'Tis up hill! The Lord in His grace fetch us up;" and spying a bush near him, he added, "And truly there are thorns and briars in the way, too." He had great command of his flock at Roxbury, and was a most diligent preacher and catechiser, declaring, in reference to the charge to St.
Peter, that "the care of the lambs is one-third part of the charge to the Church of God." An excellent free school was founded at Roxbury, which was held in great repute in the time of Cotton Mather, to whom we owe most of our knowledge of this good man.

The biography is put together in the peculiar fashion of that day, not chronologically, but under heads illustrating his various virtues, so that it is not easy to pick out the course of his undertakings.

Before passing on to that which especially distinguished him, we must give an anecdote or two from the "article" denominated "His exquisite charity." His wife had become exceedingly skilful in medicine and in dealing with wounds, no small benefit in a recent colony scant of doctors, and she gave her aid freely to all who stood in need of help.

A person who had taken offence at something in one of his sermons, and had abused him passionately, both in speech and in writing, chanced to wound himself severely, whereupon he at once sent his wife to act as surgeon; and when the man, having recovered, came to return thanks and presents, he would accept nothing, but detained him to a friendly meal, "and," says Mather, "by this carriage he mollified and conquered the stomach of his reviler." "He was also a great enemy to all contention, and would ring a loud _Courfew Bell_ wherever he saw the fires of animosity." When he heard any ministers complain that such and such in their flocks were too difficult for them, the strain of his answer was still: "Brother, compass them;" and, "Brother, learn the meaning of those three little words, 'bear, forbear, forgive.'" Once, when at an assembly of ministers a bundle of papers containing matters of difference and contention between two parties--who, he thought, should rather unite--was laid on the table, Eliot rose up and put the whole upon the fire, saying, "Brethren, wonder not at that which I have done: I did it on my knees this morning before I came among you." But that "exquisite charity" seems a little one-sided in another anecdote recorded of him, when "a godly gentleman of Charlestown, one Mr.Foster, with his son, was taken captive by his Turkish enemies." {f:6} Public prayers were offered for his release: but when tidings were received that the "Bloody Prince" who had enslaved him had resolved that no captive should be liberated in his own lifetime, and the distressed friends concluded, "Our hope is lost;" Mr.Eliot, "in some of his prayers before a very solemn congregation, very broadly begged, 'Heavenly Father, work for the redemption of Thy poor servant Foster, and if the prince which detains him will not, as they say, release him so long as himself lives, Lord, we pray Thee kill that cruel prince, kill him, and glorify Thyself upon him.' And now behold the answer.

The poor captiv'd gentleman quickly returns to us that had been mourning for him as a lost man, and brings us news that the prince, which had hitherto held him, was come to an untimely death, by which means he was now set at liberty." "And to turn their hearts" was a form that did not occur to the earnest suppliant for his friend.