THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
So long as the Christian in his faith in God is able to look through his sufferings to the love of God, he has no room for patience. One is patient when in the darker events of life he does not lose self-mastery but remains firm and ready in the purpose that he must obey God. Such obedience is the last remnant of trust in God. While this patience is not the joy which puts an end to suffering, it is the path which leads to it, and the future offers a hope which finds its justification in the fact that Christ in his death is evident to the Christian as a visible manifestation of the love of God (cf. Rom. v. 5-8). Christian patience thus becomes the strength of faith, although the Christian himself feels it to be the weakness of faith. Christian patience is, however, not a mere test of faith, but is the inner process whereby personality is developed beyond what it was, and the believer experiences its full meaning only when he subjects himself in silent patient obedience to a higher power, which must be personal, and not an institution of any kind. (W Herrmann.)
PATON, JOHN BROWN: English Congregationalist; b. at Loudon, Ayrshire, Scotland, Dec. 17, 1830. He was educated at Spring Hill College, Birmingham (B.A., London University, 1849; M.A., 1854); was minister of Wicker Church, Sheffield (1854-63), and from 1863 until his retirement in 1897 as principal emeritus was principal of the Congregational Institute for Theological and Missionary Studies, Nottingham. He was one of the founders of the University Extension system, and established the Bible Reading and Prayer Union in 1892, the Boys' and Girls' Life Brigades in 1900, and the Young Men's and Young Women's Brigade of Service in 1904. He has been vice-president of the British Institute of Social Service since 1904, and has taken a prominent part in educational, charitable, and non-conformist religious work. Besides his work as joint editor of The Eclectic Review (1858-61) and associate editor of The Contemporary Review (1882-88), his writings include Evangelization of Town and Country (London, 1861); The Origin of the Priesthood in the Church (1875); Supernatural Religion: A Criticism (1878); The Inner Mission of Germany, and its Lessons to Us (1885); The Twofold Alternative — Materialism or Religion: the Church, a Priesthood or a Brotherhood (1885); Contemporary Controversies on the Doctrine of the Church and the Relations of Church and State (1886); The Inner Mission (four addresses; 1888); The Inner Mission of Great Britain (1896); and Collected Essays (2 vols., 1907.)
Bibliography: J. Marohant, J. B. Paton, Educational and Social Pioneer, London, 1909.
PATON, JOHN GIBSON: Presbyterian missionary; b. at Kirkmahoe (9 m. n. of Dumfries), Scotland, May 24 1824; d. at Canterbury, Victoria, Australia, Jan. 28, 1907. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, the divinity hall of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and the Andersonian medical university, all in Glasgow, where he was a city missionary from 1847 till 1857. He was licensed Dec. 1, 1857, and ordained a missionary to the New Hebrides Mar. 23, 1858, and left Glasgow with his wife Mary Ann Robson on April 16. At Melbourne they
transhipped to Aneityum where they landed Aug. 30. He began his labors on the island of Tanna Nov. 5 1858. There, on Feb. 12, 1859, his wife died in child-bed, and her infant son, March 20. The natives proved to be intractable and he was finally driven away by their savage attacks on Feb. 4, 1862. He then began those tours in behalf of New Hebrides mission work which were ultimately to make him known throughout all the English-speaking world. He went first to the Presbyterian churches of Australia and New Zealand. In 1864 he visited Scotland, was elected moderator of the General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, secured seven missionaries for the New Hebrides, and returned with his second wife, Margaret Whitecross. He landed in Sydney Jan. 17, 1865, made another tour of the churches, and visited the New Hebrides. In Nov., 1866, he became a missionary on one of the islands, Aniwa. He held his first communion there Oct. 24, 1869, and ultimately saw all the natives nominal Christians. In March, 1873, he visited the Australasian colonies to raise money; returned to Aniwa the next year, but in 1883 laid before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria the necessities of the New Hebrides mission and was sent by it in 1884 to Great Britain to raise the money. He returned with the funds desired early the next year, visited Aniwa, but then took up his missionary tours again through Australasia between 1886 (when he was elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria) and 1892, then through the United States and Canada, and so around the world, returning to Victoria in 1894. In 1897 he was in Melbourne carrying through the press the New Testament in the Aniwan language. In 1899 he was in Aniwa. In 1900 he attended the Ecumenical Missionary Conference in New York City, and was hailed as a great missionary hero. In 1901 he was back in Australia. His health had begun to fail, his wife was also ailing, and on May 16, 1905, she died. In 1904 he issued his translation into Aniwan of the Acts of the Apostles, and began proof-reading on that of Genesis. He was a man of picturesque appearance and bore his testimony with great power.
He described himself as theologically "a Presbyterian Evangelical Calvinist of the old Covenanter Reformed Church of Scotland." He wrote many pamphlets on missionary topics, and also to expose the evils of the Kanaka labor traffic, as well as opposing the French annexation of the New Hebrides in favor of British occupation. But the book which made him famous was his autobiography, whose sale was enormous on the strength of his perils on Tanna and Aniwa. The book owed much to the literary skill of his brother, Rev. James Paton, D.D. (who died in Glasgow Dec. 21, 1906), and appeared in three parts, John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides. An Autobiography. Edited by his Brother (New York, 1st part, 1889, second part 1890; parts three and four, carrying the story from 1885 till his death, appeared bound up with the other parts, 1907).
Bibliography: Besides the Autobiograpky, consult Harriet B. Genung, J. G. Paton, Missionary to the Martyr Islands, Boston, 1907.