In 1862 I appealed to the Victorian General Assembly to take up the New Hebrides Mission as their own. The appeal was followed by Rev. J. Clark, Convener of Heathen Missions Committee in 1863, getting the Assembly to accept the proposal. And in 1865 the Rev. Dr. A. J. Campbell carried our scheme, and the Assembly pledged itself to give £500 per annum for the support of the _Dayspring_, from the offerings of the Sabbath Schools. New Zealand and other Colonies soon followed Victoria’s example, until all were pledged to uphold the New Hebrides Mission. For my dear friend and old College companion, Rev. Joseph Copeland, had visited at the same time Queensland and New Zealand, and had received from them respectively £101 2_s._ 4_d._ and £580; so that all the Churches adopted our scheme for the permanent support of the _Dayspring_; and the Mission fund had now a fair balance on the right side.
At the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria in 1866, I was adopted—being officially transferred from the Church in Scotland—as the first Missionary from the Presbyterian Churches of Australia to the New Hebrides. Dr. Geddie would also have been adopted at the same time, but Novia Scotia could not agree to part with its first and most highly-honoured Missionary. The Victorian Church therefore engaged the Rev. James Cosh, M.A., on his way out from Scotland, as its other agent, in the hope that we two might be able to re-open and carry on the Tanna Mission. In their _Christian Review_ of 1867, they said:—
“The idea which we in Victoria had, when the Missionaries left us in July last was, that Messrs. Paton and Cosh would be associated on Tanna, and labour for its evangelization, under the special auspices as well as at the cost of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria; but Mr. Cosh, having chosen the station at Pango on Efatè, where the Natives were more prepared for the Gospel, and where life and property were safe, went to spend a year’s novitiateship with Mr. and Mrs. Morrison on Efatè. Mr. Paton would have fain gone back to Tanna, but the Missionaries generally feared that no one European life would have been safe at the time on Tanna. They therefore, and no doubt wisely, sent Mr. Paton to the small and less savage, but not less Heathen, Island of Aniwa.”
It was indeed one of the bitterest trials of my life, not to be able to return and settle down at once on dear old Tanna; but I could not go alone, against the decided opposition of all the other Missionaries—Dr. Inglis, however, at last sympathizing most strongly with my views. I went, as will appear hereafter, to Aniwa, the nearest island to the scene of my former woes and perils, in the hope that God would soon open up my way and enable me to return to blood-stained Tanna.
My heart bleeds for the Heathen, and I long to see a Teacher for every tribe and a Missionary for every island of the New Hebrides. The hope still burns that I may witness it; and then I could gladly rest.