John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides, Volume 1 (of 3)

Love is omnipotent. Wherever true passion for souls burns, there we may find a new Mount of Transfiguration where the earthly takes on the complexion of the heavenly.

This book presents an example of the power of such love and holy enthusiasm, alike in one of the great cities of Scotland and in the isles of the sea.

Even among the riches of missionary biography few such volumes as this are to be found, and the most apathetic reader will find himself fascinated by this charming romance of real life. It has been well said that he who is not ready to preach the gospel everywhere and anywhere is fit to preach it nowhere. Should every candidate for the office of the ministry be first tried in some such field as the wynds of Glasgow, it would prove a training in its way more profitable than any discipline in the class-room; and it might so shake the “napkin” at the four corners as to disclose whether or not there were in it even one “talent” for winning souls.

We calmly affirm, after careful perusal, that this biography is not surpassed, for stimulating, inspiring, and helpful narrative, by any existing story of missionary heroism. Its peculiar value is twofold: it shows how the most neglected and degraded masses of our cities may be reached by Christian effort, and it illustrates the spirit of missions on the wider field of south sea cannibalism. Our only regret is that this story of missionary labor is not carried on to its successful issue. This volume leaves us eagerly expectant of what is promised as the sequel.

He who doubts whether there is a supernatural factor in missions, should carefully read this narrative. What but the power of God could turn the demon of drink into a ministering angel, or the blasphemer into a praying saint, or out of the mouth of hell withdraw the half-devoured wretch who was desperately bent on suicide?

Let those who sit quietly at home in their easy-chairs, or who make rousing addresses or write stirring articles on city evangelization and the estrangement of the masses from the church, follow this heroic city missionary as he dives into the depths of all this depravity and degradation, and demonstrates what the love of souls and the gospel of life can do to rescue those who are drowning in the abyss of perdition.

The Manuscript of this Volume, put
together in a rough draft amid ceaseless
and exacting toils, was placed in my
hands and left absolutely to my disposal by
my beloved brother, the Missionary.

It has been to me a labour of perfect love to re-write and revise the same, pruning here and expanding there, and preparing the whole for the press. In the incidents of personal experience, constituting the larger part of the book, the reader peruses in an almost unaltered form the graphic and simple narrative as it came from my brother’s pen. But, as many sections have been re-cast and largely modified, especially in those Chapters of whose events I was myself an eye-witness, or regarding which I had information at first hand from the parties concerned therein, — and as circumstances make it impossible to submit these in their present shape to my brother before publication, — I must request the Public to lay upon me, and not on him, all responsibility for the final shape in which the Autobiography appears.

I publish it, because Something tells me there is a blessing in it.

Note to Second Edition

The Editor desires very gratefully to acknowledge his joy in receiving, not only through Press Notices, but from Correspondents in every rank, most ample confirmation of the assurance expressed by him in the last sentence of the Original Preface — “There is a blessing in it.”

He has been urging his Brother to complete, as soon as he possibly can, Part Second of the Autobiography; and he hopes that the call for this Second Edition of Part First at so early a date will successfully enforce his appeal.

February, 1889.

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