The Life of John G. Paton

All Saints Conference 2025

This message was given at Christ Covenant Church in Centralia, WA. You can find the other conference messages here.

Audio

Childhood Home

John Gibson Paton was born in the county of Dumfries, Scotland, to James and Janet Gibson, in 1824. For those of us who have sadly never visited Scotland, Dumfries is located in the south near the border of England, 60 miles south of Glasgow. The village he grew up in was a thriving and industrious one, and in his Autobiography, he recalls vividly the beauty of the Scottish landscape around him.

Paton was the oldest of eleven children—five sons and six daughters. They grew up in a simple cottage home as a lower class family. On one end of the cottage was his mother’s domain—the kitchen and dining room. On the other end was his father’s domain—his workshop where he labored daily as a small-scale weaver of stockings (think thick and tall wool socks).

Paton and his siblings were immensely blessed by God to have been brought up in an earnest Scottish Presbyterian home, a thoroughly Christian and covenantal family. At the center of the home was what was called the “closet” – a little room with a bed, small table and chair, and tiny window. Paton says that “this was the Sanctuary of that cottage home.” It was the Sanctuary, because that is where his father prayed.

“Thither daily, and oftentimes a day, generally after each meal, we saw our father retire, and ‘shut to the door’; and we children got to understand by a sort of spiritual instinct (for the thing was too sacred to be talked about) that prayers were being poured out there for us, as of old by the High Priest within the veil in the Most Holy Place. We occasionally heard the pathetic echoes of a trembling voice pleading as if for life, and we learned to slip out and in past that door on tiptoe, not to disturb the holy colloquy.

The outside world might not know, but we knew, whence came that happy light as of a new-born smile that always was dawning on my father’s face: it was a reflection from the Divine Presence, in the consciousness of which he lived. Never, in temple or cathedral, on mountain or in glen, can I hope to feel that the Lord God is more near, more visibly walking and talking with men, than under that humble cottage roof of thatch and oaken wattles. Though everything else in religion were by some unthinkable catastrophe to be swept out of memory, or blotted from my understanding, my soul would wander back to those early scenes, and shut itself up once again in that Sanctuary Closet, and, hearing still the echoes of those cries to God, would hurl back all doubt with the victorious appeal, ‘He walked with God, why may not I?’”

Here you see that his father practiced a deep Scottish Puritan piety. But it was not a severe piety. Notice the joy his children saw and felt as he emerged from his prayer closet, and the positive memories that Paton has of his father’s piety.

And this daily joy especially marked their Lord’s Day Sabbath practice. Paton writes that each child in the home “considered it no penalty, but a great joy” to go with their father to church – a round-trip walk of 8 miles to their Reformed Presbyterian Church. Their mother was unable to attend church due to health issues, and so when they returned they retold her the sermon and continued in the things of the Lord. Paton writes:

“We had special Bible Readings on the Lord’s Day evening – mother and children and visitors reading in turns, with fresh and interesting question, answer, and exposition, all tending to impress us with the infinite grace of a God of love and mercy in the great gift of His dear Son Jesus, our Saviour. Oh, I can remember those happy Sabbath evenings; no blinds down, and shutters up, to keep out the sun from us, as some scandalously affirm; but a holy, happy, entirely human day, for a Christian father, mother and children to spend. Others must write and say what they will, and as they feel; but so must I. There were eleven of us brought up in a home like that; and never one of the eleven, boy or girl, man or woman, has been heard, or ever will be heard, saying that Sabbath was dull and wearisome for us, or suggesting that we have heard of or seen any way more likely than that for making the Day of the Lord bright and blessed alike for parents and for children.”

And so we see here that although the Paton household was not rich materially—eleven children in a tiny cottage—they were richly blessed spiritually through the earnest faith of their Reformed father.

Calling to Ministry & Missions

Now, let us consider Paton’s call into ministry and, eventually, into the work of foreign missions.

As a young boy, Paton worked hard as a member of their very productive household, both in the family business but also in academic studies. He writes:

“Though under twelve years of age, I started to learn my father’s trade in which I made surprising progress. We wrought from six in the morning till ten at night, with an hour at dinner-time and half an hour at breakfast and again at supper. These spare moments every day I devoutly spent on my books, chiefly in the rudiments of Latin and Greek; for I had given my soul to God, and was resolved to aim at being a missionary of the Cross, or a minister of the Gospel…”

And so we see that from a young age, the Spirit of the Lord had stirred within Paton’s heart a call to the ministry. And in particular, his interest in the foreign mission field came from his own father. He continues:

“How much my father’s prayers at this time impressed me I can never explain, nor could any stranger understand. When, on his knees and all of us kneeling around him in Family Worship, he poured out his whole soul with tears for the conversion of the heathen world to the service of Jesus, and for every personal and domestic need, we all felt as if in the presence of the living Saviour, and learned to know and love Him as our Divine Friend. As we rose from our knees, I used to look at the light on my father’s face, and wish I were like him in spirit,—hoping that, in answer to his prayers, I might be privileged and prepared to carry the blessed Gospel to some portion of the heathen world.”

This conviction was maintained throughout his childhood.

At one point, in order to support his schooling during a particularly difficult financial season for his family, Paton started to work for the Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners—essentially the British version of our Army Corps of Engineers. His superiors noted his faithful work and also that he spent his lunch breaks studying while others played games. And so a Lieutenant approached him with an offer to be promoted in the service, receiving additional training at the government’s expense, as long as he would sign on for a seven-year commitment.

Paton writes:

“Thanking him most gratefully for his kind offer, I agreed to bind myself for three years or four, but not for seven.

Excitedly he said, “Why? Will you refuse an offer that many gentlemen’s sons would be proud of?”

I said, ‘My life is given to another Master, so I cannot engage for seven years.’

He asked sharply, ‘To whom?’

I replied, ‘To the Lord Jesus; and I want to prepare as soon as possible for His service in the proclaiming of the Gospel.’

In great anger he sprang across the room, called the paymaster, and exclaimed, ‘Accept my offer, or you are dismissed on the spot!’”

Paton walked away from the job that day, knowing that to accept the offer would frustrate God’s purpose for his life.

As Paton entered adulthood, he departed his childhood home for the city of Glasgow with the hopes of entering the ministry. He encountered various difficulties with both health and finances, but eventually ended up as the teacher of a church school. He writes:

“The minister warned me that the School was a wreck, and had been broken up chiefly by coarse and bad characters from mills and coal-pits, who attended the evening classes. They had abused several masters in succession; and, laying a thick and heavy cane on the desk, he said: ‘Use that freely, or you will never keep order here!’ I put it aside into the drawer of my desk, saying, ‘That will be my last resource.’”

Well… his account of using the cane is quite entertaining, but didn’t make the cut for this message. However, I can say that Paton firmly established his authority in the classroom and the school began to flourish.

After this, Paton moved on and became an evangelist for the Glasgow City Mission. It was very difficult work, visiting many homes of those who had fallen away from the faith and had never been visited by a minister before. Paton writes there were

“many avowed infidels, Romanists, and drunkards,—living together, and associated for evil, but apparently without any effective counteracting influence… sin and vice walked about openly—naked and not ashamed.”

Paton’s work was slow-going, but over a decade, he became very successful in the work… and yet the call to the foreign field continued to be on his mind.

“Happy in my work as I felt through these ten years, and successful by the blessing of God, yet I continually heard (chiefly during my last years in the Divinity Hall) the wail of the perishing Heathen in the South Seas. I saw that few were caring for them, while I well knew that many would be ready to take up my work in Scotland, and carry it forward perhaps with more efficiency than myself. Without revealing the state of my mind to any person, this was the supreme subject of my daily meditation and prayer…”

And then an event occurred that became Paton’s tipping point.

The Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland had been advertising for a missionary to join its ongoing mission work among the cannibalistic tribes in the New Hebrides… and two years had passed with no volunteers. And so the Synod of the church, so earnestly feeling the need for another laborer in the field, resolved to cast lots, Paton says, “to discover whether God would thus select any Minister to be relieved from his home-charge, and designated as a Missionary to the South Seas.”

They did this by having each minister hand in the names of the three best-qualified among them for the work. Paton writes:

“Hearing this debate, and feeling an intense interest in these most unusual proceedings, I still remember the hushed solemnity of the prayer before the names were handed in. I remember the strained silence that held the Assembly while the scrutineers retired to examine the papers; and I remember how tears blinded my eyes when they returned to announce that the result was so indecisive, that it was clear that the Lord had not in that way provided a Missionary. The cause was once again solemnly laid before God in prayer, and a cloud of sadness appeared to fall over all the Synod.”

In that moment, Paton felt the Lord speaking to him, “Since none better qualified can be got, rise and offer yourself!” And yet, afraid that it was mere emotion, he refrained from speaking out and instead returned home in order to take the time to discern if this was truly the Lord’s will for his life.

Three days later… he decided to move forward, and he felt great relief in the decision, writing “nothing so clears the vision, and lifts up the life, as a decision to move forward in what you know to be entirely the will of the Lord.” And yet all was not that simple…

Once others had heard that the denomination had accepted him into training for the foreign mission field, he discovered that “nearly all were dead against the proposal.” This was not because they thought Paton was unqualified, but rather because they found him so fruitful in his city ministry that they did not want him to abandon it.

In order to keep him, they even offered to him a building the church owned to be his manse and to increase his salary. But these offers did not move him. Some implored him, stating, “There are Heathen at home; let us seek and save, first of all, the lost ones perishing at our doors.” To which he replied:

“This I felt to be most true, and an appalling fact; but I unfailingly observed that those who made this retort neglected these Home Heathen themselves; and so the objection, as from them, lost all its power.”

Paton acknowledged his deep love and care for his people, yet he felt he could leave them in the care of the Lord and another faithful pastor, whereas the pagans in the New Hebrides were perishing without access to the gospel.

One infamous objection to his going came from what Paton described as a “dear old Christian gentleman, whose crowning argument always was, ‘The cannibals! You will be eaten by cannibals!’ And so Paton writes that at last he replied:

“Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.’”

And the man bothered him no longer…

Paton’s own congregation grieved so excessively at the thought of him leaving them, that he did begin to second-guess again whether this was simply his headstrong will or the Lord’s. And yet, he kept hearing in his heart, “Go ye into all the world, preach the Gospel to every creature, and lo! I am with you always.” A command with a promise that would often comfort him in the future while enduring many trials and dangers.

What finally sealed the deal was laying the matter before his dear parents, who he writes replied in effect:

“Heretofore we feared to bias you, but now we must tell you why we praise God for the decision to which you have been led. Your father’s heart was set upon being a Minister, but other claims forced him to give it up! When you were given to them, your father and mother laid you upon the altar, their first-born, to be consecrated, if God saw fit, as a Missionary of the Cross; and it has been their constant prayer that you might be prepared, qualified, and led to this very decision; and we pray with all our heart that the Lord may accept your offering, long spare you, and give you many souls from the Heathen World for your hire.”

And so it was that John G. Paton, and his young wife, Mary Ann, set sail to the New Hebrides, two weeks after their wedding ceremony to become missionaries of the Cross.

Trials on Tanna

Now I would like to relate to you some key events or episodes in Paton’s life and ministry in the New Hebrides, in particular his four years on the island of Tanna.

But first, an orientation to where we are now on the globe. The New Hebrides are a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean—north east of Australia—which were first fully explored and named by Captain Cook in 1773. Today, the islands are known as Vanuatu.

Paton first ministered on the island of Tanna for four years, and then later on the island of Aniwa. Tanna was occupied with cannibals who had historically zealously defended their island from outsiders with spears. But at this point in history, they cautiously welcome the missionaries.

Tanna was a dark island, filled with real evil, as Paton’s brother claimed “There is not an unmentionable vice hinted at in Romans 1 which is not unblushingly prated on those Islands, wheresoever the Gospel has not dawned.”

In particular, women were severely mistreated. Newborn baby girls were often murdered by their fathers. Young daughters lived in cages for several years until marriage. Widows were strangled by their sons as to accompany their deceased husbands into the spirit world. As one chief told Paton: “If we did not beat our women, they would never work; they would not fear and obey us; but when we have beaten, and killed, and feasted on two or three, the rest are all very quiet and good for a long time to come.”

Alongside cannibalism, murder, and the abuse of women, other sins like stealing and lying were commonplace and practiced without shame. Religiously, the pagan islanders worshiped many false gods and ancestors, and made idols out of many created things. Despite all of this, the Patons had hope in the gospel’s power to convert even the most wicked sinner’s heart, for as he writes:

“We believed because they were men, not beasts; it had to be done… and our hearts rose to the task with an unquenchable hope!”

And so you can hear why John and Mary Ann were willing to leave the comforts of home and a successful ministry in Scotland to suffer for a people they had never met. They had great hope, and an earnest desire to see God glorified and all people filled with joy that can only come from Him.

And the suffering came almost immediately.

First, as Paton quickly learned the language and befriended the natives, he earnestly shared as much as he was able the gospel and stories from Scripture with the men. But he writes:

“When we began to teach them that, in order to serve this Almighty and living Jehovah God, they must cast aside all their idols and leave off every heathen custom and vice, they rose in anger and cruelty against us, they persecuted every one that was friendly to the Mission, and passed us through dreadful experiences… It was the old battle of History; light had attacked darkness in its very stronghold, and it almost seemed for a season that the light would be finally eclipsed, and that God’s Day would never dawn on Tanna!”

Besides the persecution, a deeper affliction came upon the Paton family in their home. Paton writes:

“My dear young wife, Mary Ann Robson, and I had landed on Tanna on the 5th November, 1858, in excellent health and full of all tender and holy hopes. On the 12th February, 1859, she gave birth to our son; for two days or so both mother and child seemed to prosper, and our island-exile thrilled with joy!

But the greatest of sorrows was treading hard upon the heels of that joy! My darling’s strength showed no signs of rallying. She had an attack of malaria and fever… and then in a moment, altogether unexpectedly, she died on the 3rd of March.

To crown my sorrows, and complete my loneliness, the dear baby boy, whom we had named after her father, Peter Robert Robson, was taken from me after one week’s sickness, on the 20th March. Let those who have ever passed through any similar darkness as of midnight feel for me; as for all others, it would be more than vain to try to paint my sorrows!”

Stunned by the dreadful loss, in entering upon this field of labor to which the Lord Himself so evidently led me, my reason seemed for a time to almost give way. Malaria and fever, too, laid a depressing and weakening hand upon me… But I was never altogether forsaken.

The ever-merciful Lord sustained me, to lay the precious dust of my beloved ones in the same quiet grave, dug for them, close by at the end of the house. I undertook all of this with my own hands, despite my breaking heart!”

Paton describes how he frequently retreated to their grave in the following months and years on Tanna, as he labored for the salvation of the “savage islanders amidst difficulties, dangers, and deaths.” As he writes:

“But for Jesus, and the fellowship He vouchsafed me there, I must have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave. Whensoever Tanna turns to the Lord, and is won for Christ, men in after-days will find the memory of that spot still green—where with ceaseless prayers and tears I claimed that land for God in which I had ‘buried my dead’ with faith and hope.”

An event like this would break most men and have them return home. But not only did the Lord sustain Paton through this trial, but He kept him through many more to come over the four years in Tanna. And while the Islanders were resistant and violent, Paton did make progress.

He learned their language, created an alphabet, preached the gospel and taught the Scriptures, made progress in Bible translation and teaching the Islanders to read, and established six missionary stations on the island. He received encouragement and help not only from a few fellow missionaries on the island but also from natives who converted and became close friends and co-workers, such as a former cannibal named Kowia and his closest friend, Abraham.

At one point, a group of men sought to kill Paton by means of their sacred black magic. One of their methods was to cast incantations over the fruit a man had eaten and discarded. In an effort to disabuse the natives of such practices, Paton filled with faith bit into three pieces of fruit, handed them to the sorcerers, and dared them to kill him. As their schemes failed, he called out to them like Elijah, “Be quick! Stir up your gods to help you! I am not killed yet; I am perfectly well!”

After a week had gone by, Paton declared victory, telling the men:

“Yes, truly; my Jehovah God is stronger than your gods. He protected me, and helped me; for He is the only living and true God, the only God that can hear or answer prayer from the children of men. Your gods cannot hear prayers, but my God can and will hear and answer you, if you will give heart and life to Him, and love and serve Him only. This is my God, and He is also your friend if you will hear and follow His voice.”

As the years went on, disease and violence on the island increased, and some fellow missionaries were martyred by the natives. Yet Paton was resolved to stay as long as he was able. He slept with his clothes on, ready to flee, and his guard dog protected him in the evenings when, at times, his house was surrounded by men calling out violent threats. At times, he would spend a whole day working with men following him with their guns, ignoring them.

Eventually, though, Paton knew that the situation on the island had become so unstable that it was time to flee. Paton was clearly courageous, and although he had demonstrated many times that he was willing to die for the Lord, he also knew it was his responsibility not to put the Lord to the test but to escape if he could. As he wrote, looking back:

“To have remained longer would have been to incur the guilt of self-murder in the sight of God.”

At the start of Paton’s journey to the coast and the ship that was to rescue him and his fellow missionaries, he was secretly hidden in a tree by a friendly native as men sought to kill him in the night. He writes:

“I climbed into the tree, and was left there alone in the bush. The hours I spent there live all before me as if it were but of yesterday. I heard the frequent discharging of muskets, and the yells of the savages. Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe in the arms of Jesus.

Never, in all my sorrows, did my Lord draw nearer to me, and speak more soothingly in my soul, than when the moonlight flickered among these chestnut leaves, and the night air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus.

Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Saviour’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship.”

Eventually, Paton made it off the island with nothing but the clothes on his back, his precious Bible, and a few translations into the Tannese language.

Life After Tanna

Following his escape, Paton was sent by the mission to fundraise for a new ship to transport the missionaries, primarily from Australian congregations, and to recruit more missionaries from back home in Scotland. He was very successful in this work of exciting congregations for the cause of God’s global mission.

He married again to a woman named Margaret, and they returned to the Islands, but this time to minister on the neighboring island of Aniwa. The Patons had ten children together, although four died in childhood.

I do not have time to tell the story of the work on Aniwa in this talk, but Paton labored for another 15 years there, and they were very fruitful years. Within three years of laboring, they baptized their first converts, with Paton writing:

“At the moment when I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, but now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my hearts to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.”

By 1870, the entire island of about 250 people, had received the sacrament of baptism and converted to Christianity. As he writes:

“Aniwa was to be the land wherein my past years of toil and patience and faith were to see their fruits ripening at length. I claimed Aniwa for Jesus, and by the grace of God Aniwa now worships at the Saviour’s feet.”

This is not to say that Paton’s toil on the first island was in vain. As he writes:

“God never guided me back to Tanna, but others, my dear friends, have seen his kingdom planted and beginning to grow amongst the slowly relenting race.”

And today if you were to visit the island of Tanna, as one missionary friend of mine has, you will still find the spiritual descendants of John G Paton, as well as the physical descendants of those converted cannibals—still faithfully worshiping in theologically conservative, Bible-believing Presbyterian churches, thus in part fulfilling that great prophetic promise—that “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him…” (Ps. 22).

Application for Fathers

Now I’d like to conclude with just one point of application for you from the life of John G Paton, and it is an exhortation especially to the fathers present.

Paton’s father came to saving faith around the age of 17, and after studying the lives of the Scottish Covenanters and the Westminster Confession, joined himself to the Reformed Presbyterian church in Scotland, which he thought best continued the work of the Reformation in Scotland. Paton writes of his father:

“And so began in his seventeenth year that blessed custom of Family Prayer, morning and evening, which my father practiced probably without one single avoidable omission till he lay on his deathbed, seventy-seven years of age; when ever to the last day of his life, a portion of Scripture was read, and his voice was heard softly joining in then Psalm, and his lips breathed the morning and evening Prayer—falling in sweet benediction on the heads of all his children, far away many of them over all the earth, but all meeting him there at the Throne of Grace.”

You will remember the stories from the beginning of the talk regarding Paton’s father’s prayers and encouragement in his childhood. This faithful love and affection from his father continued into his adulthood. When Paton left the family home as a young man to study in Glasgow, his father walked with him the first six miles of the journey. Looking back on that moment, Paton wrote as an adult,

“His counsels and tears and heavenly conversation on that parting journey are fresh in my heart as if it had been but yesterday; and tears are on my cheeks as freely now as then, whenever memory steals me away to the scene. For the last half mile or so we walked on together in almost unbroken silence…

His lips kept moving in silent prayers for me; and his tears fell fast when our eyes met each other in looks of which all speech was vain! We halted on reaching the appointed parting place he grasped my hand firmly for a minute in silence, and then solemnly and affectionately said: ‘God bless you, my son! Your father’s God prosper you, and keep you from all evil!’ Unable to say more, his lips kept moving in silent prayer; in tears we embraced, and parted.”

Paton then says he ran off, and when he turned a corner and lost sight of his father, he stopped and wept for a time. He then climbed a dyke to try to catch one final glimpse of his father, and as he reached the top, he caught his father too, climbing up a hill for the same purpose, although his father could not see him. Paton writes,

“I watched through blinding tears, till his form faded from my gaze; and then hastening on my way, vowed deeply and oft, by the help of God, to live and act so as never to grieve or dishonor such a father and mother as He had given me… In my earlier years particularly, when exposed to many temptations…”

Fathers, do not underestimate the influence you have in your homes. What Paton’s father did was, in one sense, quite simple and unremarkable. He sincerely led his family daily before the throne of God, and he did so with joy.

On Aniwa, Paton taught new converts that one of the first steps of obedience was morning and evening family worship—something he had learned from his own father. As one biographer put it, “Little did his father know that by training his son he would be training islands of cannibals.”

And so my exhortation to you all is to pour out your lives for the spiritual and physical good of your wives and children. Demonstrate daily to them what it looks like to love the Lord and to work hard. Read the Bible with them and sing psalms. Serve your neighbors and community with gladness. When you sin against them, as you will, ask for forgiveness and show them what true repentance looks like. Do everything in your power to lead them by your own example—and then trust the results to the Lord with a sincere and humble faith—knowing that He delights to show mercy from generation to generation.

Recommended Resources

• John G. Paton by Paul Schlehlein

• John G. Paton: The Autobiography of the Pioneer Missionary to the New Hebrides (full Banner of Truth edition)

• The Autobiography of John G. Paton: Prayer, Perseverance, and the Transformation of Tanna (new edition of the first half of his Autobiography with a foreword by Pastor Toby Sumpter and modern insights from Missionary Ben’s visit to Tanna)

• Letters from the South Seas by Margaret Paton

• Missionary: Obeying the Great Commission documentary