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Christian Work among the North American Indians during the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2009

Edward Payson Johnson
Affiliation:
Professor of Church History in the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, New Brunswick, N. J.

Extract

The average person, of average acquaintance with the history of our country, knows but little of the missionary labors of our Christian ancestors. He remembers hearing something, or reading somewhere, about a certain John Eliot, a Puritan preacher, who tried for years to Christianize some Indian communities near Boston; and to him Eliot was simply a visionary and a gently-stubborn fanatic, unpractical and unreasonable as the enthusiastic preacher sometimes is; but of course Eliot was the only preacher foolish enough to try to Christianize Indians; and the slow development and the final decay of Eliot's enterprise proved conclusively the utter folly and futility of giving the white man's religion to the red man, and also proved conclusively that Eliot himself was little more than a dreamer, or a monomaniac, to foresee his cause triumphant finally over countless impossibilities. Christian preachers and people generally devote themselves to labors more profitable and objects more sensible.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Church History 1921

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References

page 4 note 1 A. C. Thompson, Protestant Missions, page 4.

page 6 note 1 Thompson, Prot. Miss., p. 51.

page 6 note 2 Brown, History of Missions, p. 32.

page 7 note 1 Cf. Thompson, Prot. Miss., p. 44, and Robinson, Hist, of Christian Miss., PP.56, 57

page 8 note 1 Corwin, Manual, pp. 587, 468.

page 8 note 2 Eccl. Records of New York, iii, 2191; iv, 2549, 2595.

page 9 note 1 Robinson, Hist. Chr, Missions, pp. 58, 59.

page 10 note 1 Compare Eccl. Records, iii, 1556, 1866, and Hawkins, Missions of the Church of England, 265, 282 ff., and 266 ff.

page 12 note 1 Hawkins, as cited, pp. 283 to 287.

page 12 note 2 Compare Doc. Hist. N. Y., iii, p. 645, iv, p. 313, and Hawkins, as cited, pp. 320 ff.

page 13 note 1 Hawkins, as cited, pp. 293, 320, 327.

page 14 note 1 Hawkins, op. cit., pp. 92 ff.

page 16 note 1 Prime, History of Long Island, pp. 104 ff., 110 ff., 114 ff.

page 22 note 1 Brainerd's Life, p. 211.

page 23 note 1 Cf. Hopkins, Memoir Relating to the Housatonic Indians and the Rev. John Sergeant, pp. 2, 5, 8.

page 27 note 1 Cf. Thompson, Prot. Miss., pp. 97–105; Sprague, Annals, in loc., pp. 548 ff.; and Brown, History of Missions, ii, pp. 57 ff.

page 28 note 1 Cf. League of the Iroquois, pp. 20/21.

page 28 note 2 Robinson, as cited, p. 50.

page 35 note 1 Moravian Missions, pp. 48, 49.

page 38 note 1 See Histories by Bishops Loskiel and Hamilton also DrBrown's, WilliamHistory of Missions, vol. i, pp. 260 ff.Google Scholar

page 39 note 1 See Kelsey's Friends and the Indians