The Autobiography of the Pioneer Missionary to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
Born into a Christian family near Dumfries in 1824, Paton’s early years were marked by a struggle against poverty. He was self-educated, and the training ground for his life’s work was the slums of Glasgow where he laboured with success as a city missionary. With the ‘wail of the perishing heathen in the South Seas’ continually sounding in his ears, he prepared himself to serve overseas and was ordained as a missionary to the New Hebrides in 1858. The first attempt to introduce Christianity to these islands, inhabited by savages and cannibals, resulted in John Williams and James Harris being clubbed to death within a few minutes of landing in 1839. The difficulties that confronted Paton were accentuated by the sudden death of his wife and child within months of their arrival. Against the savagery and the superstition, despite the trials and the tragedies, Paton persevered and witnessed the triumph of the gospel in two of these South Sea Islands. His life is almost without parrallel in missionary annals and his account of it is moving and gripping.
