The following words from the Preface to an early Edition of the Autobiography are equally applicable to present circumstances:—“The Public hailed it from the first with a welcome so uncommon, and God has in many ways so signally owned and blessed it, that it would be no modesty, but sheer stupidity, on my part, to fail in recognizing that it has been voted a Missionary Classic by the great and free Community of Readers. I have therefore spared no pains in making it as perfect as it is in my power to do, with the help of many minute corrections from friends here and abroad, and also happy suggestions as to matters of detail from the honored Missionary himself.”
In the original Preface when the book was first published in 1889, I said: “The Manuscript of this Volume, put together in a rough draft amid ceaseless and exacting toils, was placed in my hands and left absolutely to my disposal by my beloved brother, the Missionary. It has been to me a labor of perfect love to re-write and revise the same, pruning here and expanding there, and, preparing the whole for the press. In the incidents of personal experience, constituting the larger part of the book, the reader peruses in an almost unaltered form the graphic and simple narrative as it came from my brother’s pen. But, as many sections have been re-cast and largely modified, especially in those Chapters of whose events I was myself an eyewitness, or regarding which I had information at first hand from the parties concerned therein,—and as circumstances make it impossible to submit these in their present shape to my brother before publication,—I must request the Public to lay upon me, and not on him, all responsibility for the final shape in which the Autobiography appears. I publish it because Something tells me there is a blessing in it.”
That belief was abundantly justified. The book has had a great circulation, not only in Great Britain, but also in America, and in the Colonies; and it has been translated, in whole or in part, into many Modern Languages.
JAMES PATON.
Glasgow, February, 1898.
CONTENTS.
| CHAPTER I. | |
| ROUND THE WORLD FOR JESUS. | |
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| From 1886 to 1892 | [23] |
| Tour Round the World | [24] |
| Fire-Arms and Intoxicants | [25] |
| International Prohibition Proposed | [25] |
| Deputies to America | [27] |
| Samoan Converts | [28] |
| America and Hawaii | [29] |
| San Francisco | [30] |
| Salt Lake City | [31] |
| Chicago | [32] |
| Niagara | [33] |
| Pan-Presbyterian Council at Toronto | [34] |
| The Ruthven Imposture | [35] |
| Sabbath Observance | [39] |
| Rochester | [40] |
| New York | [40] |
| Public Petitions | [41] |
| Washington | [41] |
| The Presbyterian Assembly | [42] |
| President Cleveland | [43] |
| France’s Withdrawal | [43] |
| Dr. Joseph Cook | [44] |
| Dr. Blank | [45] |
| Second Probation | [47] |
| Chicago Exhibition | [47] |
| Canadian Presbyterian Church | [50] |
| Two Months’ Rush of Meetings | [51] |
| Incidents of Travel | [53] |
| Impressions of Canada and the States | [59] |
| CHAPTER II. | |
| THE HOME-LANDS AND THE ISLANDS. | |
| Arrival in Great Britain | [63] |
| Requisitions | [64] |
| Professors and Students | [67] |
| Dayspring Scheme | [67] |
| Ten Years’ Delay | [67] |
| Gideon’s Fleece Experiment | [74] |
| Two memorable Checks | [75] |
| The “John G. Paton Mission Fund” | [77] |
| The Dayspring Disaster | [85] |
| Mission Work on all the Islands | [91] |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
| John G. Paton, æt. 70 | [Frontispiece.] |
| Williams River, Erromanga | To face p. [14] |
| Members of the New Hebrides Mission Synod, 1898 | „ [28] |
| Heathen Natives of Ambrim Memorials of the Dead, Ambrim | „ [58] |
| A Heathen Chief of Futuna Epeteneto | „ [96] |
For the use of all the above illustrations, save the first, our acknowledgments are due to “The Missionary Review of the World.”