Benjamin, the youngest son, was his coadjutor at Roxbury, and was left in charge there while he circulated amongst his Indians, and would have succeeded him.
The loss of this son must have fallen very heavily on him; but "the good old man would sometimes comfortably say, 'I have had six children, and I bless God for His free grace; they are all either _with_ Christ or _in_ Christ, and my mind is now at rest concerning them.'" When asked how he could bear the death of such excellent children, his answer was, "My desire was that they should have served God on earth, but if God will choose to have them rather serve Him in heaven, I have nothing to object against it, but His will be done." His last letter to Mr.Boyle was written in his eighty-fourth year, and was a farewell but a cheerful one, and he had good hopes then of a renewal of the spirit of missions among his people.

But though his Christians did not bely their name in his own generation, alcohol did its work on some, consumption on others; and, in 1836, when Jabez Sparks wrote his biography, there was one wigwam at Natick inhabited by a few persons of mingled Indian and Negro blood, the sole living remnants of the foundation he had loved so well.

Nevertheless, Eliot's work was not wasted.

The spark he lit has never gone out wholly in men's minds.
His wife died in 1684, at a great age, and her elegy over her coffin were these words from himself: "Here lies my dear faithful, pious, prudent, prayerful wife.

I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me." He had become very feeble, and was wont to say, when asked how he did, "Alas! I have lost everything: my understanding leaves me, my memory fails me, my utterance fails me, but, I thank God, my charity holds out still; I find that rather grows than fails." He was forced to give up the duties of his office to a new pastor, and though often entreated to preach again, he would hardly ever do so, by reason, he said, that it would be wronging the souls of his people, when they had an able minister; and when he preached for the last time on a fast day, on the 63rd Psalm, it was with an apology for what he called the poorness, and meanness, and brokenness of his meditations.
"I wonder," he used to say, "for what the Lord lets me live.