wanted to continue the earth fruitful as a summer. If the grass was always growing it would soon grow to nothing, just as flowers that blow much and long generally blow themselves to death. And as it is thus with the ground, so it is with the labourers too. Afflictions, desertions, and temptations are as needful as consolations. Jonah’s whale will teach a good lesson, as well as Pisgah’s top; and a man may sometimes learn as much from being a night and a day in the deep as from forty days on the mount. I see Jonah come out of a whale and cured of rebellion. I see Moses go up to the mount with meekness but come down and break the tables. Further, I see three picked disciples attending the Master to the mount and fall asleep there. Jesus has given you a hand and heart to execute great things for His glory, and therefore He will deal you out a suitable measure of affliction to keep your balance steady.”