John G. Paton · 46 of 48

Chapter II. the Home-Lands and the Islands · Part 1

Arrival in Great Britain.—Requisitions.—Professors and Students.—Dayspring Scheme.—Ten Years’ Delay.—Gideon’s Fleece Experiment.—Two Memorable Checks.—The “John G. Paton Mission Fund.”—The Dayspring Disaster.—Mission Work on all the Islands.

I embarked from New York for Liverpool, per the new and magnificent s. s. Campania. The vibrations of that vessel were more fearful than anything I had ever experienced in all my travels. There was some defect, which I hear has since been remedied. I was scarcely conscious of ever sleeping at all, and the ship seemed to be constantly on the eve of shaking herself into fragments! On the voyage I made the acquaintance of very dear friends, bearing my own name; whose Home at Liverpool by-and-bye received me lovingly; and where also I met the learned and honored Principal Paton of Nottingham.

My arrival in Britain revealed to me, immediately and amazingly, how times had changed since my previous visit, only ten years before. Then I had many difficulties to face in arranging for public meetings, especially in England, as set forth in a previous Chapter. 64Many a weary day’s tramping I had, even in Scotland where something was known about the Mission to the New Hebrides, passing from Minister to Minister, and pleading, frequently all in vain, for the use of their Pulpits and for access to their Congregations. But since then, by my brother’s insistence, the story of my life had gone through the Land in my Autobiography. I was no longer treated as a stranger, but as the dearly beloved friend of every one who had read my book. Blessed be God, who used it for His glory, and gave our Mission appeal everywhere an open door, such as never in my most hopeful hours had my faith even dreamed!

Now, hundreds of invitations poured in on my British Committee, all Honorary Helpers who grudged no amount of labor and pains. I found a Series of Meetings already arranged for me, covering the principal towns and cities of the United Kingdom,—Mr. Watson of Belfast taking charge in Ireland, Mr. Langridge in England, and my brother James, with his Honorary Secretary, arranging for Scotland, and acting as General Director of the Mission. When those had been fairly overtaken, the additional applications had risen to several hundreds more than could possibly be faced, unless I prolonged my stay for years. My Committee at one time found themselves dealing with a mass of 500 invitations! A selection had to be made of the more important and populous centres for the Services on the Lord’s Day, and one or two Meetings each day during the week in the smaller 65surrounding towns; but even then the disappointments were many and grievous; and not more so to them than to me; for I did passionately desire to tell every human being the story of the Gospel on the New Hebrides, that other and still other souls might be won thereby for Jesus my Lord.

One very precious feature of my tour was this:—the manner in which Ministers and Christian workers of all the Churches united to welcome me, and gave very practical support to this Presbyterian Mission. Frequently, the invitation was signed by all the Ministers of the district, excepting only the Roman Catholic; and my prayers rose daily to my Lord that my humble presence might be one of the means in His loving hand of paving the way for a closer union amongst the Members of His Redeemed Flock. I was much touched by the requisition that came to me from my well-beloved Dumfries, with the names of all the Ministers, and full of tender references to my early associations with the Queen of the South, as in our boyhood we loved to call her!

The Congregations, on week days not less than on Sabbaths, filled the largest Public Halls and Churches in each locality; with frequent overflow Meetings at which I had to speak for fifteen minutes or so, and then leave them in the hands of others, whilst I drove or ran to the principal Meeting, now opened and awaiting my Address. During the two years of my Tour, I addressed very nearly 1400 audiences, ranging from a few hundreds to five and six thousand each, 66and in doing so I travelled over many thousands of miles, on foot and in every kind of conveyance that is used in the English-speaking world.

The Chairmen at my various Meetings represented every type of Christian worker, and all social grades, from the godly Tradesman, evangelizing in his quiet Mission Hall, up through Ministers and Mayors, Provosts and Members of Parliament, Bishops and Archbishops, to Lords and Dukes and other Peers of the Realm. Under this rush of the Missionary Spirit, many conventional barriers were broken down, so that I was, even on Sunday, invited to give my Address from the very Pulpit in Episcopal Churches, as for example in the Pro-Cathedral at Manchester. On week days, this was a not infrequent experience.

These things, and all my opportunities of usefulness, thus unexpectedly thrust upon me, at the close of a long life of toil and self-denial and sacrifice for Jesus, I devoutly laid at His feet, and implored Him to use me only for His glory. And I can truly say that I never felt more deeply humbled, all my days, than at the close of some of those almost unparalleled Missionary Meetings, when I was alone with my Saviour after all was over, and thinking of my lowly Home and all the way by which the God of my father had led me, from these hours of hardship to this day of triumph. Fame and influence laid me lower and lower yet, at the feet of Jesus, to whose grace alone everything was due.

Never were these feelings more present with me than when I was called upon to tell the story of our 67Mission before the learned Professors and eager Students, at so many Universities, Colleges, Theological Halls, and similar Institutes. I have a note of at least sixty-three Seats of Learning, including Princeton and the most famous Colleges in America, as well as Oxford and Edinburgh, Cambridge and Glasgow at Home, where some of the greatest living Masters in every department, such as my own world-famous Professor, the now venerable Lord Kelvin, listened to my testimony as to the power of the Gospel to make new Creatures of the South Sea Cannibals and build them up into the likeness of Jesus Christ. I trespassed not into their spheres, where I would have been a child and an ignoramus compared with them; and they, on the other hand, treated me with profound respect, and even occasionally with demonstrative appreciation, in that sphere of the moral and spiritual, the work of the Christ-Spirit and its influence on the lowest and most degraded of human beings, wherein I had some right to speak with authority. This was my “one” talent, in the presence of such men; and I “traded” with it, that the Name of my Saviour might be honored more and more, in the Halls of Letters, and in the Temples of Art and Science.

By the general desire of my fellow Missionaries on the New Hebrides, I had visited Britain ten years before, for the express purpose of raising if possible £5,000 for a new Dayspring, larger than the old, and with Steam Auxiliary Power. By the blessing of God on my humble pleading, and very largely in direct answer 68to prayer, for I called on no one privately for donations, there came to us in twelve months the large sum of £10,000, of which more than one half reached us by post. My Church in Victoria, to whom I rendered an account of all, set apart £6,000 for the new Mission Vessel, the interest to be added to capital till such time as she might be built; while the remaining £4,000 were devoted to the obtaining and supporting of additional Missionaries for the New Hebrides.

But a new difficulty had emerged, and created not only delay all these years, but no small measure of regrettable dissension; and that was how to maintain the Ship, and keep her floating in the service of the Mission; for the Dayspring, not being allowed to trade, had been wholly maintained by the Sabbath Schools of the Churches having Missionaries on the New Hebrides. The sum which they had raised annually, each Church in its allotted proportion, amounted to £1,500, or rather more; and it was manifest that the Steam Auxiliary would cost at least £1,000 extra per annum. Unfriendly critics doubled that charge, and some prophesied even treble; but level-minded experts limited it to £1,000, and the actual facts of experience, as to cost of maintaining the Morning Star and the Southern Cross, in these same Pacific Seas, tallied with their estimates.

The burning question, therefore, had been how to raise this extra sum for Dayspring Maintenance. Our Victorian Church proposed to increase her quota from £500 to £750, and issued appeals to the other coöperating 69Churches to make a similar advance. It did not seem too much to expect, in the interests of the Mission, all whose operations had trebled since the original responsibility was allocated; but they pled inability to comply, and so the project hung fire for ten years and more, experiments being meanwhile made in other arrangements for the Maritime Service of the Mission, and new interests of various kinds being thereby created, which have not tended to unity and peace in the management of the New Hebrides. There is peril also incurred to the highest spiritual interests of the Mission, which I daily pray God, in His loving kindness and mercy, to be pleased to avert!

Without ascribing anything but the most ordinary motives in the world to those who opposed the getting of a new Dayspring, the situation that thus grew up is perfectly transparent. The Australian New Hebrides Company was employed to do the work of our Mission by their Trading Ships. In 1805—e.g., we paid to them the large sum of £2,451, 8s. 1d.; all found money, for, without us, these Ships in their outgoing trip to the Islands would have sailed comparatively empty. To secure a Ship of our own would be, therefore, to deprive the Company of this handsome subsidy; and it is but Human Nature, and implies no necessary dishonor, that the shareholders and their Ministerial and Missionary friends should have become the keenest and even bitterest opponents of the new Dayspring. Further, the headquarters of the Company being at Sydney, and the subsidy for our Mission, 70as well as the money for the upkeep of our Missionaries and their families, being consequently expended almost exclusively there, it is, from the world’s point of view, equally natural to anticipate that the very heart and centre of the opposition has been in New South Wales, and has concentrated itself in the Advisory Committee which sits at Sydney and is known as The Dayspring Board. All this, I say, was only to be expected, if the whole transaction is to be weighed and measured by the standards of men of the World, instead of being put into the balances of Jesus Christ, and estimated in the light of the spiritual and eternal interests of the Islanders whom He has committed to our care.

With great plausibility, this selfish opposition sought to commend itself to a wilder circle by a Patriotic plea. If we did not support the Trading Company, it would fail, and the French might come on the scene and annex the New Hebrides! The facts of history were forgotten or ignored, with their ominous lesson, that other influences than trade must be brought into action to save these Islands from France. Did the tide of British trade, on the Loyalty Islands, on Madagascar, and the like, prevent their annexation by France? Certainly not! True, it will be a terrible calamity, not only to our Mission but to Australasia, if France is permitted to annex the New Hebrides; but while she is openly preparing the way for that fatal step, Britain and her Colonies mock at all our warnings, and treat the whole matter with indifference, if not contempt. 71New South Wales and Victoria have even withdrawn those modest subsidies from Colonial Trading Ships, whereby their Governments might have continued to manifest some little desire to save the New Hebrides from the maw of Popish France!

Even if the horror of French Annexation were to overtake us, it might be rationally contended that our Mission, instead of being implicated with the existence of a rival Trading Company, would receive more favorable consideration, if we had a Steam Auxiliary Ship devoted entirely to spiritual services, ministering to, say, twenty-four Mission Families, with their Lay Assistants and all belongings and dependents.

But, after all, such reasonings do not even touch the very heart of the matter; and men who never go deeper than these cannot understand our aims, and are in no position to criticise them, however loudly they may abuse or oppose us. It is the spiritual and eternal welfare of our poor Islanders that is at stake, in the question of Dayspring or no Dayspring; at least that is my immovable conviction, and, apart from that, no argument on the other side has or can have much consideration at my hands. With a Mission Ship of our own, for the New Hebrides, as for every other Mission in these Pacific seas, we can visit our Stations, as the interests of God’s work may require; we can visit and cheer the Native Teachers at their lonely outposts amongst Heathen Villages; we can deliberately visit and open up Pioneer Stations, where Heathenism still reigns, and plant there our young Missionaries 72and their Helpers; we can dissociate our Ship and her crew from the drunkenness, profligacy, and profanity of the ordinary crews of Trading Vessels; we can prevent the sale of Fire-Arms and Intoxicants, in barter with the Natives; and, in a single word, we can make the Mission Ship, in all her ways and surroundings, an adjunct to the work of the Missionary, and a herald of the Kingdom of God among the Islanders, alike on God’s Day of Rest, and on every day of the week—and all this in a manner and to a degree, that is not within human possibility if we be deprived of our own Dayspring, and thrown back upon ordinary Trading Ships. This, and this alone, goes to the bottom of the whole controversy.

Consequently, the men who opposed us never seriously denied what we here affirm, or attempted to answer our arguments. On the contrary, they practically gave away the whole case by perilling everything on the question of expense. All we urged might be unassailably true, but the cost was prohibitory! The money could not be raised, or, if it could, it would be positively sinful to spend so much on such a Mission! My blood often tingled to my finger tips, to hear this urged by self-indulgent and purse-proud men, who spent every year, on the pleasures of this perishing life, more than all that was required for the Dayspring and the four and twenty Mission Families, and the hundred thousand New Hebrideans, to whom she was to minister as the white-winged Servant of the Gospel of Jesus. Nor was my 73mood much calmer when this same thing was urged by Ministers and Office-Bearers of the Church, at Home and in the Colonies, who carry on their labors amidst the inspiring surroundings and associations of their happier lot; who criticise Missions and their management from the safe and cozy retreat of their libraries and armchairs; who by post and telegraph are in touch with those most dear to them every day, yea, every hour; and many of whom never denied themselves one of the necessities of life, nor one of their own perhaps foolish luxuries, for the sake of the Lord Jesus and His cause,—never allowed themselves to suffer, even to the extent of one poor pennyworth, even for the length of one passing day, for the love they bore to God or to their fellows. I fear that I am an impatient reasoner, when creatures of this type cross my path. Alas, they too much abound, to the shame of the Church, and for the scorn of the World!

Coming back, therefore, to Britain, with these ten years of delay to be accounted for, I did in all my Addresses frankly avow, that, in my judgment the main obstacle, if not the only one, was the lack of this extra £1,000 per annum for Maintenance. Friends on every side started up, and thrust upon me the proposal, that those who had subscribed the money to build the ship were quite willing to subscribe yearly to assist in maintaining her. I took the whole matter to my Lord in special prayer. It was borne in upon me to let the proposal be fully known, and I felt myself bound to conclude that if, in a spontaneous way, the sum of 74£1,000 were provided, with any hope of permanent interest, to renew it from year to year, that would be to me at least the demonstration of the Gideon’s Fleece, that God, who had through His people presented the Ship to our Mission, was opening up a way for her yearly Maintenance.

A Circular Letter on the Dayspring Maintenance Fund was accordingly drawn up, and issued to all correspondents and supporters by my British Committee. Certificates for Three-Penny Shares in the Dayspring, to be renewed annually, were widely circulated in Sabbath Schools. And, without further organization or appeal, the answer to our prayers was almost instantaneously forthcoming. My Honorary Treasurer had the needed £1,000 already paid, and sufficient promises for the immediate future. We were empowered to promise this for Maintenance, if the Dayspring were duly placed on the scene. If not, the money was to be returned to the donors, or by them allocated to other departments of the Mission enterprise. If, in all this, we had not the guidance of God, I know not how to trace His hand!

Other Providential signs were not awanting. I called one day, at Liverpool, on a generous Christian gentleman, to thank him personally for a sum of £50 sent to the Mission. The thought or purpose of seeking more money from him had never once entered my brain! He questioned me carefully about the needs of the Mission, the accommodation of the proposed Ship, and all our plans. Then he closed our interview 75thus: “I am convinced that you cannot buy or build a sufficient Mission Vessel for £6,000, and I wish you to add this in order to secure a larger and a better Ship.” He handed me his check for £1,000! In tears of joy, I thanked God and His dear servant, but hinted something about preferring it rather for the first year’s Maintenance Fund, but he repeated that this was to secure a larger and better Ship, adding: “Receive this as from God, and the other will come also.”

Again, my dear friend Lord Overtoun, who had presided over two Meetings that were addressed by me, entered one morning into a Railway Car by which I was travelling, and sat down beside me. At the close of a happy and very friendly conversation, he added: “Lady Overtoun and I gave you £200 toward the building of the Mission Ship; and now, after talking the matter over, we have resolved to give you £100 per annum for five years to help to pay for her Maintenance.”

My soul overflowed with praise to God, and with thanks to those whose hearts were thus in His keeping. To me, and to all my fellow Helpers, it seemed to be plainly the will of the Lord. We reverently believed that this was God’s doing, and no mere plan of ours. He had given the Dayspring in a present to the New Hebrides; and now He had provided for her Maintenance. We were convinced at that time, and, despite all that has happened since, we are still convinced, that the Divine voice was infallibly saying, Go forward!

76I returned to Victoria in the autumn of 1894. To the Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at Melbourne I gave my first public account of my Tour Round the World as their Missionary and Representative. At the close of my address, I handed to the Moderator a check for £12,527, 4s. 2d., as the fruit of the Collections and Donations at my Public Meetings—the offerings of the people of God from all these lands, to be used for completing the evangelization of the New Hebrides. To this I added a deposit of £1,000,—part of the profits of my book, but for the time locked up in our Australian Banks. As this money all came to me through those Congregations and Assemblies which I addressed as Missionary Representative of the Church in Victoria, I regarded it as belonging to my Church and as placed entirely under their control. I had no right to exercise any further authority over it, save only thus far, that it could not honorably be spent in any other way than on the New Hebrides Mission. The donors had again and again protested that they wanted to hear me on that Mission and on nothing else—that they had many other opportunities of giving to the other great Missions in India, China, and Africa, and that what they gave through me was for the New Hebrides. I handed over the money; I delivered their message; and there, so far, my responsibility ceased.

But that sum, vast as it may seem, represented only half the generosity of the Churches of Britain and America during these three fruitful years. Side by 77side with Public Collections and the like, another stream of liberality had been constantly flowing. The readers of my Autobiography responded liberally to the appeal of my British Committee, and poured donations into their hands or mine, almost entirely by post, till, from readers of my book alone, The John G. Paton Mission Fund, gave me on leaving a check for £12,000. These donations were placed entirely at my personal disposal, under one condition only—that I must use them for the extension of Mission work on the New Hebrides. For the management of this sum, I obtained the sanction of the General Assembly to the preparation of a legal Deed. It is held by the Finance Committee of the Victorian Church, under those conditions,—that I only can operate on it for the extension of the work of God on the New Hebrides, while I live; and that after my decease they can use it, but only for these same purposes; thus fulfilling, as faithfully as may be, the wishes of those Christian souls who sent this money to me from all corners of the world.

In addition to these two large branches of our General Fund, there had come to myself or to my British Committee very considerable sums for Special Funds. Notably these two:—the Native Teachers’ Fund, designed to pay a small yearly salary, formerly of £6, but now beginning at that figure and after two years’ faithful service rising to £8, to each of those Converts to whom God had given the capacity and the call to become Helpers to the Missionary in School and Church, and 78in many cases Pioneers of the Cross where no white Missionary had ever gone: and also, the Dayspring Maintenance Fund, already referred to and described. The latter of these two was, of course, retained in the hands of the British Committee at my call, till such time as the Churches and the Mission Synod decided for or against a Mission Vessel. The former they continue to administer, at my direction and under my sanction, through one of the Missionaries on the Islands, who acts as their treasurer and agent. So far as the annual donations will allow, we freely grant to every Missionary all the assistance in our power for the training and maintaining of these Native Evangelists, many of whom are destined to become the future Pastors of the people. Up till now our difficulty has been to find enough of suitable and reliable Native Teachers to be allocated to the Churches, Bible Classes, Sunday Schools, and individual Christians, willing to support them. But we hope for great things from the Training College recently opened on Tangoa under Dr. Annand, one of our ablest and most devoted Missionaries; and my British Committee have undertaken to pay the salary of his Assistant, £150 per annum, with my cordial approval. Many prayers are uplifted daily for this Missionary Institute on the New Hebrides, at the very heart and centre of these Cannibal Isles, that the Lord God would own it and send forth thence trained and consecrated Evangelists to build up and to rule the New Hebridean Church of Christ in the days that are to be,—no longer under European 79tutelage, but under Native Pastors. We would glory to lead on to that consummation, and then to pass to other fields of labor!

It is but right for me to mention, though most readers are already aware of it, that all my Helpers and Fellow Workers at Home and in America give their time and strength freely and gladly, without thought of any reward except the joy of the service. All actual outlays incurred in the on-carrying of the various schemes are, of course, met out of what we call the General Fund; but every other penny, that comes to them or to me, goes directly to the extension of the Gospel on the New Hebrides. Each donation or subscription is acknowledged in our little quarterly magazine known as Jottings, a copy of which is posted to all our correspondents and supporters, and which is now the bond whereby God keeps us together and sustains our interest in this work—another development, not so much of our seeking, as rather thrust upon us by the necessities of the work of the Lord, which so increased that my Helpers could in no other way overtake the correspondence, or circulate the Mission news so eagerly desired. It is thus that those who unfeignedly seek to serve are led on by the Master Himself. The Pillar of Cloud and Fire still marches before us; but, alas, how many have lost the power to behold it!

I praise God every day of my life for all these dear supporters and correspondents, far scattered in every Land, but one in heart for the salvation of the New 80Hebrides. Through their generosity, my British Committee with my joyful approval have undertaken, in addition to the support of Native Teachers and the subsidy for Maintenance of Dayspring, to defray the entire cost of two Missionaries and their wives, and also two Lay European Assistants. Nay, if the generosity of friends should continue, they are at the moment of my writing hopefully contemplating the support of a third Missionary, with, if possible, a Lay Assistant also. These are surely God-honoring fruits from the planting of my humble book in hearts that love the Lord, and from the zeal and devotion and extraordinary gifts of our Honorary Organizing Secretary—with whom, and with all our Helpers everywhere, we reverently say, Glory to God and not unto us!

Our loving God orders everything well. But for that Fund handed over by me to the Victorian Church, I know not what would have become of the New Hebrides Mission during the intervening years, since the crash of our Australian Banks and the consequent terrible financial depression. Thousands and tens of thousands of our people were literally ruined. Money could not be obtained, even for the ordinary and inevitable expenses of our Congregations. Ministers’ stipends were, on almost every hand, temporarily reduced. The Foreign Mission Committee’s income fell so terribly, that nearly everything was consumed in meeting the claims of the Mission to the Aborigines and to the Chinese. In 1895 the contributions to the 81Dayspring Fund fell in Victoria from £500 to £200, and even that was raised with difficulty. In fact, but for our Fund, the salaries of several of the Missionaries and Native Teachers would of necessity have been cancelled, and our forces withdrawn from the field. God be praised, that calamity was averted! All our Army for Jesus have been maintained at their posts; nay, additional Pioneers have actually, despite these depressions, gone forth and pierced the Kingdom of Darkness here and there with shafts of Gospel light.

On my return to Victoria all these schemes, and particularly the new proposals as to the Dayspring, were fully laid before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at Melbourne. Though the Ship was offered as a free gift to the Mission, and the additional £1,000 per annum was now provided, without laying one farthing of financial burden on them or on any of the Churches concerned, yet our Victorian Church resolved to proceed with great deliberation, and to carry, if possible, the approval of all parties concerned. They entered into correspondence with each of the seven other Churches coöperating in the New Hebrides, and with each of the Missionaries on the Islands, and agreed to instruct the building of the Ship only if all, or a clear majority, cordially approved. More than ten years ago, all had sanctioned the raising of the money for a new and larger Steam Auxiliary Ship, and that sanction had never been withdrawn. But many things had happened since then; and it was at least brotherly and 82considerate, if not absolutely obligatory, to confer with them all ere proceeding further.

The vast majority of the Missionaries at once reaffirmed their approval of the scheme. All the Churches concerned, except one, either cordially approved or left the matter to the free decision of the Australasian Churches and the Missionaries on the field, in which decision they intimated that they would heartily concur. The one exception was the Church of New South Wales, influenced, as already indicated, by its close association with the Trading Company, though doubtless from motives entirely honorable, so far as individuals were concerned. What is known as The Dayspring Board, with its headquarters at Sydney, was also strongly opposed, and for similar reasons, too manifest to need specification here. But I cannot regard the opposition of that Board as either defensible or requiring to be taken into account at all. It is simply an Advisory Committee. It neither raises any money for the Ship nor for the Mission. It is the Executive, at most, of the Mission Synod and the Churches concerned; and its proper and only function is to carry out, in a helpful and business-like way, the instructions received from the Missionaries. It is absurd, therefore, that such a Board should have any vote on the question of a Dayspring or no Dayspring, any more than would a paid Agent executing the orders of the Missionaries for articles of merchandise. A delicate sense of honor should have made them feel this, and act accordingly, instead of becoming, as they 83did, not only avowed opponents of the scheme, but, in some cases, even bitter partisans and unscrupulous antagonists. For myself, I frankly say that the opposition of a Board so constituted should not only be discounted, but should be wholly ignored.