[1] From Loudoun parish school, Paton went on in 1838 to the tuition of his maternal uncle Andrew Morton Brown, D.D., Congregational minister, then at Poole, Dorset.
[1] Deciding to become a congregational minister, Paton entered in January 1847 Spring Hill College, Birmingham, in which Rogers held the chair of literature and philosophy.
He heard Ralph Waldo Emerson lecture on the Conduct of Life in the Birmingham town hall, and attended (from 1850) the ministry of Robert Alfred Vaughan, another important influence.
[1] In 1861 Cavendish College, Manchester was started for the training of candidates for the congregational ministry; Paton went weekly from Sheffield to take part in its teaching.
With Percy William Bunting, and Alfred Ernest Garvie, he edited a series of papers Christ and Civilisation (1910), his last work.
[2] His son, John Lewis Paton (1863-1946), who headed the Cambridge classical tripos in 1886, became High Master of Manchester Grammar School in 1903.