by James Ray, President and General Director

It had been a long journey. So much had happened since that day in Scotland when John Paton said “goodbye” to his father. That goodbye lingered with Paton throughout his entire life as if it were but yesterday. The bond between the two men was lifelong although they were separated by worlds. The influence of James Paton on his son’s life is a legend within itself. James and Janet Paton had eleven children. Those children witnessed a faith in God profound in its very simplicity. After each meal those children observed their father as he led the family in worship. The echo of those prayers lingered long in their minds and hearts. John Paton once wrote, “He walked with God, why may not I?…How much my father’s prayers 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 we were in the presence of the Living Saviour.”

Forty years after the event, John wrote of his departure from home to train for missionary service.

John was leaving home for Glasgow to attend divinity school in preparation for missionary service. John Paton was in his early twenties. The distance from his small Scottish village, Torthorwald, to the train station at Kilmarnock was 40 miles. John Paton, remembering that day, wrote:

“My dear father walked with me the first six miles of the way. 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 my father, as was often his custom carrying hat in hand. His lips kept moving in silent prayers for me; and his tears fell fast when our eyes met each other in looks for 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. I ran off as fast as I could and, when about to turn a corner in the road where he would lose sight of me, I looked back and saw him still standing with head uncovered where I had left him gazing after me. Waving my hat in adieu, I rounded the corner and out of sight for an instant. But my heart was too full and sore to carry me further, so I darted into the side of the road and wept for a time. Then, rising up cautiously, I climbed the dike to see if he yet stood where I had left him; and just at that moment I caught a glimpse of him climbing the dike and looking out for me! He did not see me, and after he gazed eagerly in my direction for a while he got down, set his face toward home, and began to return, his head still uncovered, and his heart, I felt sure, still rising in prayers for me. 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.”

That scene would be embedded in John Paton’s heart for the rest of his life. His father’s prayers on that walk would remain a source of strength even in the cannibal islands of the South Pacific. Captain James Cook explored the New Hebrides in 1773, giving the chain of eighty islands that name because of the similarities with the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland.

In 1839 John William and James Harris from the London Missionary Society landed in the islands. The two missionaries found a place with absolutely no Christian influence and totally heathen. Both of these missionaries eventually were killed and eaten by the cannibals on the island of Erromanga only minutes after going ashore. John Paton, later writing of this event said, “Thus were the New Hebrides baptized with the blood of martyrs; and Christ, thereby, told the whole Christian world that He claimed these islands as His own.”

In 1842 the London Missionary Society sent another team to the New Hebrides to the Island of Tanna. Within seven months the missionaries were forced to flee. In this context on April 16, 1858, John Paton, then 33 years of age, sailed for the New Hebrides (via Australia) with his wife Mary. The couple landed on the Island of Tanna on November 5. Tanna was a beautiful South Pacific island but lurking with dangers. The first night behind him on the Island of Tanna, John was ready to do a great work for Christ in reaching these pagan people with the Word of God.

John instructed his wife and baby to stay at the camp while he went to a nearby spring to catch some water for a pot of tea for breakfast. When he approached the spring, he was dismayed to find the water polluted and unusable. The water was RED…blood red. It was in fact filled with blood. This first event in John Paton’s missionary contact with this island symbolized his whole ministry. This would be a ministry filled with blood for the sake of Christ.

When Paton landed the day before, war was in progress between an inland tribe and a tribe of the shore. That night five or six men had been killed in the fighting. The slain had been cooked and eaten at the spring and this accounted for the blood. Paton and his wife were dismayed. Without doubt, thoughts of home and Scotland filled their minds. The second night was filled with a sound more blood curdling even than the howls of infuriated warriors.

From the villages around, Paton and his wife heard the horrific wailing from the widows of the slain as they were strangled, thus making way for them to join the departed husbands in the other world.

This was a hard and dangerous field of service. Paton’s lovely wife and precious little son were a great comfort to him in these days of adjustment to such an environment. They had each other. Nothing could shake them. During this time his father’s prayers and Mary’s gentle encouragement held him fast.

John and Mary had arrived on Tanna in November of 1858. In March of 1859, six months later, a lonely man dug a grave and laid the bodies of his wife and son in the dust. They had both died of a fever. Each shovel of dirt which covered the hole was mingled with tears from a heart so broken it could not go on. He dug two graves with his own hands and buried his wife and baby beside the house that he had built for them.

Paton lingered near the little cemetery in the days and weeks that followed. That grave was as near to Mary as he could be although unfulfilling. Paton wrote about this tragedy:

“Stunned by that dreadful loss, in entering upon this field of labor to which the Lord had Himself so evidently led me, my reason seemed for a time almost to give way. The evermerciful Lord sustained me…and that spot became my sacred and much frequented shrine, during all the following months and years when I labored on for the salvation of the savage islanders amidst difficulties, dangers, and deaths…ut for Jesus, and the fellowship He gave to me there, I must have gone mad and died beside the lonely grave.”

Just at the time of Mary’s death a mission ship arrived on the island from England. On board were two men, Bishop Selwyn and Mr. Coleridge Patterson (later the Martyr Bishop of Nukapu). Paton wrote: “Standing with me beside the grave of mother and child, I weeping aloud on his one hand and Patterson sobbing silently on the other, the Godly Bishop Selwyn poured out his heart to God amidst sobs and tears during which time he laid his hands on my head, asking God to bless me and my trying labors.” Strengthened by these angels unaware, Paton and God again set out to do a work among the heathen in the South Pacific.

In 1864, John Paton married again. His second wife was Margaret Whitecross from East Lothian, Scotland. In 1864, John and his wife arrived at the small island of Aniwa. The people were cannibals and also practiced infanticide. They followed the heathen custom of killing widows so they could join their husbands in the next world. The natives also worshiped the spirits of departed ancestors along with idols of wood and stone. It seemed an impossibility that such despicable people could ever change. At times his heart wavered. Paton learned the language and eventually reduced it to written form. The couple taught the people to read and translated and printed the Scriptures. He built an orphanage and Margaret taught a class of about fifty women. The people, under their teaching, learned to be experts at sewing and using special tools. They taught the people to sing. Eventually there were native preachers taking the Gospel throughout all the villages of the island. Later recalling the influence of the Gospel of Christ in the South Pacific, Paton wrote:

“In Fiji, 79,000 cannibals have been brought under the influence of the Gospel; and 13,000 members of the churches are professing to live and work for Jesus. On our own Aneityujjm, 3,500, cannibals have been lead to renounce their heathenism. In Samoa, 34,000 cannibals have professed Christianity; and in nineteen years, its college has sent forth 206 native teachers and evangelists. On our New Hebrides, more than 12,000 cannibals have been brought to sit at the feet of Christ and 133 of the natives have been trained and sent forth as teachers and preachers of the Gospel.”

How much these former cannibals owed Christ. How much these former heathen owed John Paton. How much they owed Mary Ann Robson, Paton’s first wife who planted her soul in their heathen land and died after six months, but…how much they owed a father back in Scotland who gathered his children around after the meal and poured out his heart for the heathen lost in darkness while a little boy listened and felt the presence of a living God. John never forgot his father. That last walk with his father before leaving home was always fresh upon his heart.

“For the last half mile or so we walked on together in almost unbroken silence—my father, as was often his custom carrying hat in hand. His lips kept moving in silent prayers for me; and his tears fell fast when our eyes met each other in looks for which all speech was vain!”

With a heart full of tears John Paton said, “Goodbye, Dad,” but in truth James Paton would always be there with his son John. Through all the grief and struggle and death, he would be there…

It would NEVER be GOODBYE!