(Biographies) John G. Paton — John Piper

The following message is by pastor John Piper. More information from desiring. God is available at www .desiringgod .org.

The New Hebrides and John Paton's Missionary Calling

If you draw a line from Honolulu straight to Sydney It'll cut right through Port Villa, which is the capital of what is today called Vanuatu and And if you go along two-thirds of that line, you'll be there.

Those are the New Hebrides. Given that name by Captain James Cook in the 18th century because they look to him like the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland today Vanuatu has about 190 thousand people on 80 islands.

Not all of them are habit inhabited, but many of them. As far as we know there was no Christian influence among the New Hebrides until 1839. Think of it just think of it. Just think of it. 18 centuries.

Between Christ and the first missionary it should not have been the first missionaries. You've probably heard the names John Williams and James Harris. Within minutes after going ashore on the island of Aramanga.

They were clubbed to death cooked and Eaten in the face of the ship that was still off shore. John Patton arrived there in 1858 and Gave his life to the New Hebrides. He died when he was What was 1907 you do the math he had a long life, which is amazing when you realize what he went through.

He was born in 1824. 1824 to 1907 he lived in Scotland. Grew up in a godly home and was a city missionary. Today, we call him urban missionary probably in the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Glasgow from age 23 to 34 and it was a wonderfully fruitful ministry.

He was filling up classes of six and seven hundred poor people every day. And then God called him to be a foreign missionary and he went to the island of Tanna with his wife. When he was 34 and he labored there for four years until he was driven off.

Hostilities became so great took four years doing vision spreading all over Australia and Britain and then God called him to the island of a Neewa and There he spent the rest of his life and the whole island came to Christ and today If you go to Vanuatu Roughly.

Oh, what are my numbers here? 85 I think of the People On the islands would call themselves Christians and a very large percentage of that are Presbyterians. It's the biggest church, which is a tribute to the abiding influence.

That's about what? 93 years between the time Patton died and today and The Presbyterian Church is strong there perhaps according to John Stone's operation world. 21 of the population would call themselves Evangelical so the history of the church is so short it's so recent and they were cannibals and it's not an overstatement or a rhetorical flourish and The missionaries came there in the 1830s 40s 50s and labored So faithfully that whole islands were brought to were brought to Christ.

And it was a remarkable thing. What he did was simply to plant himself there learn the language. Translate parts of the Bible. Built a couple of orphanages on a Neewa he and his wife raised dozens and dozens of children for Jesus.

He said trained teachers that became converted sent them out to the outlying Villages. He said we ministered to the sick we dispensed medicines every day. We taught them the use of tools we expounded the scriptures.

We held worship services every week on the Lord's Day for any who was willing to Come and then he wrote in his old age. I claimed a Neewa For Jesus and by the grace of God a Neewa now worships at the Savior's feet.

It was a remarkable thing. It was not a big island. It was two miles by seven miles. That's how big the island was had on it three or four thousand people scattered in little little villages around and that's what he gave 15 years of concerted life to and then he began to mingle Mission on the island with what was really probably the most influential part of his life was missions mobilization.

He's preached all over America from California up into Toronto to New York City around Europe especially in Australia and the islands. Constantly blowing the trumpet of the South Sea Islands and the remaining tribes yet to be reached there he kept journals notebooks and letters and I don't know if any of these are left in the bookstore now, but John G Patton and autobiography is all three volumes in one volume from banner of truth trust now.

Everything I know about him I learned from this book plus about four others which were totally dependent on this book except one. There's one other book that I know of that says The later years because there was about ten years to go when he stopped here and I wanted to know well How did he die and what happened in the last ten years life?

And there is one called the later years which I got from Bethel library. So it's not a huge corpus and anybody can read it and you can do for your church what I'm about to do here. And I encourage you to do these kinds of Biographical studies.

You don't have to be any great scholar to do this you just have to take one of these on vacation on in the summer and underline it when you read it and go home and take a few notes and Put it together and give a talk and your people will love it.

They will benefit so much from the trials through which so many great saints have gone. So I encourage you to do it. So here's the outline of my of my Talk which is entitled you'll be eaten by cannibals.

Courage in the Face of Opposition and Loss

Courage in the cause of world missions. Lessons from the life of John G Patton. Three questions. Number one What kinds of circumstances in his life called for courage? To What did his courage achieve?

Three. Where did his courage come from? So number one what kinds of circumstances called for courage in Patton's life. Number one. He had courage to overcome the criticism he received from respected elders for going to the New Hebrides.

A Mr. Dixon said you'll be eaten by cannibals. And a brother just walked up to me here and said when he was at Moody I forget whether you said your grandmother or whoever. Sent pictures from National Geographic to him and said they'll eat you.

It was not a joke then. It wasn't a joke for mr. Dixon here either. You'll be eaten by cannibals. Well Harris and Williams who were happened 19 years ago when that was said This is fresh. This is not a hundred and fifty years ago.

This is 19 years ago, and you're going back to the same islands. And this was his response. Mr. Dixon You are advanced in years now and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave and there to be eaten by worms.

I Confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus. It will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms. And in the great day My resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.

Now there is a kind of spiritual moxie there. That makes the book really enjoyable. It's a good read. He was a remarkable man, I think we're overusing the word remarkable, so I'll try to Pick another remarkable word besides that one.

He was an extraordinary man. And it makes a very good read. There was a gutsiness and in-your-faceness that comes out in his dealing with the most terrified circumstances on the islands that you just stand and Wonder.

But he was leaving a very fruitful ministry. He was a success if anybody would look at him and say you got a anointing for urban ministry, brother. Nobody's been able to do for decades in Glasgow what you have done and he walked away from it and he got stiff criticism for it.

He said the opposition was so strong from nearly all and many of them warm Christian friends that I was sorely tempted to question whether I was carrying out the divine call or Only some headstrong wish of my own.

This also caused me much anxiety and drove me close to God in prayer. First act of courage. To handle that kind of criticism and stand by his sense of God's call. Second he had courage to risk losing his loved ones and Press on when he did in fact lose them.

He married just before he left. It's early 30s. There's a lot of details by the way left out that just are maddening. You want to know I Do not know how many children Patton had. I know he had at least six, but there's no where he talks about them.

This is his his seed activity in writing this autobiography is frustrating to the biographer. But he had several anyway, he he married Mary and took her On a boat three months to Sydney then over to the islands.

They choose the island Tanna. Go to Tanna. They positioned him there. He built a house then he brought her over. February 12 1859 the baby was born so now they have a little one and they're married and the boat leaves.

No telephone or telegraph and nobody else. Our island exile he said thrilled with joy. But the greatest of sorrows was treading hard upon the heels of my great joy. Mary had repeated attacks of ague fever pneumonia diarrhea quote.

Then in a moment altogether Unexpectedly, she died on March 3rd so this is Four months after he's there To crown my sorrows and complete my loneliness. The dear baby boy Whom we had named after her father Peter Robert Robeson Was taken from me after one week sickness on the 20th of March.

Let those who have ever passed through any similar darkness as of midnight feel for me as. For all others it would be more than vain to try to paint my sorrows. He dug the graves with his own hands he put them in at the end of his house and he said my reason.

Seemed for a time almost to give way. But for Jesus and the fellowship, he vouchsafed to me there. I must have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave. Now the two aspects of courage here are one to risk that happening.

Her parents never recovered from that. He met them when he went back four years later. They never recovered they died from that blow and. So you can imagine the kind of criticism that would begin to crop up.

You took my daughter. You took my daughter. I've had. I've had a man threatened my life. From outside this church for sending his son overseas. He said to me if anything happens to him you will pay the courage then to go on.

After it happens is a great courage and he went on he went on four years Beside that grave alone with Abraham his Anitomies Convert servant helper who was wonderfully trustworthy. He fought the battle alone to preach the gospel among the cannibals.

Enduring Sickness and Constant Threats

Number three he had courage to risk his own sickness in a foreign land with no doctors and no escape. Fever and ague he said attacked me 14 times. Severely. He never knew picture it now. You have no hospitals.

You have no doctors. You do have some primitive medicines with you. And you get sick with the same thing your wife died of and you watched her die. You buried her with your own hands and you never know 14 times and you don't know which one is gonna be your time.

Do you not go mad do you not quit after the third or fourth or fifth or thirteenth time and say that's enough. Then he didn't just kept on going and going and going and those dangers were not just in the first four years on Tana.

Here's what he wrote 15 years later. There was another wife Margaret he married after the went back home and he had another child. And this is what he wrote during the hurricanes of January April 1873.

When the day spring the mission ship was wrecked we lost our darling child by death. My dear wife had a protracted illness and I was brought very low with severe rheumatic fever and was reported as dying.

So it isn't as though he he passed through a season of serious suffering in the first four years and then triumphant conversion of Aniwa. He wrote the line our. Our struggles were strangely mingled all through life with successes and difficulties.

It was a strange mingling number four. The most common demand for courage was the almost constant threat to his life from the hostilities of these Natives. What makes this autobiography so thrilling? It's like a thriller to read is because of his report of so many crisis.

Situations into which he was brought and out of which the Lord Brought him one crisis after the other and one wonders how he kept his mind from snapping. I've been in only a very few Situations where there have been death threat phone calls or somebody hollering obscenities outside your house or some Gunshots and and the the thing that has happened inside of my stomach and my chest at those moments.

When it's not surrounded by 500 people with machetes. It's just you're not sure what it is. I Just want how in the world do you keep your mind from just going snap? And then to have it happen over and over and there are no weekend getaways.

There no restaurants, there's no bed and breakfast there's there's nothing but more of it tomorrow morning. Never knowing whether if you walk down to the water place somebody would Kill you or if you did anything, it's constant Tension knit the spring never has a chance to unwind.

How in the world but for sovereign miraculous grace upon grace way beyond anything any of us carries into it. Could it last and that's the way he he lived for these four years on Tana he wrote our continuous danger Caused me now oftentimes to sleep with my clothes on.

That I might not that I might start at a moment's warning My faithful dog Clutha. This is a great theme running through the first volume. Clutha I love Clutha little Scottish Terrier saves his life over and over again.

And all I think is he must have brought him on the boat. I mean where do you get a Scottish Terrier in in the New Hebrides and Clutha the name Clutha's the name of the boat that that brought him down there.

So this little dog and it's a very poignant thing when the dog doesn't escape when he escapes, but this dog Saved his life over and over again, and he gives God the credit for it. Our continuous danger caused me often to sleep in my clothes that I might start at a moment.

My faithful dog Clutha would give a sharp bark and waken me. God made them fear this precious creature. And Often used her in saving my life my enemies Seldom slackened he wrote their hateful designs against my life.

However, calmed or baffled for a moment a wild chief For example followed me around for hours with a loaded musket. They got muskets from the traders. In fact, one of the other horrible themes in this book is how Wicked the white men are in their Intentionally Fostering violence and intentionally spreading measles in one case.

They took them they took Slaves off into the boat threw them in the hole with Measles took them out after 24 hours and send them back and the epidemic wiped out a third of the islands. The population was about a hundred and seventy thousand when the ministry began and it was down to Seventy thousand by the time the missionaries were done and one of the reasons the missionaries were treated so badly is because the traitors did that kind of thing and they blamed them as they might well for the kinds of miseries that were brought to them.

A Wild chief followed me around for four hours with his musket loaded and though often directed towards me God restrained his hand. I spoke kindly to him and Attended to my work as if he had not been there Fully persuaded that my God had placed me there and would protect me till my allotted task was finished.

So imagine going about your pastoral duty all morning with a man with a loaded musket. Just kind of following you around and doing like this. And you never know you never know when he's gonna pull the trigger one morning a day break.

My house was surrounded by armed men and a chief intimated that they had assembled to take my life. Seeing that I was entirely in their hands. I knelt down and gave myself a weight body soul and spirit to the Lord Jesus.

For what seemed the last time on earth rising? I went out to them and began calmly talking about their unkind treatment of me and Contrasting it with all my conduct toward them. At last some of the chiefs who had attended worship rose and said our conduct has been bad.

But now we will fight for you and kill all those who hate you so they were a very fickle group, but he he had a way of Getting right in their face. He would just say you shouldn't be doing this. He lectured them He would just he would grab the pistol of the gun and Shake that I'm like this and hold the barrel up in the air while he lectured them about how bad they were Because he was their friend and there to do them good and and so many times they were shamed by his Lecturing them in that way and they would walk away.

His courage increased I believe as his deliverances were multiplied. He experienced so many Times that you do begin to get callous, you know certain neighborhoods you get used to and certain noises You get used to if that didn't happen missionaries would just would go crazy I think where they are they just get used to certain things that we would be scared by Going amongst them every day.

I did my utmost to stop hostilities setting the evils of war before them and pleading with the leading men to Renounce it. He would even go and visit his enemies when they asked him to come to pray because they knew he had medicines.

They knew he prayed with effectuality and so even those who had been hostile to him when they got sick would say send for Missy The missionary and so he went one time to a man named Ian he was called durst.

I durst neither move nor speak because he had just he was lying there and he was an ambush he walks into the hut and This man is lying there like he's dying and throws off the cover pulls out a huge knife puts it right at his chest and And that's he just feels like well, it's over and here's what he wrote.

I durst neither move nor speak. Except that my heart kept praying to the Lord to spare me or if my time was to take me home to glory With himself. There passed a few moments of awful suspense my sight went and came and Those he almost fainted not a word had been spoken except to Jesus and then Ian wheeled the knife around thrusted into a sugarcane leaf and cried go quickly and I ran for my life a Weary four miles till I reached the mission house faint yet praising God for such deliverance.

Fifth cause for courage. The need for courage in the face of criticism that you didn't stay When you left after four years of risking his life almost daily. The rising tide of opposition was over the whole island and huge mobs were gathering on the hills around the coastline where he was and He felt like this would now be the guilt of self-murder.

Which is a strange thing because it looked to me like many other times. It was also risking the gift guilt of self-murder and and yet there comes a point I suppose where you sense something in your bones and he he wasn't one to think that you should choose martyrdom.

Intentionally by throwing yourself on somebody else's musket or knife. Then so he prayed for deliverance and the Lord sent a ship and he took the opportunity and he did escape after four years of enduring those horrors.

Then he got criticized for it and he wrote Conscious that I had to the last inch of my 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 were also Occasionally spoken to my face. One dear friend for instance said You should not have left. You should have stood at your post Until you fell. It would have been to your honor and better for the cause of mission had you been killed at the post of duty like the Gordons and the others.

And at that point when you've risked your life for years and lost your wife and lost your child and Somebody says that to you if you've been pouring your life out and preaching your heart out. Wouldn't you just Want to take your ball and go home to Glasgow?

And say okay if that's the way you treat your missionaries if that's the way you feel then I'm out of here, and he didn't he could absorb that and Press on. And he did press on. That's point one. What were the causes of courage?

So here's here's number two. What did it achieve? What did it achieve and I've already mentioned one the entire island of? Aniwa turned to Christ. So he had four years of apparently fruitless ministry on the island of Tanna a few little remarkable conversions and Then four years of itinerant trumpeting telling his story recruiting raising money for the ship and so on spreading vision and Then they reassign him to Aniwa.

And he says later years later I claimed Aniwa for Jesus and by the grace of God today Aniwa worships at the Savior's seat second thing that it achieved. This endurance on the island of Tanna resulted in a story being written and told that awakened thousands to the call of missions and Strengthened the home church of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland in ways.

He never dreamed so he wrote his Second volume to the autobiography, which is the second two-thirds our second third last third of this book roughly Because the first volume as it was told orally and then written had such a great impact.

But now the connection between that impact in mobilizing missions for the New Hebrides and the other South Sea Islands and the four years of Seeming failure. He brought those two together like this Oftentimes while passing through the perils and defeats of my first four years in the mission field of Tanna I wondered why God permitted such things but on looking back now, I Already clearly perceive that the Lord was thereby preparing me for doing and providing me materials wherewith to accomplish the best work of my life namely the kindling of the heart of Australian Presbyterian ism with a living affection for the islanders of their own Southern Seas and In being the instrument under God of sending out missionary after missionary To the New Hebrides to claim another island and still another island for Jesus.

That work and all that may spring from it in time and eternity Never could have been Accomplished by me but for the first sufferings and then the story of my Tanna enterprise. So there is a Romans 828 kind of microcosm that he lived on for the rest of his life those four years that looked so Completely pointless in the happening and some of you are at the fourth year of that.

You cannot write the rest of your story. You have to trust God that he will do something with that apparently fruitless Investment. I was filled With a high passion of gratitude. He wrote after he visited Scotland To be able to proclaim at the close of my tour tour at home That of all her ordained ministers.

Speaking of the Reformed Presbyterian Church now One in every six was a missionary of the cross. So one of the effects one of the achievements of the fruitless Experience on Tanna was to go home and tell the stories of the dangers.

Tell the stories of his wife tell the stories of his child tell the stories of his sickness. And when he headed back four years later to a Newa one in six of you Was a foreign missionary. That's worth a lot of suffering at least he believed it was.

Now what about the effect on the church just at home not to leave it but here's what he wrote. Nor did the dear old church thus cripple herself. Because of these men who were leaving on the contrary her zeal for missions accompanied if not caused unwanted W-o-n-t unwanted Prosperity at home new waves of liberality passed over the heart of the people of God debts That had burdened many of the churches and mansions were swept away additional congregations were organized and in May 1876 the Reformed Presbyterian Church entered into an honorable and Independent union with her larger wealthier more progressive sister the pre-church of Scotland.

So he thrilled to look at the health of the church at home. Because he was there recruiting for the New Hebrides and brothers I would tell you never ever ever has the Lord let the cause of world missions in a local church.

Hurt that church it doesn't happen and So go go for broke when it comes to the unreached peoples of the world I don't care how bad it is in your church lift up your sights towards the unreached peoples of the world.

Third effect to vindicate the power of the gospel to convert the hardest people. One of the interesting things about Patton's Autobiography is that he has an eye on the culture despisers of religion back home in Scotland and in Europe he's writing this book for lots of different kinds of people.

One of the kinds of people he's writing for is professors in universities who scoff at the reality of the supernatural and the reality of conversion. Oh, he's got good quotes on this for example. There was a Chief named Kaweah on Tana, this is one of the triumphs of Tana.

There weren't many but Kaweah was one of them and he was dying and these natives had an Uncanny way to know when they were dying and he came to him and he said I am dying. And he didn't know how he knew but he just said I am dying.

Farewell, Missy. I am very near death now. We will meet again in Jesus and with Jesus. Abraham sustained him tottering to the place of graves. There he lay down and slept in Jesus and there the faithful Abraham buried him beside his wife and children.

Thus died a man who had been a cannibal chief. But by the grace of God and the love of Jesus changed Transfigured into a character of light and beauty. What think ye of this ye skeptics as to the reality of?

Conversion. In another place. He talks about Abraham himself. This Abraham is another sweet piece of this story. They don't get any better than Abraham his servant. When I have read or heard of the shallow objections of irreligious scribblers and talkers.

Hinting that there was no reality in conversions and that mission effort was but waste. Oh How my heart has yearned to plant them just one week on Tana with the natural man. All around in the person of cannibal and heathen and only the one spiritual man in the person of the converted Abraham.

Nursing them he means him nursing them feeding them. Saving them for the love of Jesus that I might just learn how many hours it took. To convince them that Christ in man was a reality after all all the skepticism of Europe Would hide its head in foolish shame and all its doubts would dissolve under one Glance of the new light that Jesus and Jesus alone pours from the converted cannibals.

I. There's something about Evangelism brothers and especially on the raw cutting-edge where it feels impossible that a person could really stop being a Muslim and start being a Christian or stop being a Hindu and start being a Christian or Stop being a cannibal and start being a Christian stop being an agnostic and start being a glorious transformed Christian.

There's something that happens there that sweeps away all the skepticism of Europe from your heart. Whereas if you're just trying to fight that battle with books and not doing the frontline stuff of testing it it doesn't have the same force of Deliverance from skepticism.

And so this book functions as a kind of Vindication of the reality of the supernatural and the reality of conversion. That's another effect of of courage on Tana third Point. Let me third main point. Where did this courage come from?

What was its origin? Number one his courage came from his father. And I know he wants to say first it came from God and I do say that first but under God there were these means and his father I tell you after the first 80 pages of this if you had taken it from me and ripped it to shreds and Said see you've wasted your $25.

I would have said I didn't waste a nickel. Five pages in this book are worth $25 to me. I have four sons and one daughter and I wept over these pages and I wept last night as I read them again. Because I want to be a daddy like this daddy was To produce a John Patton.

He did not come out of nowhere. He came from a daddy and a mommy and most of us Not all but lots of us are Fathers in this room and some are younger and still have a lot of fathering to do. Others are older and we still have a lot of fathering to do these.

I do. I got a four-year-old and I get another chance now with talent. Now, why do I say this was so remarkable that he came from his his father? There was a closet in this little Torth or a walled village and in that little closet his father went three times a day after every meal and prayed and they heard him Praying there were 11 children in the family and they knew how to keep it sacred and quiet.

This is what he wrote. Though everything else in religion were by some unthinkable catastrophe to be swept out of memory. Were blotted from my understanding my soul would wander back to those early scenes and shut itself up.

Once again in that sanctuary Closet and hearing still the echoes of those cries to God would hurl back all doubt. With the victorious appeal he walked with God. Why may not I how much my father's prayers at this time impressed me?

I can never explain nor could any stranger understand when on his knees and All of us kneeling around him in family worship. He poured out his whole soul with tears for the conversion of the heathen world to the service of Jesus and for every personal domestic need we felt as if in the presence of the Living Savior and Learned to know and love him as our divine friend.

A Godly Father's Influence on Children

Now there was one scene We recreated for you and then let him Describe it and this is the most moving scene in the book for me and there were many moving scenes in this book. He's now in his early 20s.

I wish I knew exactly how old and he's gonna leave to Thorwald for the first time and go to Glasgow. Glasgow is a long way. It's 40 miles to the train station. You got to walk it. You don't know when your son will come back from the big city, he's gonna go to Divinity School.

He has this mission impulse within him. He may stay there. We may not seem we're we're older. We may die. We don't know. My my dear father Walked with me the first six miles of the way. His counsels and tears and heavenly conversation on that parting journey Are fresh in my mind as if it had been but yesterday.

He's an old man writing this and Tears are on my cheeks as freely now as then whenever memory steals me away to the scene. For the last half mile or so we walked on together in almost unbroken silence my father as Was often his custom carrying hat in hand while his long flowing yellow hair then yellow But in later years white as snow Streaming like a girl's down over his shoulders.

His lips kept moving in silent prayers for me and his tears Fell fast when our eyes met each other in looks for which all speech was vain. We halted on reaching the appointed parting place. He grasped my hand firmly for a minute in silence and then solemnly and affectionately said God bless you my son your father's God Prosper you and keep you from all evil unable to say more.

His lips kept moving in silent prayer in tears. We embraced and parted. I ran off as fast as I could and When about to turn a corner in the road Where he would lose sight of me. I looked back and saw him still standing with head uncovered where I had left him gazing after me Waving my hat adieu.

I rounded the corner and out of sight in an instant, but My heart was too full and sore to carry me further So I darted into the side of the road wept for a time then Rising up cautiously. I climbed the dike to see if he yet stood where I left him and Just at that moment.

I caught a glimpse of him climbing the dike and Looking out for me. He did not see me and After he gazed eagerly in my direction for a while. He got down set his face toward home and began to return His head still uncovered and his heart.

I felt sure it's still rising in prayers for me. I watched through blinding tears Till his form faded from my gaze and then hastening on my way and here was the line vowed deeply and oft by the help of God to live and act So as never to grieve or dishonor such a father you you talk about what was happening on Tanna by the gravestone of his wife and Through the thousands of difficulties in his life.

And what was happening was the fruit of a father's love. III Almost gave this lecture totally on that father-son relationship. Because there's enough there just to unpack it for us in terms of how he prayed he talked about.

They had to walk six miles to church his father missed church twice in 42 years. Never in his memory missed a family devotion. Everything gave way. I think of myself and if if Barnabas says I'm late for school then I say well at least let's pray well whip.

Sit down you could be late for school. They never miss this. You got to be Scotch to do that, right. The six miles this kid and his ten brothers and sisters he said looked forward to going and coming because The meat at the temple was so rich.

They were eager to get there and it was so rich it took six miles to digest it on the way home and he said Religion was presented to me with such an intellectual Freshness that was the phrase intellectual freshness that the Lord's day was never boring in the patent home.

No, what an impact the home will have. Number two. His courage came from a deep sense of divine calling before he was 12. He said he knew God wanted to be a foreign missionary though. He put it on the shelf for a long time.

When he was criticized you shouldn't go this is crazy. Then his parents took forward. And this is what they said. Here to for we feared to bias you. But now we must tell you why we praise God for the decision to which you have been led.

Your father's heart was set upon being a minister. But other claims forced him to give it up. When you were given to them your father and mother this is his father writing this. Your father and mother laid you upon the altar their firstborn to be consecrated if God saw fit as a missionary of the cross and It has been their constant prayer that you might be prepared.

Qualified led to this very decision and we pray with all our heart That the Lord may accept your offering. Long spare you and give you many souls from the heathen world for your hire. Thank God for parents right.

God for parents. Number three a third source. Courage came from a sense of the holy heritage of his church. He was the heir of the blood of martyrs among the Scottish Covenanters and he knew it and he said I am more proud That the blood of martyrs is in my veins and their truths in my heart.