Prayer before Punishment

John Paton was a Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides islands in the mid-nineteenth century. In his autobiography, he shared how his father responded to his children's disobedience:

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 as 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 by love far more than by fear.

The autobiography is John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides.

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