John G Paton

Presbyterians were once known for their missionary activity full of heart-warming zeal and self-sacrificing love. In fact, Marj Carpenter, 1995 PCUSA Moderator, even asserts that “the Presbyterians have opened more mission fields than any other church in history.”

I wonder if we have fallen from that godly apex. Let us, as college students with our lives probably before us, consider the inspiring life of John G Paton.

Paton was a Scottish Presbyterian missionary who went to the New Hebrides even though the islands were inhabited by hostile cannibals who had already eaten two missionaries and driven others away. Though many of us today would proffer excuses that it was too dangerous or that we were not the best fit to serve there or that we were clearly not wanted, this passionate Presbyterian, was unceasingly dedicated to God’s glory and His command to “preach the word … in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2). And once Paton was there, he tragically lost his wife and newborn son to fever. Yet he would not throw in the towel … he continued to serve on alone. Listen to one of his quotes revealing the depths of his heart and his devotion to Christ: “At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, 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. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.”

Oh how vain my desires and pleasures are. How absolutely Christ-centered this man was that he could really glory in the salvation of others with such authentic passion! What would we recall as our deepest bliss? I pray that if you and I do not measure up, that we will be convicted by our shallowness in comparison to great Presbyterians like this man. But further, I pray that rather than shrinking away from these towering figures in shame, we will rise for the glory of Christ and be counted faithful servants as well: seeking his glory in such magnificently, self-sacrificing ways that really do show the worth of Christ.

Additional Paton excerpt: “I climbed into the tree and was left there alone in the bush. The hours I spent there live all before me as if it were but of yesterday. I heard the frequent discharging of muskets, and the yells of the Savages. Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe as in the arms of Jesus. Never, in all my sorrows, did my Lord draw nearer to me, and speak more soothingly in my soul, than when the moonlight flickered among those chestnut leaves, and the night air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus. Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior's spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. If thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all alone, in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have you a Friend that will not fail you then?”

As we continue to think about what we will do with our lives, let us seriously keep such saints’ lives before our minds… let us acutely consider these lines from an anonymous poem: “Only one life, 'twill soon be past, Only what's done for Christ will last.”