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Who Was John Paton?

Paul Schlehlein

The number from the great cloud of missionary witnesses who were sent during the 19th century, the Great Century of Missions, is hard to fathom. The list includes Norris Groves (1795–1853) to Baghdad, David Livingstone (1813–1873) to Africa, Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) to China, and James Gilmour to Mongolia (1843–1891). Thousands more died unknown, buried beneath the rubble of church history but not forgotten by the One who returns with a reward in His hand.

Of the missionary titans that have crossed cultural, linguistic and national boundaries to make Christ known, it is my view that John G. Paton is the greatest model of a New Testament missionary. He belongs on the Mount Rushmore of church history’s greatest missionaries.

William Carey may be the “Father of Modern Missions,” Amy Carmichael may have spent more years on the field, and John Eliot may have translated a more difficult language. But based on pure missionary prowess—language acumen, undaunted courage, church planting focus, godly children, perseverance in suffering, and dogged evangelism—Paton rises above them all.

Early Life

Paton was born in Scotland to godly parents on May 24, 1824, the eldest of eleven children. The little nation of Scotland punched beyond its weight class in the 1800s, sending out great missionaries like Alexander Duff to India, Robert Moffat to South Africa, and William Burns to China. The year Paton was born, the Student Missionary Society at St. Andrews was formed. William Carey had set sail to India just a few decades prior. Missionary zeal was growing.

Paton grew up in a Christ-centered home that emphasized daily family worship. His father was a sock manufacturer who had aspired to missions in his youth. The Paton children used to gather around their father as he tearfully poured out his heart in prayers for the heathen around the world. Later in life, when John Paton was on the verge of sailing across the world, his mother revealed a family secret:

“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.”

In time, the young Paton became a tract distributor, then a successful evangelist for the Glasgow City Mission. When Paton was in his early thirties, a call went out for new missionaries to the cannibals on the South Sea Islands of the New Hebrides. When no one stepped forward, Paton volunteered, shocking everyone. Many tried to use logic, money, and even scripture to coax their prized evangelist out of wasting his life among such a dangerous people.

The famed missionary John Williams had been killed, cooked, and eaten on those same shorelines just a few years earlier. The memory was still fresh in Scottish minds. One old Christian stood up and said: “The cannibals, you will be eaten by the cannibals!” Paton’s reply is one for the ages:

“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.”

Paton on the New Hebrides

Paton left for the islands with his new 19-year-old wife just a month before his 34th birthday. From a postcard, the New Hebrides looked beautiful––a series of 80 magnificent, exotic islands in the Pacific Ocean. But with no gospel light, the natives were murderous and ignorant, having no written language and making idols of nearly everything––trees, bugs, and volanoes, even fingernails.

Paton was not immune to the dangers of the remote islands. Only a few months after arriving, his wife and newborn son died of malaria. He buried them arm in arm in the same pit, saying he almost went mad with grief beside that lonely grave.

Everyone, including other missionaries, urged him to leave the island of Tanna, but he feared he would never be allowed back. Despite the indescribable grief, he stayed at his post of duty. For the next four years he translated portions of the scriptures into the Tannese language, won a couple converts and started a few mission stations. He was running for his life nearly every day, often sleeping with his clothes on so as to be ready to escape at a moment’s notice. Nearly all the missionaries that joined him either died of sickness or were murdered by the cannibals.

He was the only missionary left on the island when he found a ship that took him to safety in Australia. After four years of galvanizing missionary zeal in Australia and Scotland, he married Margaret Whitecross and returned to the New Hebrides, this time to the neighboring island of Aniwa. For the next fifteen years the Patons enjoyed remarkable fruit for their labor. They founded schools and orphanages. He and Maggie had many children, several of whom returned to the islands as missionaries. They won many to Christ. Paton wrote: “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 heart to pieces.”

Trials persisted. Several Paton children died on the islands. He took three trips around the world, recruiting missionaries until his last voyage at the age of 76. He died six years later, old enough to see thousands of converts singing to Jesus, saying: “We took what care we could, and God the Lord did the rest; or rather he did all—for his wisdom guided us, and his power baffled them.”

God had blessed the faithful evangelist’s work, to the extent that, at the end of his life, Paton wrote: “On our New Hebrides, more than 12,000 cannibals have been brought to sit at the feet of Christ.”

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