become of his soul? Whether could the soul come forth thence, or not?” There is a singular beauty in one of the questions put by these pupils of natural religion: “Can one be saved by reading the Book of the Creature [Nature]?” Eliot says, “This question was made when I taught them that God gave us two books, and that in the Book of the Creature every creature was a word or sentence.”
A specimen of the “weak questions” is the following: “What shall be in the room of the world when it is burnt up?” Eliot calls this “an old woman's question, yesterday.” The women were allowed to ask questions through their husbands, — not always, either in savage or civilized life, a satisfactory medium.
Only once does there seem to have been trifling. Eliot says, “We had this year a malignant, drunken Indian, that (to cast some reproach, as we feared, upon this way) boldly pronounced this question: ‘Mr. Eliot, who made sack, who made sack?’ [the word for all strong drinks]. But he was soon snibbed [snubbed?] by the other Indians calling it ‘a pappoose question,’ and seriously and gravely answered, not so much to his question as to his spirit, which hath cooled his boldness ever since.”
This wicked Indian, named George, seems to have been a sad reprobate. He killed and skinned a young cow belonging to a settler in Cambridge, and had the effrontery to pass it off as “a moose” to Mr. Dunster, the President of the College, “and covered it with many lies.” He was “convented before an assembly of the elders,” and made confession, which was kindly received.
Patience, gentleness, and dialectic skill must have been equally needed by the good Apostle under these questionings. Supposing his readers well furnished at such points, he does not give us his answers.
Eliot made several distinctly marked stages of his work in the process of preparing his flock at Natick for and admitting them to the full privileges of what he calls “a
