ement of spirit" did make "the work longsome." So
longsome it was, that while the schoolmaster was speaking every one got
restless, and there was a confusion; and the ministers, who had a long
dark ride through the woods before them, went away, and were hard to
bring back again, so that he had to finish hearing the declarations of
faith alone.

Still, he cut off the baptism and organization of a church till he had
sent all these confessions to be considered by the Society in England,
printed and published under the title of "Tears of Repentance," with a
dedication to Oliver Cromwell. Then came other delays; some from the
jealousy and distrust of the English, who feared that the Indians were
going to ally themselves to the Dutch; some from the difficulty of
getting pastors to join in the tedious task of listening to the wordy
confessions; and some from the distressing scandal of drunkenness
breaking out among the Indians, in spite of the strict discipline that
always punished it. It was not till 1660 that Mr. Eliot baptized any
Indians, and the next day admitted them to the Lord's Supper, nine years
after he had begun to preach. The numbers we do not know, but there is
no doubt that he received no adults except well proved and tried persons
coming up to the Puritan standard of sincerity and devotion.

At this time the Society at home was in great danger; for, on the
Restoration, the charter had become void, and, moreover, the principal
estate that formed the endowment had been the property of a Roman
Catholic,--Colonel Bedingfield,--who resumed possession, and refused to
refund the purchase money, as considering the Society at an end. It
would probably have been entirely lost, but for the excellent Robert
Boyle, so notable at once for his science, piety, and beneficence. He
placed the matter in its true light before Lord Clarendon, and obtained
by his means a fresh charter from Charles II. The judgment in the Court
of Chancery was given in favour of the Society, and Boyle himself
likewise endowed it with a third part of a grant of the forfeited
impropriations in Ireland which he had received from the king. But all
the time there was a great disbelief in the efficacy of the work among
the Indians both at home and in New England. It was the fashion to call
all the stories of Indian conversions mere devices for getting money, and
the unhappy, proud hostility that almost always actuated the ordinary
English colonis