My dear children, what a task would you think it, even with a long
lifetime before you, were you bidden to copy every chapter and verse, and
word, in yonder great family Bible! Would not this be a heavy toil? But if
the task were, not to write off the English Bible, but to learn a
language, utterly unlike all other tongues,—a language which hitherto had
never been learned, except by the Indians themselves, from their mothers’
lips,—a language never written, and the strange words of which seemed
inexpressible by letters;—if the task were, first, to learn this new
variety of speech, and then to translate the Bible into it, and to do it
so carefully, that not one idea throughout the holy book should be
changed,—what would induce you to undertake this toil? Yet this was what
the Apostle Eliot did.

It was a mighty work for a man, now growing old, to take upon himself. And
what earthly reward could he expect from it? None; no reward on earth. But
he believed that the red men were the descendants of those lost tribes of
Israel of whom history has been able to tell us nothing, for thousands of
years. He hoped that God had sent the English across the ocean, Gentiles
as they were, to enlighten this benighted portion of his once chosen race.
And when he should be summoned hence, he trusted to meet blessed spirits
in another world, whose bliss would have been earned by his patient toil,
in translating the Word of God. This hope and trust were far dearer to
him, than any thing that earth could offer.

Sometimes, while thus at work, he was visited by learned men, who desired
to know what literary undertaking Mr. Elliot had in hand. They, like
himself, had been bred in the studious cloisters of a university, and were
supposed to possess all the erudition which mankind has hoarded up from
age to age. Greek and Latin were as familiar to them as the babble of
their childhood. Hebrew was like their mother tongue. They had grown gray