Our Cottage Home by John G. Paton

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 26, 1914

Our Cottage Home

By John G. Paton

Our cottage home in the ancient village of Torthorwald, about four and a quarter miles from Dumfries, consisted of a "but" and a "ben" and a "mid room," or chamber, called the "closet." The one end was my mother's domain, and served all the purposes of dining room and kitchen and parlor, besides containing two large wooden erections called by our Scotch peasantry "box beds;" not holes in the wall as in cities, but grand, big, airy beds, adorned with many-colored counterpanes, and hung with natty curtains, showing the skill of the mistress of the house.

The other end was my father's workshop, filled with five or six "stocking frames," whirring with the constant action of five or six pairs of busy hands and feet, and producing right genuine hosiery for the merchants at Hawick and Dumfries.

The closet was a very small apartment betwixt the other two, having room for only a bed, a little table, and a chair, with a diminutive window shedding diminutive light on the scene. This was the sanctuary of that cottage home. Thither daily, and oftentimes a day, generally after each meal, we saw our father retire, and "shut to the door;" and we children got to understand by a sort of spiritual instinct (for the thing was too sacred to be talked about) that prayers were being poured out there for us, as of old by the high priest within the veil in the most holy place. We occasionally heard the pathetic echoes of a trembling voice, pleading as if for life, and we learned to slip out and in past that door on tiptoe, not to disturb the holy colloquy. The outside world might not know, but we knew, whence came that happy light as of a newborn smile that always was dawning on my father's face; it was a reflection from the divine presence, in the consciousness of which he lived.

Never, in temple or cathedral, on mountain or in glen, can I hope to feel that the Lord God is more near, more visibly walking and talking with men, than under that humble cottage roof of thatch and oaken wattles. Though everything else in religion were by some unthinkable catastrophe to be swept out of memory, or 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?"

Our mother, Janet Jardine Rogerson, was a bright-hearted, high-spirited, patient-toiling, and altogether heroic little woman, who for about forty-three years made such a wholesome, independent, God-fearing, and self-reliant life for her family of five sons and six daughters as constrains me, when I look back upon it, almost to worship her memory.

In her girlhood she had gone, with her high spirits and breezy disposition, to gladden the quiet abode of some grand or great-granduncle and aunt, familiarly named, in all that Dalswinton neighborhood, "Old Adam and Eve." Their home was in the outskirts of the moor, and life for the young girl had there not probably too much excitement. But one thing had arrested her attention. She had noticed that a young stocking maker, James Paton, son of William and Janet, was in the habit of stealing alone into the quiet wood, book in hand, day after day, at certain hours, as if for private study and meditation. It was a very excusable curiosity that led the bright young heart of the girl to watch him devoutly reading and hear him reverently reciting; and finally that curiosity awed itself into a holy respect, when she saw him lay aside his broad Scotch bonnet, kneel down under the sheltering wings of some tree, and pour out all his soul in daily prayers to God. . . .

Somewhere in or about his seventeenth year, my father had passed through a crisis of religious experience, and from that day he openly and very decidedly followed the Lord Jesus. Family worship had heretofore been held only on Sabbath day in his father's house; but the young Christian, entering into conference with his sympathizing mother, managed to get the household persuaded that there ought to be daily morning and evening prayer, and reading of the Bible and holy singing. And thus began, in his seventeenth year, that blessed custom of family prayer, morning and evening, which my father practiced probably without one single omission till he lay on his deathbed, seventy-seven years of age; when, even to the last day of his life, a portion of Scripture was read, and his voice heard softly joining in the psalm, and his lips breathed the morning and evening prayer, falling in sweet benediction on the heads of all his children, far away many of them over all the earth, but all meeting him at the throne of grace. None of us can remember that any day passed unhallowed thus; no hurry for market, no rush for business, no arrival of guests, no trouble or sorrow, no joy or excitement, ever prevented at least our kneeling around the family altar, while the high priest led our prayers to God, and offered himself and his children there.

Our place of worship was the Reformed Presbyterian church at Dumfries, fully four miles from our Torthorwald home; but the tradition is that during forty years my father was only thrice prevented from attending the worship of God,—once by snow so deep that he was baffled and had to return; once by ice on the road, so dangerous that he was forced to crawl back on his hands and knees; and once by a terrible outbreak of cholera at Dumfries. All intercourse betwixt the town and the surrounding villages was publicly prohibited; and the farmers and villagers, suspecting that no cholera would make my father stay at home on the Sabbath, sent a deputation to my mother on the Saturday evening, and urged her to restrain his devotions for once. That, however, was needless; as where the life of others was at stake, his very devotion came to their aid.

Each of us, from very early days, considered it no penalty, but a great joy, to go with our father to the church; the four miles were a treat to our young spirits, and occasionally some of the wonders of city life rewarded our eager eyes. A few other pious men and women from the same parish went to one or another favorite minister at Dumfries; and when the God-fearing peasants foregathered in the way to or from the house of God, we youngsters had sometimes rare glimpses of what Christian talk may be and ought to be.

We had special Bible readings on the Lord's Day evening, and the Shorter Catechism was gone through regularly. O, I can remember those happy Sabbath evenings! no blinds drawn and shutters up, to keep out the sun from us, as some scandalously affirm; but a holy, happy, entirely human day, for a Christian father, mother, and children to spend.

There were eleven of us brought up in a home like that; and never one of the eleven, boy or girl, man or woman, has been heard, or ever will be heard, saying that the Sabbath was dull or wearisome to us. But God help the

homes where these things are done by force and not by love!

The very discipline through which our father passed us was a kind of religion in itself. If anything really serious required to be punished, he retired first to his closet for prayer, and we boys got to understand that he was laying the whole matter before God; and that was the severest part of the punishment for me to bear. I could have defied any amount of mere penalty, but this spoke to my conscience like a message from God. We loved him all the more, when we saw how much it cost him to punish us; and, in truth, he had never very much of that kind of work to do upon any one of all the eleven—we were ruled far more by love than fear.

His long and upright life made him a great favorite in all religious circles far and near within the neighborhood. At sick beds and funerals he was constantly sent for and much appreciated; and this appreciation greatly increased, instead of diminished, when the years whitened his long, flowing locks, and gave him apostolic beauty. His happy partner, "Wee Jen," died in 1865, and he himself in 1868,—an altogether beautiful and noble episode on human existence having been enacted, amid the humblest surroundings of a Scottish peasant's home, through the influence of their united love by the grace of God; and in this world, or in any world, all their children will rise up at mention of their names and call them blessed.—"John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides."

Fathers and mothers, will you not pray as did John G. Paton's parents? The boys and girls everywhere need your prayers, they need the prayers of your family altar. May they have them?