The Story of John G. Paton; Or, Thirty Years Among South Sea CannibalsPaton, John Gibson
Religion
The Story of John G. Paton; Or, Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals
Paton, John Gibson
Missions -- Vanuatu; Paton, John Gibson, 1824-1907
The kind cowfeeder had to inform us--and he did it with much genuine
sorrow--that at a given date he would require the hay-loft, which was
our place of meeting; and as no other suitable house or hall could be
got, the poor people and I feared the extinction of our work. At that
very time however, a commodious block of buildings, that had been
Church, Schools, Manse, etc., came into the market. My great-hearted
friend, the late Thomas Binnie, persuaded Dr. Symingrton's congregation,
Great Hamilton Street, in connection with which my Mission was carried
on, to purchase the whole property. Its situation at the foot of Green
Street gave it a control of the district where my work lay; and so the
Church was given to me in which to conduct all my meetings, while the
other Halls were adapted as Schools for poor girls and boys, where they
were educated by a proper master, and were largely supplied with books,
clothing, and sometimes even food, by the ladies of the congregation.
Availing myself of the increased facilities, my work was all
reorganized. On Sabbath morning, at seven o'clock, I had one of the most
deeply interesting and fruitful of all my Classes for the study of the
Bible. It was attended by from seventy to a hundred of the very poorest
young women and grown-up lads of the whole district. They had nothing to
put on except their ordinary work-day clothes,--all without bonnets,
some without shoes. Beautiful was it to mark how the poorest began to
improve in personal appearance immediately after they came to our Class;
how they gradually got shoes and one bit of clothing after another, to
enable them to attend our other Meetings, and then to go to Church; and,
above all, how eagerly they sought to bring others with them, taking a
deep personal interest in all the work of the Mission. Long after they
themselves could appear in excellent dress, many of them still continued
to attend in their working clothes, and to bring other and poorer girls
with them to that Morning Class, and thereby helped to improve and
elevate their companions. My delight in that Bible Class was among the
purest joys in all my life, and the results were amongst the most
certain and precious of all my Ministry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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