John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides, volume 2 (of 3) : $b An autobiography edited by his brotherPaton, John Gibson
Religion
John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides, volume 2 (of 3) : $b An autobiography edited by his brother
Paton, John Gibson
Missionaries -- Vanuatu -- Biography; Paton, John Gibson, 1824-1907
On returning Southwards, I was confined for about two months, and
placed under the best medical advice. All feeling seemed gradually to
have departed from my foot; and amputation was seriously proposed both
in Edinburgh and in Glasgow. Having somehow managed to reach Liverpool,
my dear friend, the Rev. Dr. Graham, took me there to a Doctor who
had wrought many wonderful recoveries by galvanism. Time after time he
applied the battery, but I felt nothing. He declared that the power
used would almost have killed an ordinary man, and that he had never
seen any part of the human body so dead to feeling on a live and
healthy person. Finally, he covered it all over with a dark plaster,
and told me to return in three days. But next day, the throbbing
feeling of insufferable coldness in the foot compelled me to return at
once. After my persistent appeals, he removed the plaster; and, to his
great astonishment, the whole of the frosted part adhered to it! Again
dressing the remaining parts, he covered it with plaster as before, and
assured me that with care and rest it would now completely recover. By
the blessing of the Lord it did, though it was a bitter trial to me
amidst all these growing plans to be thus crippled by the way; and to
this day I am sometimes warned in over-walking that the part is capable
of many a painful twinge. And humbly I feel myself crooning over the
graphic words of the Greatest Missionary, “I bear about in my body the
marks of the Lord Jesus.”
On that tour, the Sabbath Schools joyfully adopted my scheme, and
became “shareholders” in the Mission Ship. It was thereafter ably
developed by an elder of the Church. A _Dayspring_ collecting box has
found its way into almost every family; and the returns from Scotland
have yielded ever since about £250 per annum, as their proportion
for the expenses of the Children’s Mission Ship to the New Hebrides.
The Church in Nova Scotia heartily accepted the same idea, and their
Sabbath School children have regularly contributed their £250 per
annum too. The Colonial children have contributed the rest, throughout
all these years, with unfailing interest. And whensoever the true
and full history of the South Sea Islands Mission is written for the
edification of the Universal Church, let it not be forgotten that the
children of Australasia, and Nova Scotia, and Scotland did by their
united pennies keep the _Dayspring_ floating in the New Hebrides; that
the Missionaries and their families were thereby supplied with the
necessaries of life, and that the Islanders were thus taught to clothe
themselves and to sit at the feet of Jesus. This was the Children’s
Holy League, erewhile referred to; and one knows that on such a Union
the Divine Master smiles well pleased.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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