The Autobiography of John G. Paton (pt. 1): My Home in Scotland and the Example of a Godly Father
Before becoming a missionary to cannibals, John G. Paton was a boy in a Scottish cottage who watched his father pray.
This is the first in a series of episodes from the life of John G. Paton, adapted from his autobiography for young readers.
6 min read
I loved my Scottish home in the County of Dumfries. The Scottish people called Dumfries the Queen of the South, and that beautiful country was worthy of the name. In the southwest of Scotland, Dumfries is a land of rolling hills and slow-moving waters, where the River Nith runs down from the moors and empties into Solway Firth. The country has no grandeur as the Highlands are grand. Her beauty is sober—green pastures, grey stone dykes, glens where a bird’s cry is the only sound for miles together. Soil is hard-won from the hillside, and the men who till that earth reflect their soil—sober, plain-spoken, serious about eternal things. If ever a country prepared her children, unknowing, for hardship endured in the service of Christ among the heathen, it was this one. There I was born in a small cottage, on May 24, 1824.
The cottage belonged to the farm of Braehead, and my father, James Paton, made his living by making stockings. My mother Janet was a bright-hearted, high-spirited, patient-toiling, and heroic little woman. For about forty-three years, she made and kept a wholesome, independent, God-fearing, and self-reliant life for her family of five sons and six daughters. My parents were good friends with the “gentleman farmer,” John Gibson, and so named me after him. My earliest memories of that place are warm. I would toddle over to the mansion, where I was adored by the lady there. The landlord truly cared for his tenants, and even as a small child I felt the beauty of his friendship.
When I was around five years old, my parents moved to the ancient village of Torthorwald, about four and a quarter miles from Dumfries. Torthorwald was then a busy, thriving village, and many people bustled about: farmers, weavers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and tailors. The view from Bank Hill above our village is one of the great beauties of Scotland.
At your feet lay a thriving village, every cottage nestled within a little garden, sending up its blue cloud of peaty smoke, which never seemed to pollute the blessed air. On a summer day, the spires of Dumfries shone so conspicuous that you could have believed it much closer than four miles away. The splendid sweeping vale lay all before the naked eye, beautiful with village spires, mansion houses, and white shining farms. The Galloway hills, gloomy and far-tumbling, bounded the forward view, while to the left rose Criffel hill, cloud-capped and majestic. Further on, the white sands of Solway, with tides swifter than horsemen, gleamed in the sunlight. Finally, the eye rested joyfully upon the hills of Cumberland to see the blue curling smoke from its villages on the southern Solway shores. Yet dearest to my heart were the healthy and happy homes for God’s children. They are surely the finest feature in any landscape!
There our dear parents made their home for forty years. There too were born to them eight other children, making a family of five sons and six daughters. They kept a small garden in front of their cottage and a large garden across the road. Our cottage, with its woven and intertwisted thatch roof, was marvelously cozy. It was always well maintained and never allowed to remain in disrepair.
My father had been devoted to prayer from his youth, and my parents’ love for one another was kindled through his godly example of fervency in prayer. As a young girl, my mother’s attention was arrested by a young stocking maker who had the habit of stealing away alone into the quiet wood, book in hand, day after day, at certain hours, as if for private study and meditation. A very excusable curiosity led her young bright heart to watch him reading devoutly and reverently reciting. Finally, that curiosity turned into a holy respect when she saw him lay aside his broad Scotch bonnet, kneel down under the sheltering wings of some tree, and pour out all his soul in daily prayers to God. As yet they had never spoken.
One day, she played the trick of stealing and hiding his bonnet while he prayed, then watched from a distance while he searched for it, bewildered by its absence. But she regretted her mischief, and he found a note there the next day: “She who stole away your bonnet is ashamed of what she did; she has a great respect for you, and asks you to pray for her, that she may become as good a Christian as you.” She soon caught his eye from a distance, and he knew somehow that she was the one who had left the note. That afternoon, he did pray “for her” in more senses than one.
And his diligence in prayer persisted after they were wed. In the middle of our home was a room called the “closet.” One end of the home was my mother’s domain, serving as dining room, kitchen, and parlor, besides holding two large wooden beds—called by our Scotch peasantry “box-beds”—grand, big, and airy, adorned with many-colored counterpanes and hung with neat, tidy curtains, showing the skill of the mistress of the house. The other end of the house was my father’s workshop, filled with five or six “stocking frames”—machines for making stockings—whirring with the constant action of five or six pairs of busy hands and feet. The “closet” was a very small room between these two ends of the home, with only enough space for a bed, a little table, a chair, and a small window that let in a little light. This was the Sanctuary of that cottage home.
Daily, generally after each meal, we saw our father retire to that Sanctuary and shut the door. We children came 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. Our father prayed there like the high priest within the veil in the Holy of Holies. We occasionally heard the echoes of his trembling voice pleading as if for life. We learned to pass that door on tiptoe to avoid disturbing that holy meeting.
A happy light was always dawning on my father’s face. The outside world might not know where it came from, but we knew. It was a reflection from the divine presence that saturated our home. Not in temple or cathedral, not on mountain or in glen, will I ever feel the Lord God walking with men as I felt Him walk with my father under that humble cottage roof. Those early memories are forever imprinted on my soul. It was my father’s example of faith and godliness that first proclaimed the gospel to my little heart before it was said with words. And ever since those early days, my father’s example has always inspired me to ask myself, “He walked with God, why may not I?”
John G. Paton was a nineteenth-century Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides, where he preached the gospel to heathen cannibals for over thirty years.
