“The Commissioners never forbade you to translate the Scriptures for preaching, or for any other use either of your own or of your hearers, but advised that what you meant to print or set forth upon the Corporation charge might be done with such consideration of the language and improvement of the best helps to be had therein, that as much as may be the Indians in all parts of New England might share in the benefit; which we fear they cannot so well do by what you have already printed.”
Mr. Abraham Pierson, of Connecticut, came under the
patronage of the Society for his labor and skill in the
mastery of the Indian language. Fifteen hundred copies of an
Indian catechism made by him, printed by the Society in
our Cambridge in 1659, preceded any work of Eliot's. The
quaint simplicity of Eliot's remarks at the close of his
Indian Grammar, also printed in Cambridge, 1666, makes
them worthy of being copied here: —
“I have now finished what I shall do at present; and in a word or two, to satisfy the prudent inquirer how I found out these new ways of grammar, which no other learned language (so far as I know) useth, I thus inform him. God first put into my heart a compassion over their poor souls, and a desire to teach them to know Christ and to bring them into his kingdom. Then presently I found out (by God's wise providence) a pregnant-witted young man, who had been a servant in an English house, who pretty well understood our language better than he could speak it, and well understood his own language, and hath a clear pronunciation. Him I made my interpreter. By his help I translated the Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and many texts of Scripture. Also I compiled both exhortations and prayers by his help. I diligently marked the difference of their grammar from ours. When I found the way of them, I would pursue a word — a noun, a verb — through all variations I could think of. And thus I came at it. We must not sit still and look for miracles. Up, and be doing; and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ, will do anything. Nil tam difficile quod non. I do believe and hope that the gospel shall be spread to all the ends of the earth and to the dark corners of the world by such a way, and by such instruments
