earl of Kincardine in the peerage of Scotland, and the first Baron Elgin in that of the United Kingdom. The eldest son of Thomas, the seventh earl, by his second marriage, he was born in 1811, and succeeded to the peerage in 1841. He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he had as companions and rivals his younger predecessors in the office of governor-general of India, Dalhousie and Canning. Mr. Gladstone also was one of his juniors at both school and college, and recalls the circumstance that it was from young Bruce he "first learned that Milton had written any prose." As a young man he came into contact with Dr. Chalmers, who induced him to speak in public on church extension, and it was to Chalmers's sermon on the "Expulsive Power of a New Affection" that he turned on his death-bed, repeating many passages from it in the last hour. He sat in the House of Commons for Southampton long enough to attach him to the constitutional principles now described as Liberal-Conservative, though he never identified himself with a party.

Lord Elgin began his official career in 1842, at the age of thirty, as governor of Jamaica. He succeeded the great Indian civilian, Lord Metcalfe, who had left the colony in such a state of quietude and prosperity as was possible soon after emancipation. During an administration of four years he succeeded in winning the respect of all classes. He improved the condition of the negroes and conciliated the planters by working through them. In 1846 Lord Grey appointed him governor-general of Canada. Son-in-law of the popular earl of Durham, he was well received by the colonists, and he set himself deliberately to carry out the policy which makes Lord Durham's name remembered there with gratitude to this day. Alike from his political experience in England and his life in Jamaica Lord Elgin had learned that safety lay in acting as the moderator of all parties, while applying fearlessly the constitutional principles of the mother country to each difficulty as it arose. In this his frank and genial manners also aided him powerfully. His assent to the local measure for indemnifying those who had suffered in the troubles of 1837 | led the mob of Montreal to pelt his carriage for the rewarding of rebels for rebellion, as Mr. Gladstone described it. But long before his eight years' term of service expired he was the most popular man in Canada. His relations with the United States, his hearty support of the self-government and defence of the colony, and his settlement of the freetrade and fishery questions, moreover, led to his being raised to the British peerage.

Soon after his return to England in 1854, Lord Palmerston offered him a seat in the Cabinet as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, which he declined. But when, in 1856, the seizure of the "Arrow" by Commissioner Yeh plunged England into war with China, he at once accepted the appointment of special envoy with the expedition. On reaching Point de Galle he was met by a force summoned from Bombay to Calcutta by the news of the sepoy mutiny at Meerut on the 11th May. His first idea, that the somewhat meagre intelligence would justify most energetic action in China, was at once changed when urgent letters from Lord Canning reached him at Singapore, the next port, on the 3d June. H.M.S. "Shannon" was at once sent on to Calcutta with the troops destined for China, and Lord Elgin himself followed it when gloomier letters from India reached him. The arrival of the "Shannon" gave new life to the handful of white men fighting for civilization against fearful odds, and before the reinforcements from England arrived the back of the mutiny had been broken. Nor was the position in China seriously affected by the want of the troops. Lord Elgin sent in his ultimatum to Commissioner Yeh at Canton on the same day, the 12th December, that he learned the relief of Lucknow, and he soon after sent Yeh a prisoner to Calcutta. By July, 1858, after months of Chinese deception, he was able to leave the Gulf of Pecheli with the emperor's assent to the Treaty of Tiensin, whereby concessions were made such as all civilized peoples grant to each other, if only from self-interest. The treaty sanctions the residence of foreign ambassadors in Peking-long secured by the Russians-guarantees protection to Christians, opens the country to travellers with passports, and the Yang-tzse and five additional ports to trade, under a revised tariff. The sum of £650,000 was exacted for losses at Canton, and an equal sum for the expenses of the war. Following the Americans, the apparently successful plenipotentiary visited Japan, and

obtained less considerable concessions from its Government in the Treaty of Yeddo. It is true that the negotiations were confined to the really subordinate Tycoon or Shogoon, holding an office since abolished, but that visit proved the beginning of British influence in the most progressive country of Asia. Unfortunately, the Chinese difficulty was not yet at an end. After tedious disputes with the tariff commissioners as to the opium duty, and a visit to the upper waters of the Yang-tzse, Lord Elgin had reached England in May, 1859. But when his brother and the allied forces attempted to proceed to Peking with the ratified treaty, they were fired on from the Taku forts at the mouth of the Peiho. The Chinese had resolved to try the fortune of war once more, and Lord Russell again sent out Lord Elgin as ambassador extraordinary to demand an apology for the attack, the execution of the treaty, and an indemnity for the military and naval expenditure. Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala), and Sir Hope Grant, with the French, so effectually routed the Tatar troops and sacked the Summer Palace that by the 24th October, 1860, a convention was concluded, which was "entirely satisfactory to Her Majesty's Government." The treaty and convention have regulated the relations of China with the West to the present time (1878). In the interval between the two visits to China, Lord Elgin held the office of postmaster-general in Lord Palmerston's administration, and was elected lord rector of the university of Glasgow. He had not been a month at home after the second visit when the same premier selected him to be Her Majesty's viceroy and governor-general of India.

Lord Elgin had now attained the object of his honorable ambition, after the office had been filled in most critical times by his juniors and old college companions, the mar quis of Dalhousie and the Earl Canning. He succeeded a statesman who had done much to reorganize the whole administration of India, shattered as it had been by the mutiny. Long, too long in grappling with it, as he himself afterwards confessed, Lord Canning had atoned for the sluggishness of his early action by the vigor of his last two years of office, and established his popularity on the firm basis of his land-tenure reforms and his foreign or feudatory policy. Lord Elgin could only develop both, and he recognized this as what he called his "humble task." But, as the first viceroy directly appointed by the Crown, and as subject to the secretary of state for India, Lord Elgin at once gave up all Lord Canning had fought for, in the co-ordinate independence, or rather the stimulating responsibility, of the governor-general, which had prevailed from the days of Clive and Warren Hastings. From his time to the present the old powers of the historic governorgeneral have been overshadowed by the party influences of the Indian secretary. This subservience was seen in a further blow at the legislature, by which a bill could be published without leave from the Calcutta council, and in the reversal of Lord Canning's measure for the sale of a fee-simple tenure with all its political as well as economic advantages. But, on the other hand, Lord Elgin loyally carried out the wise and equitable policy of his predecessor towards our feudatories with a firmness and a dignity that in the case of Holkar and Oudeypore had a good effect. He did his best to check the aggression of the Dutch in Sumatra, which was contrary to treaty, and he supported Dost Mahomed in Cabul until that aged warrior entered the then neutral and disputed territory of Herat. Determined to maintain inviolate the integrity of our own north-west frontier, Lord Elgin assembled a camp of exercise at Lahore, and marched a force to the Peshawur border to punish those branches of the Yusufzai tribe who had violated the engagements of 1858.

It was in the midst of this "little war" that he died. Soon after his arrival at Calcutta, he had projected the usual tour to Simla, to be followed by an inspection of the Punjab and its warlike ring-fence of Pathans. He even contemplated the summoning of the central legislative council at Lahore. After passing the summer of 1863 in the cool retreat of Peterhoff, Lord Elgin began a march across the hills from Simla to Sealkote by the upper valleys of the Beas, the Ravee, and the Chenab, chiefly to decide the two allied questions of tea cultivation and trade routes to Kashgaria and Tibet. The climbing up to the Rotung Pass (13,000 feet) which separates the Beas valley from that of the Chenab, and the crossing of the frail twig bridge across the Chundra torrent, prostrated him by the time he

had descended into the smiling English-like Kangra valley. Thence he wrote his last letter to Sir Charles Wood, still full of hope and not free from anxiety as to the Sittana expedition. At the lovely hill station of Dhurmsala, "the place of piety," he lay on his death-bed, watching the glories of the Himalayan autumn, and even directing Lady Elgin where to select his grave in the little cemetery around the station church, which hangs high on the bluff above the house where he breathed his last. After telegraphing his resignation to the Queen, he lay for a fortnight amid sacred words and holy thoughts, tended by loving and skilful hands, and suddenly gave up the fight with agony on the 20th November, 1863. He died of fatty degeneration of the muscular fibre of the heart. He is the second governor-general whose body has a resting place in India, Lord Cornwallis having found a grave at Ghazeepore, during his second administration. It is vain to speculate what Lord Elgin might have been had he lived to apply the experience gathered during his eventful apprenticeship to Indian administration. Sir John (now Lord) Lawrence, the great Bengal civilian, took up his task. Lord Elgin will be best remembered as the quietly successful governor-general of Canada for eight years.

For his whole career see Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin (John Murray), edited by Walrond, but corrected by his brother-in-law, Dean Stanley; for the China missions see Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan, by Laurence Oliphant, his private secretary; for the brief Indian administration see the Friend of India for 1862-63. (G. Sм.) EL-GOLEA, a town on the southern frontiers of Algeria, in that part of the Sahara which bears the name of El-erg, about 160 miles S. W. of Wargla, in 30° 35' N. lat. and 30 10 E. lon. It consists of three portions-the citadel on a limestone hill, the upper town, and the lower town, each separated from the others by irregular plantations of date trees. In itself it is of no particular interest, but its position makes it a very important station for the caravan trade between Algeria and the countries to the south. It was originally a settlement of the Zenâta Berbers, by whom it was known as Taorert, and there is still a considerable Berber element in its population, though the Arabic language is in general use. The full Arab name is El Golea'a el Menia'a, or the "little fortress well defended." According to the statement of the natives, the well in the upper town is about 60 feet deep.

ELI (1 Sam. chaps. i.-iv.) was priest of Jehovah at the temple of Shiloh, the sanctuary of the ark, and at the same time judge over Israel-an unusual combination of offices, which must have been won by signal services to the nation in his earlier years, though in the history preserved to us he appears in the weakness of extreme old age, unable to control the petulance and rapacity of his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, which disgraced the sanctuary and disgusted the people. While the central authority was thus weakened, the Philistines advanced against Israel, and gained a complete victory in the great battle of Ebenezer, where the ark was taken, and Hophni and Phinehas slain. On hearing the news, Eli fell from his seat and died. According to the Massoretic text, he was ninety-eight years old, and had judged Israel for forty years (1 Sam. iv. 15, 18). The Septuagint translator gives but twenty years in ver. 18, and seems not to have read ver. 15 [Wellhausen in loco]. After these events the sanctuary of Shiloh appears to have been destroyed by the Philistines [comp. Jer. vii.; Ewald, Geschichte, ii. 584; Wellhausen on 2 Sam. viii. 17], and the descendants of Eli with the whole of their clan or "father's house" subsequently appear as settled at Nob (1 Sam. xxi. 1, xxii. 11 sqq., comp. xiv. 3). In the massacre of the clan by Saul, with the subsequent deposition of the survivor Abiathar from the priestly office (1 Kings ii. 27), the prophecies of judgment uttered in the days of Eli against his corrupt house were strikingly fulfilled (1 Sam. ii. 27 sqq., iii. 11 sqq.).1 An important point of Hebrew archæology is involved in the genealogy of Eli and his house. It appears from 1 Kings ii. 27-35 that Zadok, from whom the later high priests claimed descent, and who appears in 1 Chron. v. 38 (E. V. vi. 12) as the lineal descendant of Aaron through Eleazar and Phineas, was not of the house of Eli, and in 1 Chron. xxiv. Ahimelech, son of Abiathar, is reckoned to the sons of Ithamar, the younger branch of the house of 1 A curious Jewish tradition makes Phinehas the man of God who denounced judgment on Eli. Jerome, Quæst. Heb. in Lib. I. Regum.

Aaron. Hence the traditional view that in the person of Eli the high-priesthood was temporarily diverted from the line of Eleazer and Phinehas into that of Ithamar [comp. Joseph. Ant. c. 11, 8 5, v. viii. c. 1, 3, and for the fancies of the Rabbins on the cause of this diversion, Selden, De Succ. in Pontif., lib. i. cap. 2]. This view, however, seems to be absolutely inconsistent with 1 Sam. ii., which represents Eli's "father's house" or clan as the original priestly family, and predicts the destruction or degradation to an inferior position of the whole of this "father's house," and not merely of the direct descendants of Eli. Moreover, Ahimelech, who is the only link to connect Eli with Itha mar, is an ambiguous personage, who, perhaps, owes his existence to a corruption in the text of 2 Sam. viii. 17 [comp. Wellhausen in loco; Graf, Geschichtliche Bücher, p. 237], where most recent critics read, and the history seems to require, "Abiathar son of Ahimelech" [comp., however, Bertheau on 1 Chron. xviii. 16, and Keil on 1 Chron. v.]. To build an elaborate theory on the genealogical statements in Chronicles is the less justifiable because that book wholly ignores the priesthood of Eli, while Hebrew genealogies must sometimes be understood in a figurative sense. pare further on the whole subject, Thenius and Wellhausen, Geschichte des Stammes Levi" in Merx's Archiv, i. pp. 79, on 1 Sam. ii.; Ewald's Geschichte, ii. p. 576 sqq.; Graf, “Zur 88, and among older writers especially Selden, in his book already cited, De Successione in Pontificatum. (W. R. 8.)

Com

ELIAS LEVITA (1472-1549), a Jewish rabbi, the most distinguished Hebrew scholar of his time, was born at Neustadt, on the Aisch, in Bavaria, in 1472. From the fact that he spent most of his life in Italy, some have supposed him to have been an Italian by birth. There can be no doubt, however, that he was a German, as he asserts the fact in the preface to one of his works, and his pupil Münster states expressly that he was born at Neustadt of Jewish parents. His father, Rabbi Ascher Levita, assumed the surname of Aschkenasi (the German), which was also used by the son. Banished as a Jew from his native country, Elias went to Italy in the beginning of the 16th century. He resided at first in Venice, where he earned a high reputation as a teacher of Hebrew. In 1504 he removed to Padua, where he continued his career as a teacher, and wrote a commentary on the Hebrew grammar of Rabbi Kimchi. When Padua was sacked in 1509 he lost all his property, and removed to Venice. About 1512 he took up his residence in Rome, where he enjoyed for a number of years the friendship of Cardinal Egidio, and of several other dignitaries of the church. So intimate were his relations with the Christians that he was accused of having apostatized from Judaism. His opinions were undoubtedly more liberal than those of the majority of the Jews of his time, but there is no reason to question his own assertion that he remained true to the faith in which he was born. When Rome was attacked by Charles V. in 1527, Elias Levita lost all his means for the second time, and again found an asylum in Venice. In 1540 he went to Isny in Swabia, having been invited by Paul Fagius to join him in the superintendence of a printing-press for Hebrew books. The last two years of his life were spent in Venice, where he died in 1549. The most valuable of the numerous works of Elias Levita were those bearing on Hebrew grammar and lexicography. His Massoreth Hammassoreth (Venice, 1538) is a critical commentary on the text of the Hebrew Scriptures, and contains a very able discussion of the question of the origin of the vowel points, which he assigns to the Massoretic doctors of the school of Tiberias in the 5th century after Christ. He also wrote a treatise on Hebrew grammar, a dictionary, chiefly to the Targums and the Talmud, and several smaller works in Hebrew philology. In the preface to his Massoreth, and other por tions of his works, there are various autobiographical details. A German translation of the Massoreth Hammassoreth by Semler appeared in 1772, and an edition of the work with notes and an English translation was published in London in 1867.

ÉLIE DE BEAUMONT, JEAN BAPTISTE ARMAND Louis LEONCE (1798–1874), a celebrated French geologist, was born at Canon, in Calvados, on the 25th September, 1798. He was educated at the Lycée Henri IV., where he took the first prize in mathematics and physics; at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he stood first at the exit examination in 1819; and at the École des Mines, where he began to show a decided preference for the science with

the few and simple words with which Elijah makes his prayer to Jehovah. Once only with the calm assurance of one who knew that his prayer would be answered, he invokes the God of his fathers to vindicate himself in the presence of an apostate people. The answer comes at once: "The fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench." So convincing a sign was irresistible; the people who had stood by in wondering silence now fell on their faces and acknowledged Jehovah as the true God. In harmony with the method in which Jehovah often vindicated himself in the Old Testament economy, the acknowledgment of the true prophet and his God was immediately followed by the destruction of the false prophets. The first heat of conviction made the people quick to obey the command to seize the prophets of Baal, who were immediately afterwards slain by Elijah beside the brook Kishon. The deed, though not without parallel in the Old Testament history, stamps the peculiarly vindictive character of Elijah's prophetic mission.

The people having returned to their rightful allegiance to the true God, the drought sent as a punishment for their defection at once ceased. The narrative proceeds without a break. On the evening of the day that had witnessed the decisive contest, Elijah, after having invited Ahab to eat and drink, and foretold abundance of rain, proceeded once more to the top of Carmel, and there, with "his face between his knees" (possibly engaged in the prayer referred to in James v. 17, 18), waited for the long-looked-for blessing. His servant, sent repeatedly to search the sky for signs, returned the seventh time reporting a little cloud arising out of the sea "like a man's hand." The portent was scarcely seen ere it was fulfilled. The sky was full of clouds and a great rain was falling when Ahab, obeying the command of Elijah, set out in his chariot for Jezreel. Elijah, with what object does not appear, ran before the chariot to the entrance of Jezreel, a distance of at least sixteen miles, thus showing the power of endurance natural to a prophet of the wilderness. If he went with any hope that the events that had just occurred would change the heart of Jezebel, as they seem to have changed the heart of the king, he was at once undeceived. On being told what had taken place, Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah with a vow in the most solemn terms that ere another day had passed his life would be even as the lives of the prophets of Baal, and the threat was enough to cause him to take to instant flight.

The first stage of his journey was to Beersheba, on the confines of the kingdom of Judah. Here he left his servant, who, according to an old Jewish tradition, was the widow's son of Zarephath, afterwards the prophet Jonah,' and proceeded a day's journey into the wilderness. Laying himdown under a solitary juniper (broom), he gave vent to his bitter disappointment at the apparent failure of his efforts for the reformation of Israel in a prayer for death. By another of those miraculous interpositions which occur at nearly every turn of his history he was twice supplied with food and drink, in the strength of which he journeyed forty days and forty nights until he came to Horeb, where he lodged in a cave. A hole "just large enough for a man's body" (Stanley), immediately below the summit of Jebel Musa, is still pointed out by tradition as the cave of Elijah. If the scene on Carmel was the grandest, that on Horeb was spiritually the most profound in the life of Elijah. There for the first time he learned that the normal channel of divine revelation is spiritual and not material, and that its object is mercy and not judgment. Not in the strong wind that brake the rocks in pieces, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in the still small voice that followed, the Lord made himself known. There, too, he learned, also for the first time, the true nature and limits of his own prophetic mission. He was the herald, not of a sudden vengeance and a sudden reformation of which his own eyes might hope to see the fulfilment, but of the slow steady progress of that kingdom of God that cometh not with observation. He was taught this practically in the threefold commission laid upon him, which implied in each part of it that the work of vengeance and of reformation alike were to be fulfilled by other hands and in a succeeding age. He was to return to Damascus and anoint Hazael king of Syria; he was to anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king of Israel in place of Ahab; and as his own successor in the prophetic office he was to anoint Elisha the son of Shaphat. 1 Jerome, Proœm, in Jonam,

The revelation at Horeb closed with an announcement that must have been at once a comfort and a rebuke to the prophet. In his allegiance to Jehovah he was not alone, as in sadness of spirit he had supposed; there were no less than seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed to Baal. Leaving Horeb and proceeding northwards, Elijah found the opportunity of fulfilling the last of the three commands that had been laid upon him. He met Elisha engaged at the plough probably near his native place, Abel-meholah, in the valley of the Jordan, and, by the symbolical act of casting his mantle upon him, consecrated him to the prophetic office. As it happened, this was the only command of the three which he fulfilled in person; the course of events left the other two to be carried out by his successor. After the call of Elisha the narrative contains no notice of Elijah for several years. It was not until Ahab, at the prompting of Jezebel, had committed his crowning iniquity in the matter of Naboth's vineyard that he again appeared, as usual with startling abruptness. Without any indication of whence or how he came, he is represented in the narrative as standing in the vineyard when Ahab entered to take possession of it, and as pronouncing upon the king and his house that awful doom (1 Kings xxi. 17-24) which, though deferred for a time, was ultimately fulfilled to the letter. With one more denunciation of the house of Ahab, Elijah's function as a messenger of wrath was fully discharged. When Ahaziah, the son and successor of Ahab, having injured himself by falling through a lattice, sent to inquire at Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether he should recover, the prophet was commanded by God to appear to the messengers and tell them that, for this resort to a false god, the king should die. The effect of his appearance was such that they turned back without attempting to fulfil their errand. Their description of the prophet left the king in no doubt as to his identity: "It is Elijah the Tishbite." With the true Jezebel spirit he resolved to destroy the enemy of his house, and despatched a captain with a band of fifty to arrest him. They came upon Elijah seated on "the mount,"-probably Carmel. The imperious terms in which he was summoned to come down-perhaps also a tone of mockery in the appellation "Thou man of God"— were punished by fire from heaven, which descended at the bidding of Elijah and consumed the whole band. A second captain and fifty were despatched, behaved in a similar way, and met the same fate. The leader of a third troop took a humbler tone, sued for mercy, and obtained it. Elijah then went with them to the king, but only to repeat before his face the doom he had already made known to his messengers, which was almost immediately afterwards fulfilled.

The only mention of Elijah's name in the book of Chronicles (2 Chron. xxi. 12-15), where he is represented as sending a letter of rebuke and denunciation to Jehoram, king of Judah, furnishes a chronological difficulty, owing to the fact that Elijah's translation seems to have taken place before the death of Jehoshaphat, the father of Jehoram. There is reason, however, to suppose that Jehoram reigned for some years before the death of his father; and on the other hand, though the account of Elijah's translation (2 Kings ii.) immediately follows that of his last public act in denouncing the doom of Ahaziah (2 Kings i.), a considerable interval may have elapsed between the two events. Whatever its duration, the time was spent in close and continuous fellowship with Elisha, his disciple and successor, who, though thrice entreated to leave him, showed the true disciple spirit in the solemn vow, "As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee." The approaching translation seems to have been known, not only to Elijah and Elisha, but also to the schools of the prophets at Bethel and Jericho, both of which they visited in their last eastward journey. At the Jordan their progress was stopped only until Elijah, wrapping his prophet's mantle together, smote the water with it, and so by a last miracle passed over on dry ground. When they had crossed, the master desired the disciple to ask some parting blessing. The request for a double portion (i.e., probably a first-born's portion) of the prophet's spirit Elijah characterized as a hard thing; but he promised to grant it if Elisha should remain with him to the last, so as to see him when he was taken away. The end is told in words of simple sublimity: "And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 Kings ii. 11). There is in this, as Stanley has truly re

Elijah occupied an altogether peculiar place in later Jewish history and tradition. Of the general belief among the Jewish people that he should return for the restoration of Israel the Scriptures contain several indications, such as the prophecy of Malachi (iv. 5, 6). Even if this be applied to John the Baptist, between whom and Elijah there are many striking points of resemblance, there are several allusions in the gospels which show the currency of a belief in the return of Elias, which was not satisfied by the mission of John (Matt. xi. 14, xvi. 14; Luke ix. 8; John i. 21). Elijah is canonized both in the Greek and in the Latin Churches, his festival being kept in both on the 20th July, -the date of his ascension in the nineteenth year of Jehoshaphat, according to Cornelius a Lapide. (W. B. 8.) ELIOT, JOHN (1604-1690), "the Apostle of the Indians of North America," was born at Nasing, in Essex, in 1604, and was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1623. He there displayed a partiality for philology which may have had some influence in stimulating the zeal he afterwards displayed in acquiring the language of the native Indians. After leaving the university he was employed as an usher in a school near Chelmsford under the Rev. Thomas Hooker. While in the family of Mr. Hooker, Eliot received serious impressions, and resolved to devote himself to the work of the Christian ministry. As there was then no field for nonconformist preachers in England, he resolved to emigrate to America, where he arrived on the 3d of November, 1631. After officiating for a year in the first church in Boston, he was in November, 1632, appointed pastor of the church in Roxbury, where he continued till his death.

When Eliot began his mission work there were about twenty tribes of Indians within the bounds of the plantation of Massachusetts Bay, and for a long time he assiduously employed himself in learning their language. He obtained the assistance of a young Indian taken prisoner in the Pequot war of 1637, and who had been put to service with a Dorchester planter. With his help Eliot translated the Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and many Scripture texts, and at length was able to preach to the Indians in their own language. This he did without the aid of an interpreter in 1646, at a place a few miles from Cambridge, afterwards called Nonantum or Noonatomen, i.e., "Rejoicing," where a settlement of Christian Indians was subsequently established.

The labors of Eliot, being reported in England, excited great attention, and a society, afterwards incorporated, was instituted for the propagation of the gospel in New England. Among its leading members was the Hon. Robert Boyle, well known by his scientific labors, who was one of Eliot's constant correspondents. From the funds of this corporation an allowance of £50 per annum was paid to Eliot in supplement of his moderate salary of £60 as minister of Roxbury.

the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England, declaring their Constant Love and Zeal to the Truth, etc., being a Narrative of the Examinations of the Indians about their Knowledge in Religion by the Elders of the Church, related by Mr. John Eliot. This work contained the confessions of those Indians that were baptized by Eliot and admitted to church fellowship. In 1660 Eliot drew upon himself some animadversion by the publication at London of a work called The Christian Commonwealth, or the Civil Policy of the rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ, which was found to contain seditious principles, especially directed against the Government of England. The statements, however, made in this book were afterwards retracted by its author.

About this time Eliot completed his task of translating the Bible into the Indian language. The corporation in London supplied the funds, and the New Testament in Indian was issued in 1661, shortly after the restoration of Charles II. It happened that the printing of the work was completed when the corporation was expecting a royal charter. A dedication to the king was accordingly inserted, written in a tone calculated to win his favor. It stated that the Old Testament was in the press, and it craved the "royal assistance for the perfecting thereof." The Old Testament was at length published in 1663. Copies of the New Testament were bound with it, and thus the whole Bible was completed in the Indian language. To it were added a catechism, and the Psalms of David in Indian verse. The title of this Bible, which is now of great rarity, and fetches a very high price, is Mamussee Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament-Ne quoshkinnumuk nashpe Wuttin neumoh Christ noh asoowesit John Eliot; literally translated:-"The whole Holy his-Bible God, both Old Testament and also New Testament. This turned by the servant-of-Christ, who is-called John Eliot." This Indian version of the Scriptures was printed at Cambridge (U.S.) by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson, and was the first Bible printed in America.

In 1680 another edition of the New Testament was published; and in 1685 the second edition of the Old Testament appeared. This last was bound up with the second impression of the New Testament, and the two parts form the second edition of the whole Bible. It was dedicated "To the Hon. Robert Boyle, the Governour, and to the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel," etc., and is, like the first edition, a work of great rarity. Eliot received valuable assistance in preparing this edition from the Rev. John Cotton of Plymouth (U.S.), who had also spent much labor in obtaining a thorough knowledge of the Indian language. A new edition of the Indian Bible was printed in 1822 at Boston by P. S. Duponceau and J. Pickering.

Besides his translation of the Bible, Eliot published at Cambridge (U.S.) in 1664 a translation of Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, of which a second edition was issued in 1688. In 1665 he published an abridged translation of Bishop Bayly's Practice of Piety, and a second edition in 1685. His well-known Indian Grammar Begun was written in the winter of 1664, his sons assisting in the work, and was printed at Cambridge (U.S.) in 1666. At the end of this book are these memorable words,-"Prayers and pains, through faith in Jesus Christ, will do anything." The grammar was reprinted in 1822, with notes by Picker ing and Duponceau, in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. ix. The Indian Primer; or the Way of Training up of our Indian Youth in the Good Knowledge of God; by J. E., was printed at Cambridge (U.S.) in 1669. It comprises an exposition of the Lord's Prayer and a translation of the Larger Catechism in Indian. A reprint of this work, from the only complete copy known to exist, preserved in the library of the university of Edinburgh, was published, under the editorial superintendence of Mr. John Small, in 1877.

In 1655 there was published in London by the corpora1 For curious facts indicating the survival of the same belief among the Jews at the present day, see Stanley's Jewish Church, lect. xxx.

by The Logick Primer; some Logical Notions to Initials the Indians in the Knowledge of the Rule of Reason, etc. These two volumes, printed at Cambridge (U.S.), are extremely rare. Of the former, the only known copy exista