At length a crisis more acute than usual came, and the wicked and superstitious malice of the Tannese broke out against him to such a degree that he was driven out of the island, all his property was looted, and he barely escaped with his life. In his distress he went over to Australia to recruit his health, which must have needed it after such a strain. Of what occurred there I quote his own statement:— “Some unsophisticated souls who read these pages will be astonished to learn, but others who know more of the heartless selfishness of human creatures will be quite prepared to hear, that my leaving Tanna was not a little criticised, and a great deal of nonsense was written, even in Church magazines, about the breaking up of the Mission. All such criticism came, of course, from men who were themselves destitute of sympathy, and who probably never endured one pang for Jesus in all their comfortable lives. Conscious that I had, to the last inch of life, tried to do my duty, I left all results in the hands of my only Lord, and all criticisms to His unerring judgment. Hard things also were occasionally spoken to my face. One dear friend, for instance, said, ‘You should not have left. You should have stood at the post of duty till you fell. It would have been to your honour, and better for the cause of the Mission, had you been killed at the post of duty like the Gordons and others.’ “I replied, ‘_I regard it as a greater honour to live and to work for Jesus than to be a self-made martyr._ God knows that I did not refuse to die; for I stood at the post of duty, amid difficulty and danger, till all hope had fled, till everything I had was lost, and till God, in answer to prayer, sent a means of escape. I left with a clear conscience, knowing that in doing so I was following God’s leading, and serving the Mission too. To have remained longer would have been to incur the guilt of self-murder in the sight of God.’” These sentiments, especially the words I have italicised, do honour alike to Paton’s devotion and to his common sense, and they are a just rebuke of a very false ideal.