Remembering John Linton, part I

John Linton was born near Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1888, in a situation of dire poverty that he rarely talked about in detail later in his life.[1] His childhood was filled with stealing, lying, and truancy—he frequently ran away from home—and everything seemed to augur a grim future for the young boy. But in God’s sovereign mercy, he was converted in 1901 at Bristo Place Baptist Church, which is the second oldest extant Baptist congregation in Scotland, the cause having been founded in 1765.[2] At thirteen he began working in a coalpit, where he worked for a year at which time his father began to teach him the trade of being an iron-moulder.[3] At the same time he was regularly attending worship at Bristo Place Baptist Church, where he was baptized in 1905 at the age of seventeen.[4]