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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Principal Cairns, by John Cairns
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Principal Cairns
+
+Author: John Cairns
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2004 [EBook #11113]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCIPAL CAIRNS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINCIPAL CAIRNS
+
+BY JOHN CAIRNS
+
+
+FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES
+
+
+
+
+The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown, and
+the printing is from the press of Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In preparing the following pages I have been chiefly indebted for the
+materials of the earlier chapters to some MS. notes by my late uncle,
+Mr. William Cairns. These were originally written for Professor MacEwen
+when he was preparing his admirable _Life and Letters of John Cairns,
+D.D. LL.D._ They are very full and very interesting, and I have made
+free use of them.
+
+To Dr. MacEwen's book I cannot sufficiently express my obligations. He
+has put so much relating to Principal Cairns into an absolutely final
+form, that he seems to have left no alternative to those who come after
+him between passing over in silence what he has so well said and
+reproducing it almost in his words. It is probable, therefore, that
+students of the _Life and Letters_--and there are many who, like Mr.
+Andrew Lang with Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, "make it their breviary
+"--will detect some echoes of its sentences in this little book. Still,
+I have tried to look at the subject from my own point of view, and to
+work it out in my own way; while, if I have borrowed anything directly,
+I trust that I have made due acknowledgment in the proper place.
+
+Among those whom I have to thank for kind assistance, I desire specially
+to mention my father, the Rev. David Cairns, the last surviving member
+of the household at Dunglass, who has taken a constant interest in the
+progress of the book, and has supplied me with many reminiscences and
+suggestions. To my brother the Rev. D.S. Cairns, Ayton, I am indebted
+for most valuable help in regard to many points, especially that dealt
+with at the close of Chapter VI.; and I also owe much to the suggestions
+of my friends the Rev. P. Wilson and the Rev. R. Glaister. For help in
+revising the proofs I have to thank the Rev. J.M. Connor and my brother
+the Rev. W.T. Cairns.
+
+J.C.
+
+DUMFRIES, _20th March_ 1903.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+CHAPTER I: ANCESTRY AND CHILDHOOD
+
+CHAPTER II: DUNGLASS
+
+CHAPTER III: COLLEGE DAYS
+
+CHAPTER IV: THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY
+
+CHAPTER V: GOLDEN SQUARE
+
+CHAPTER VI: THE CENTRAL PROBLEM
+
+CHAPTER VII: THE APOSTLE OF UNION
+
+CHAPTER VIII: WALLACE GREEN
+
+CHAPTER IX: THE PROFESSOR
+
+CHAPTER X: THE PRINCIPAL
+
+CHAPTER XI: THE END OF THE DAY
+
+
+
+
+PRINCIPAL CAIRNS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ANCESTRY AND CHILDHOOD
+
+
+John Cairns was born at Ayton Hill, in the parish of Ayton, in the east
+of Berwickshire, on the 23rd of August 1818.
+
+The farm of Ayton Hill no longer exists. Nothing is left of it but
+the trees which once overshadowed its buildings, and the rank growth
+of nettles which marks the site of a vanished habitation of man. Its
+position was a striking one, perched as it was just on the edge of the
+high ground which separates the valley of the little river Eye from
+that of the Tweed. It commanded an extensive view, taking in almost the
+whole course of the Eye, from its cradle away to the left among the
+Lammermoors to where it falls into the sea at Eyemouth a few miles to
+the right. Down in the valley, directly opposite, were the woods and
+mansion of Ayton Castle. A little to the left, the village of Ayton lay
+extended along the farther bank of the stream, while behind both castle
+and village the ground rose in gentle undulations to the uplands of
+Coldingham Moor.
+
+South-eastwards, a few miles along the coast, lay Berwick-on-Tweed, the
+scene of John Cairns's future labours as a minister; while away in the
+opposite direction, in the heart of the Lammermoors, near the headwaters
+of the Whitadder and the Dye, was the home of his immediate ancestors.
+These were tenants of large sheep-farms; but, through adverse
+circumstances, his grandfather, Thomas Cairns, unable to take a farm of
+his own, had to earn his living as a shepherd. He died in 1799, worn out
+before he had passed his prime, and his widow was left to bring up her
+young fatherless family of three girls and two boys as best she could.
+After several migrations, which gradually brought them down from the
+hills to the seaboard, they settled for some years at Ayton Hill. The
+farm was at the time under some kind of trust, and there was no resident
+farmer. The widowed mother was engaged to look after the pigs and the
+poultry; the daughters also found employment; and James, the elder son,
+became the shepherd. He was of an adventurous and somewhat restless
+disposition, and, at the time of the threatened invasion by Napoleon,
+joined a local Volunteer corps. Then the war fever laid hold of him,
+and he enlisted in the regular army, serving in the Rifle Brigade all
+through the Peninsular War, from Vimiera to Toulouse, and earning a
+medal with twelve clasps. He afterwards returned, bringing with him
+a Portuguese wife, and settled as shepherd on the home-farm of Ayton
+Castle.
+
+The younger son, John, as yet little more than a child, was hired out
+as herd-boy on the neighbouring farm of Greystonelees, between Ayton
+and Berwick. His wages were a pair of shoes in the half-year, with his
+food in the farm kitchen and his bed in the stable loft. His schooldays
+had begun early. He used afterwards to tell how his mother, when he was
+not more than five years old, carried him every day on her back on his
+way to school across a little stream that flowed near their cottage.
+But this early education was often interrupted, and came very soon
+to a close; not, however, before he was well able to read. Writing he
+taught himself later; and, later still, he picked up a good working
+knowledge of arithmetic at a night-school. He was a quiet, thoughtful
+boy, specially fond of reading, but, from lack of books, reading was
+almost out of his reach. He had not even a Bible of his own, for Bibles
+were then so dear that it was not possible for parents in humble life to
+provide those of their children who went out into the world with copies
+even of the cheapest sort. In place of a Bible, however, his mother had
+given him a copy of the Scottish Metre Version of the Psalms, with a
+"Preface" to each Psalm and notes by John Brown of Haddington. This
+was all the boy had to feed his soul on, but it was enough, for it
+was strong meat; and he valued and carefully kept that old, brown,
+leather-bound Psalm-book to the end of his days.
+
+When James left home, the shepherding at Ayton Hill was taken up by
+his brother John. Though only a lad in his teens, he was in every
+respect, except in physical strength, already a man. He was steady and
+thoughtful, handy and capable in farm work, especially in all that
+concerned the care of sheep, for which he had a natural and probably
+an inherited instinct. He was also held in great regard by the
+Rev. David Ure, the earnest and kindly minister of the Burgher
+Meeting-house, which stood behind the Castle woods at the lower end of
+Ayton village. The family were of that "strict, not strictest species
+of Presbyterian Dissenter," and John attended also the Bible-class and
+Fellowship Meeting. The family of John Murray, a ploughman or "hind"
+from the Duns district, and now settled at Bastleridge, the next farm
+to Ayton Hill, also attended Mr. Ure's church. An intimacy sprang up
+between the two families. It ripened into affection between John
+Cairns and Alison, John Murray's only daughter, and in June 1814 they
+were united in marriage. The two eldest daughters of the Cairns family
+had already gone to situations, and were soon to have homes of their
+own. The grand old mother, who had been for so many years both father
+and mother to her children, was beginning to feel the infirmities of
+age. When, therefore, the young couple took up housekeeping, she left
+the home and the work at Ayton Hill to them, and with her youngest
+daughter went over to live in Ayton.
+
+John Cairns and his wife were in many respects very unlike one
+another. He was of a grave, quiet, and somewhat anxious temperament,
+almost morbidly scrupulous where matters of conscience and
+responsibility were concerned. She, on the other hand, was always
+hopeful, making light of practical difficulties, and by her untiring
+energy largely helping to make these disappear. She had a great
+command of vigorous Scotch, and a large stock of homely proverbs,
+of which she made frequent and apposite use. Both husband and wife
+were excellently well read in their Bibles, and both were united
+in the fear of God. Built on this firm foundation, their union of
+twenty-seven years was a singularly happy one, and their different
+temperaments contributed to the common stock what each of them
+separately lacked. Ayton Hill remained their home for six years after
+their marriage, and here were born their three eldest children, of
+whom the youngest, John, is the subject of the present sketch.
+
+In the spring of 1820 the trust under which Ayton Hill had been worked
+for so many years was wound up, and a new tenant took the farm. It
+became necessary, therefore, for the shepherd to seek a new situation,
+and this brought about the first "flitting" in the family history. The
+Berwickshire hinds are somewhat notorious for their migratory habits,
+in which some observers have found a survival of the restlessness
+which characterised their ancestors in former times, and was alike
+the result and the cause of the old Border Forays. Be that as it may,
+every Whitsunday term-day sees the country roads thronged with carts
+conveying furniture and bedding from one farm to another. In front of
+the pile sits the hind's wife with her younger children, while the
+hind himself with his older boys and girls walks beside the horse, or
+brings up the rear, driving the family cow before him. In some cases
+there is a flitting every year, and instances have even been known in
+which anxiety to preserve an unbroken tradition of annual removals
+has been satisfied by a flitting from one house to another on the
+same farm.
+
+The Cairns family now entered on a period of migration of this kind,
+and in the course of eleven years they flitted no less than six times.
+Their first removal was from Ayton Hill to Oldcambus Mains, in the
+parish of Cockburnspath, where they came into touch with the Dunglass
+estate and the Stockbridge Church, with both of which they were in
+after-years to have so close a connection. The father had been engaged
+by the Dunglass factor to act, in the absence of a regular tenant, as
+joint steward and shepherd at Oldcambus, and the family lived in the
+otherwise unoccupied farmhouse. The two elder children attended a
+school less than a mile distant, and in their absence John, the
+youngest, who was now in his fourth year, used to cause no little
+anxiety to his careful mother by wandering out by himself dangerously
+near to the edge of the high sea-cliffs behind the farmhouse.
+
+At length, in a happy moment, he took it into his head to go to school
+himself; and, although he was too young for lessons, the schoolmaster
+allowed him to sit beside his brother and sister. When he was tired of
+sitting, tradition has it that the little fellow used to amuse himself
+by getting up and standing in the corner to which the school culprits
+were sent. Here he duly put on the dunce's cap which he had seen them
+wear, and which bore the inscription, "For my bad conduct I stand
+here."
+
+A tenant having been at length found for Oldcambus Mains, the family,
+which had been increased by the birth of three more children, removed
+back to the Ayton district, to the farm of Whiterigg, two miles from
+the village. The house which they occupied here is still pointed out,
+but it has been enlarged and improved since those days. At that time,
+like all the farm servants' dwellings in the district, it consisted
+of a single room with an earthen floor, an open unlined roof of red
+tiles, and rafters running across and resting on the wall at each
+side. There was a fireplace at one end and a window, and then a door
+at right angles to the fireplace. When the furniture came to be put
+in, the two box-beds with their sliding panels were set up facing the
+fireplace; they touched the back wall at one end, and left a small
+space free opposite to the door at the other. The beds came almost,
+if not quite, up to the level of the rafters, and screened off behind
+them perhaps a third of the entire space, which was used as a lumber
+closet or store. Above the rafters, well furnished with _cleeks_ for
+the family stock of hams, there was spread, in lieu of a ceiling, a
+large sheet of canvas or coarse unbleached cotton. There was a table
+under the window, a _dresser_ with racks for plates, etc., set up
+against the opposite wall, and an eight-day clock between the window
+and the fireplace. "Fixtures" were in such houses practically
+non-existent; the grate, which consisted merely of two or three bars
+or _ribs_, the iron _swey_ from which hung the large pot with its
+rudimentary feet, and, in some cases, even the window, were the
+property of the immigrants, and were carried about by them from
+farm to farm in their successive flirtings.
+
+When at Whiterigg, the children attended school at Ayton, and here
+young John learned his letters and made considerable progress in
+reading. After two years, the death of the Whiterigg farmer made
+another change necessary, and the family returned to the Dunglass
+estate and settled at Aikieside, a forester's cottage quite near
+to their former home at Oldcambus Mains, and within easy reach of
+Oldcambus School. Aikieside is in the Pease Dean, a magnificent wooded
+glen, crossed a little lower down by a famous bridge which carries
+the old post road from Edinburgh to Berwick over the Pease Burn at
+a height of nearly one hundred and thirty feet. A still older road
+crosses the stream close to its mouth, less than a mile below the
+bridge. The descent here is very steep on both sides, but it seems
+to have been even steeper in former times than it is now. This point
+in the old road is "the strait Pass at Copperspath," where Oliver
+Cromwell before the battle of Dunbar found the way to Berwick blocked
+by the troops of General Leslie, and of which he said that here
+"ten men to hinder are better than forty to make their way."
+
+Beautiful as the Pease Dean is, it has this drawback for those
+who live in the vicinity--especially if they happen to be anxious
+mothers--that it is infested with adders; and as these engaging
+reptiles were specially numerous and specially aggressive in the
+"dry year" 1826, it is not surprising that when, owing to the cottage
+at Aikieside being otherwise required, John Cairns was offered a
+house in the village of Cockburnspath, he and his wife gladly availed
+themselves of that offer. From Cockburnspath another removal was made
+in the following year to Dunglass Mill; and at last, in 1831, the much
+travelled family, now increased to eight, found rest in a house within
+the Dunglass grounds, after the father had received the appointment of
+shepherd on the home-farm, which he held during the rest of his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DUNGLASS
+
+
+The Lammermoor range, that "dusky continent of barren heath-hills,"
+as Thomas Carlyle calls it, runs down into the sea at St. Abb's Head.
+For the greater part of its length it divides Berwickshire from East
+Lothian; but at its seaward end there is one Berwickshire parish
+lying to the north of it--the parish of Cockburnspath. The land in
+this parish slopes down to the Firth of Forth; it is rich and well
+cultivated, and is divided into large farms, each of which has its
+group of red-roofed buildings, its substantial farmhouse, and its long
+tail of hinds' cottages. The seaward views are very fine, and include
+the whole of the rugged line of coast from Fast Castle on the east to
+Tantallon and North Berwick Law on the west. In the middle distance
+are the tower of Dunbar Church, the Bass Rock, and the Isle of May;
+and farther off is the coast of Fife, with Largo Law and the Lomonds
+in the background. The land is mostly bare of trees, but there is a
+notable exception to this in the profound ravines which come down from
+the hills to the sea, and whose banks are thickly clothed with fine
+natural wood.
+
+Of these, the Pease Dean has already been mentioned. Close beside
+it is the Tower Dean, so called from an ancient fortalice of the
+Home family which once defended it, and which stands beside a bridge
+held in just execration by all cyclists on the Great North Road.
+But, unquestionably, the finest of all the ravines in these parts
+is Dunglass Dean, which forms the western boundary of Cockburnspath
+parish, and divides Berwickshire from East Lothian. From the bridge by
+which the Edinburgh and Berwick road crosses the dean, at the height
+of one hundred feet above the bed of the stream, the view in both
+directions is extremely fine. About a hundred and fifty yards lower
+down is the modern railway bridge, which spans the ravine in one
+gigantic arch forty feet higher than the older structure that carries
+the road; and through this arch, above the trees which fill the glen,
+one gets a beautiful glimpse of the sea about half a mile away.
+
+Above the road-bridge, and to the right of the wooded dean, are the
+noble trees and parks of Dunglass grounds. The mansion-house, a
+handsome modern building, part of which rises to a height of five
+storeys, is built only some eight or ten feet from the brink of the
+dean, on its western or East Lothian side. About fifty yards farther
+west are the ivy-covered ruins of a fine Gothic church, whose massive
+square tower and stone roof are still tolerably complete. This church
+before the Reformation had collegiate rank, and is now the sole
+remaining relic of the ancient village of Dunglass. In former times
+the Dunglass estate belonged to the Earls of Home, whose second title,
+borne to this day by the eldest son of the house, is that of Lord
+Dunglass. But it was bought about the middle of the seventeenth
+century by the Halls, who own it still, and in whose family there
+has been a baronetcy since 1687. The laird at the time with which we
+are now dealing was Sir James Hall, whose epitaph in the old church
+at Dunglass bears that he was "a philosopher eminent among the
+distinguished men of an enquiring age." He was President of the Royal
+Society of Edinburgh for many years, and was an acknowledged expert
+in Natural Science, especially in Geology. His second son was the
+well-known Captain Basil Hall, R.N., the author of a once widely-read
+book of travels.
+
+Behind the church, and about a hundred yards to the west of the
+mansion-house, are the offices--stables, close boxes, coach-house,
+etc., all of a single storey, and built round a square paved
+courtyard. The coachman's house is on one side of this square, and the
+shepherd's on the other. The latter, which is on the side farthest
+from the "big house," has its back to the courtyard, and looks out
+across a road to its little bailyard and a fine bank of trees beyond
+it. It is neat and lightsome, but very small; consisting only of a
+single room thirteen feet by twelve, with a closet opening off it not
+more than six feet broad. How a family consisting of a father, mother,
+and eight children could be stowed away in it, especially at night, is
+rather a puzzling question. But we may suppose that, when all were at
+home, each of the two box-beds would be made to hold three, that a
+smaller bed in the closet would account for two more, and that for the
+accommodation of two of the younger children a sliding shelf would
+be inserted transversely across the foot of one of the box-beds.
+Certainly, an arrangement of this kind would fail to be approved by a
+sanitary inspector in our times; and even during the day, when all the
+family were on the floor together, there was manifest overcrowding.
+But the life was a country one, and could be, and was, largely spent
+in the open air, amid healthful surroundings and beautiful scenery.
+
+The income available for the support of such a large household seems
+to us in these days almost absurdly inadequate. The father's wages
+rarely exceeded £30 a year, and they never all his life reached £40.
+They were mostly paid in kind. So many bolls of oats, of barley and
+of peas, so many carts of coals, so many yards of growing potatoes,
+a cow's grass, the keep of two sheep and as many pigs, and a free
+house,--these, which were known as the _gains_, were the main items in
+the account. This system gave considerable opportunity for management
+on the part of a thrifty housewife, and for such management there were
+few to surpass the housewife in the shepherd's cottage at Dunglass.
+
+The food was plentiful but plain. Breakfast consisted of porridge
+and milk; dinner, in the middle of the day, of Scotch kail and pork,
+occasionally varied by herrings, fresh or salt according to the
+season, and with the usual accompaniments of potatoes and pease
+bannocks. At supper there was porridge again, or mashed potatoes
+washed down with draughts of milk, and often eaten with horn spoons
+out of the large pot which was set down on the hearth. Tea was only
+seen once a week--on Sunday afternoons. And so the young family grew
+up healthy and strong in spite of the overcrowding.
+
+Before the removal to Dunglass, the two eldest children had been taken
+from school to work in the fields, where they earned wages beginning
+at sixpence a day. Their education, however, was continued in some
+sort at a night-school. John and his younger brother James, and the
+twins, Janet and William, who came next in order, attended the parish
+school at Cockburnspath, a mile away. Cockburnspath is a village
+of about two hundred and fifty inhabitants, situated a little off
+the main road. It has a church with an ancient round tower, and a
+venerable market-cross rising from a platform of steps in the middle
+of the village street.
+
+On the south side of the street, just in front of the church, stood
+the old schoolhouse--a low one storey building, roofed with the red
+tiles characteristic of the neighbourhood, and built on to the
+schoolmaster's two-storey dwelling. The schoolmaster at this time
+was John M'Gregor, a man of ripe and accurate scholarship and quite
+separate individuality. The son of a Perthshire farmer, he had studied
+for the ministry at St. Andrews University, and had, it was said,
+fulfilled all the requirements for becoming a licentiate of the Church
+of Scotland except the sending in of one exercise, This exercise he
+could never be persuaded to send in, and that not because he had any
+speculative difficulties as to the truth of the Christian revelation,
+nor yet because he had any exaggerated misgivings as to his own
+qualifications for the work of the ministry; but because he preferred
+the teaching profession, and was, moreover, indignant at what he
+conceived to be the overbearing attitude which the ministers of the
+Established Church assumed to the parish schools and schoolmasters.
+This feeling ultimately became a kind of mania with him. He was at
+feud with his own parish minister, and never entered his church
+except when, arrayed in a blue cloak with a red collar, he attended
+to read proclamations of marriages; and he could make himself very
+disagreeable when the local Presbytery sent their annual deputation
+to examine his school. Yet he was essentially a religious man; he had
+a reverence for what was good, and he taught the Bible and Shorter
+Catechism to his scholars carefully and well.
+
+As he disliked the ministers, so he showed little deference to the
+farmers, who were in some sort the "quality" of the district, and to
+such of their offspring as came under his care. The farmers retaliated
+by setting up an opposition school in Cockburnspath, which survived
+for a few years; but it never flourished, for the common people
+believed in M'Gregor, whom they regarded as "a grand teacher," as
+indeed he was. He had a spare, active figure, wore spectacles, and
+took snuff. There was at all times an element of grimness in him, and
+he could be merciless when the occasion seemed to demand it. "Stark
+man he was, and great awe men had of him," but this awe had its roots
+in a very genuine respect for his absolutely just dealing and his
+masterful independence of character.
+
+John Cairns first went to Mr. M'Gregor's school when the family
+removed to Cockburnspath from Aikieside, and he made such progress
+that two years later, when he was ten years old, the master proposed
+that he should join a Latin class which was then being formed. This
+proposal caused great searchings of heart at home. His father, with
+anxious conscientiousness, debated with himself as to whether it would
+be right for him thus to set one of his sons above the rest. He could
+not afford to have them all taught Latin, so would it be fair to the
+others that John should be thus singled out from them? The mother, on
+the other hand, had no such misgivings, and she was clear that John
+must have his Latin. The ordinary school fees ranged from three to
+five shillings a quarter; but when Latin was taken they rose to seven
+and sixpence. Mr. M'Gregor had proposed to teach John Latin without
+extra charge, but both his father and his mother were agreed that to
+accept this kind offer was not to be thought of for a moment; and his
+mother was sure that by a little contriving and saving on her part
+the extra sum could be secured. The minister, Mr. Inglis, who was
+consulted in the matter, also pronounced strongly for the proposal,
+and so John was allowed to begin his classical studies.
+
+Within two years Greek had been added to the Latin; and, as the
+unavoidable bustle and noise which arose in the evening when the
+whole family were together in the one room of the house made study
+difficult, John stipulated with his mother that she should call him in
+the morning, when she rose, an hour before anybody else, to light the
+fire and prepare the breakfast. And so it happened that, if any of the
+rest of the family awoke before it was time to get up, they would see
+John studying his lesson and hear him conjugating his Greek verbs
+by the light of the one little oil-lamp that the house afforded.
+Perhaps, too, it was what he saw, in these early morning hours, of
+the unwearied and self-forgetful toil of his mother that taught him
+to be in an especial degree thoughtful for her comfort and considerate
+of her wants both then and in after-years.
+
+But his regular schooldays were now drawing to an end. His father,
+though engaged as the shepherd at Dunglass, had other duties of a very
+multifarious kind to discharge, and part of his shepherd work had been
+done for him for some time by his eldest son, Thomas. But Thomas was
+now old enough to earn a higher wage by other work on the home-farm
+or in the woods, and so it came to be John's turn to take up the work
+among the sheep. When his father told Mr. M'Gregor that John would
+have to leave school, the schoolmaster was so moved with regret at the
+thought of losing so promising a scholar, that he said that if John
+could find time for any study during the day he would be glad to have
+him come to his house two or three nights in the week, and to go over
+with him then what he had learned. As Mr. M'Gregor had become more and
+more solitary in his habits of late--he was a bachelor, and his aged
+mother kept house for him--this offer was considered to be a very
+remarkable proof of his regard, and it was all the more gratefully
+accepted on that account.
+
+It fortunately happened that the work to which John had now to turn
+his hand allowed him an opportunity of carrying on his studies without
+interfering with its efficiency. That work was of a twofold character.
+He had to "look" the sheep, and he had to "herd" them. The looking
+came first. Starting at six o'clock in the morning, accompanied by the
+faithful collie "Cheviot," he made a round of all the grass-parks on
+the home-farm, beginning down near the sea and thence working his way
+round to a point considerably higher up than the mansion-house. His
+instructions were to count the sheep in each field, so that he might
+be able to tell whether they were all there, and also to see whether
+they were all afoot and feeding. In the event of anything being wrong,
+he was to report it to his father. The circuit was one of three or
+four miles, and the last field to be looked was that in which were
+gathered the fifty or sixty sheep that were to be brought out to the
+unfenced lawns round the mansion-house and be herded there during
+the day.
+
+These sheep were generally to be found waiting close to the gate, and
+when it was opened they could quite easily find their own way down to
+their feeding-ground. As they passed slowly on, cropping the grass as
+they went, John was able to leave them and go home for his breakfast
+of porridge and milk. Breakfast having been despatched, and Cheviot
+fed, he once more wrapped his shepherd's plaid about him, remembering
+to put a book or two, and perhaps a piece of bannock, into the _neuk_
+of it, and set out to find his flock. There was usually little
+difficulty in doing so, for the sheep knew the way and did not readily
+wander out of it; while, even if they had deviated a little from the
+direct route, no great harm would at this stage of their passage have
+resulted. It was quite different when they came down to the lawns near
+the house. These were surrounded by ornamental shrubbery, and it was
+to keep the sheep from invading this and the adjacent flower-borders
+that the services of the herd-boy were required.
+
+What he had to do, then, after he had brought the sheep down, was to
+take his place on some knoll which commanded the ground where they
+were feeding, and keep an eye on them. If nothing disturbed them they
+would feed quietly enough, and a long spell of reading might be quite
+safely indulged in. If any of them showed signs of wandering out of
+bounds, a stroll in their direction, book in hand, would usually be
+quite sufficient, with or without Cheviot's aid, to turn them. And if
+a leading sheep were turned, the others would, sheep-like, follow the
+new lead thus imparted. This was the usual state of things in fine
+weather. In wet weather there were not the same possibilities of
+study, unless the feeding-ground happened to be in the neighbourhood
+of the old church, where sufficient shelter could be found for reading
+and the sheep could be watched through the open doorway. About four
+o'clock--in winter somewhat earlier--it was time to take the sheep
+back to the fold-field, and then the parks had to be again looked,
+this time in the reverse order, the shepherd's cottage being gained
+in time for supper.
+
+After supper, John would go into Cockburnspath to recite the lessons
+he had prepared to Mr. M'Gregor. The schoolmaster never prescribed any
+definite section to be learned; he left this to his pupil, in whose
+industry and interest in his work he had sufficient confidence.
+He rarely bestowed any praise. A grim smile of satisfaction, and
+sometimes a "Very well, sir," were all that he would vouchsafe; but
+to others he would be less reticent, and once he was heard to say,
+"I have so far missed my own way, but John Cairns will flourish yet."
+
+John is described as having been at this time a well-grown boy,
+somewhat raw-boned and loose-jointed, with an eager look, ruddy
+and healthy, and tanned with the sun, his hair less dark than it
+afterwards became. He was fond of schoolboy games--shinty, football,
+and the rest--and would play at marbles, even when the game went
+against him, until he had lost his last stake. Archery was another
+favourite amusement, and he was expert at making bows from the
+thinnings of the Dunglass yews, and arrows tipped with iron
+_ousels_--almost the only manual dexterity he possessed. Like all
+boys of his class, his usual dress was a brown velveteen jacket and
+waistcoat and corduroy trousers that had once been white.
+
+Along with the teaching he got from Mr. M'Gregor, there went another
+sort of education of a less formal kind which still deserves to be
+mentioned. Now that he was earning a wage,--it was about eightpence
+or tenpence a day,--which of course went into the common stock, he
+ventured occasionally to ask his mother for sixpence to himself. With
+this he could obtain a month's reading at the Cockburnspath library.
+A very excellent library this was, and during the three years of his
+herding he worked his way pretty well through it. It was especially
+strong in history and standard theology, and in these departments
+included such works as Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, Mitford's _History
+of Greece_, Russell's _Modern Europe_, Butler's _Analogy_, and Paley's
+_Evidences_. In biography and fiction it was less strong, but it had a
+complete set of the Waverley Novels in one of the early three-volume
+editions. When he went to Mr. M'Gregor's, John used often to take
+butter churned by his mother to the village shop, and the basket in
+which he carried it was capacious enough to hold a good load of books
+from the library on the return journey.
+
+All the family were fond of books, and the small store of volumes,
+mostly of old Scotch divinity, in the little bookcase at Dunglass was
+well thumbed. But reading of a lighter kind was also indulged in, and
+on winter nights, when the mother was plying her spinning-wheel and
+the father had taken down his cobbler's box and was busily engaged
+patching the children's shoes, it was a regular practice for John to
+sit near the dim oil-lamp and read to the rest. Sometimes the reading
+would be from an early number of Chambers's _Journal_, sometimes from
+Wilson's _Tales of the Borders_, which were then appearing--both of
+these being loans from a neighbour. But once a week there was always
+a newspaper to be read. It was often a week or a fortnight old, for,
+as it cost sixpence halfpenny, it was only by six or eight neighbours
+clubbing together that such a luxury could be brought within the reach
+of a working-man's family; but it was never so old as to be
+uninteresting to such eager listeners.
+
+But the most powerful of all the influences which affected John Cairns
+at this period of his life remains to be mentioned--that which came
+to him from his religious training and surroundings. The Christian
+religion has acted both directly and indirectly on the Scottish
+peasantry, and it has done so the more powerfully because of the
+democratic character of the Presbyterian form which that religion took
+in Scotland. Directly, it has changed their lives and has given them
+new motives and new immortal hopes. But it has also acted on them
+indirectly, doing for them in this respect much of what education and
+culture have done for others. It has supplied the element of idealism
+in their lives. These lives, otherwise commonplace and unlovely, have
+been lighted up by a perpetual vision of the unseen and the eternal;
+and this has stimulated their intellectual powers and has so widened
+their whole outlook upon life as to raise them high above those of
+their own class who lived only for the present. All who have listened
+to the prayers of a devout Scotch elder of the working-class must have
+been struck by this combination of spiritual and intellectual power;
+and one thing they must have specially noticed is that, unlike the
+elder of contemporary fiction, he expressed himself, not in broad
+Scotch but in correct and often stately Bible English.
+
+But this intellectual activity is often carried beyond the man in whom
+it has first manifested itself. It tends to reappear in his children,
+who either inherit it or have their own intellectual powers stimulated
+in the bracing atmosphere it has created. The instances of Robert
+Burns and Thomas Carlyle, who both came out of homes in which
+religion--and religion of the old Scottish type--was the deepest
+interest, will occur to everyone. Not the least striking illustration
+of this principle is shown in the case of John Cairns. In the life of
+his soul he owed much to the godly upbringing and Christian example
+shown to him by his parents; but the home at Dunglass, where religion
+was always the chief concern, was the nursery of a strong mind as well
+as of a strong soul, and both were fed from the same spring. In this
+case, as in so many others, spiritual strength became intellectual
+strength in the second generation.
+
+The Cairns family attended church at Stockbridge, a mile beyond
+Cockburnspath and two miles from Dunglass, and the father was an elder
+there from 1831 till his death. The United Secession--formerly the
+Burgher--Church at Stockbridge occupied a site conveniently central
+for the wide district which it served, but very solitary. It stood
+amid cornfields, on the banks of a little stream, and looked across to
+the fern-clad slopes of Ewieside, an outlying spur of the Lammermoors.
+Except the manse, and the beadle's cottage which adjoined it, there
+was no house within sight, nor any out of sight less than half a
+mile away.
+
+The minister at this time was the Rev. David M'Quater Inglis, a man of
+rugged appearance and of original and vigorous mental powers. He was a
+good scholar and a stimulating preacher, excelling more particularly
+in his expository discourses, or "lectures" as they used to be called.
+When he tackled some intricate passage in an Epistle, it was at times
+a little hard to follow him, especially as his utterance tended to be
+hesitating; but when he had finished, one saw that a broad clear road
+had been cut through the thicket, and that the daylight had been let
+in upon what before had been dim. "I have heard many preachers," said
+Dr. Cairns, in preaching his funeral sermon nearly forty years later,
+"but I have heard few whose sermons at their best were better than the
+best of his; and his everyday ones had a strength, a simplicity, and
+an unaffected earnestness which excited both thought and Christian
+feeling." Nor was he merely a preacher. By his pastoral visitations
+and "diets of examination" he always kept himself in close touch with
+his people, and he made himself respected by rich and poor alike.
+
+The shepherd's family occupied a pew at Stockbridge in front of the
+pulpit and just under the gallery, which ran round three sides of the
+church. That pew was rarely vacant on a Sunday. There was no herding
+to be done on that day, and in the morning the father looked the sheep
+in the parks himself that the herd-boy might have his full Sabbath
+rest. He came back in time to conduct family worship, this being
+the only morning in the week when it was possible for him to do so,
+although in the evening it was never omitted, and on Sunday evening
+was always preceded by a repetition of the Shorter Catechism. After
+worship the family set out for church, where the service began at
+eleven.
+
+The situation of Stockbridge, it has been already said, was solitary,
+but on Sundays, when the hour of worship drew near, the place lost its
+solitude. The roads in all directions were thronged with vehicles,
+men on horseback, and a great company on foot; the women wearing the
+scarlet cloaks which had not yet given place to the Paisley shawls
+of a later period, and each carrying, neatly wrapped in a white
+handkerchief, a Bible or Psalm-book, between whose leaves were a sprig
+or two of southernwood, spearmint, or other fragrant herb from the
+cottage garden.
+
+The service lasted about three hours. There was first a "lecture"
+and then a sermon, each about fifty minutes long; several portions
+of psalms were sung; and of the three prayers, the first, or "long
+prayer," was seldom less than twenty minutes in length. In summer
+there was an interval of half an hour between the lecture and the
+sermon, "when," says Mr. William Cairns, "there was opportunity for a
+delightful breathing-time, and the youths who were swift of foot could
+just reach the bottom of a hill whereon were plenteous blaeberries,
+and snatch a fearful joy if one could swallow without leaving the
+tell-tale marks on the lips and tongue."
+
+At the close of the afternoon service there was a Sunday school,
+chiefly conducted by Mr. Inglis himself, at which an examination
+on the sermon that had just been delivered formed an important part
+of the exercises. And tradition has it that the questioning and
+answering, which had at first been evenly distributed among the
+pupils, usually in the end came to resolve themselves pretty much into
+a dialogue between Mr. Inglis and John Cairns. It was here that the
+minister first came to close grips with his elder's son and took the
+measure of the lad's abilities. After he did so, his interest in
+John's classical studies was constant and helpful; and, although he
+gave him no direct assistance in them (if he had done so, he would
+have called down upon himself the wrath of Mr. M'Gregor), he was
+always ready to lend him books and give him useful advice.
+
+After three years at herding and at Mr. M'Gregor's, the question
+arose, and was the subject of anxious debate in the family councils,
+as to what was to be done with John. He was now sixteen. His elder
+brother, Thomas, had got a post under his father, whom he afterwards
+succeeded as shepherd at Dunglass. His elder sister had gone to a
+situation. And now James, the brother next younger than himself,
+had also left home to be apprenticed to a tailor. It was time for
+some decision to be come to with regard to him. Mr. M'Gregor was
+anxious that a superstructure should be built on the foundation
+laid by himself by his going to College. Mr. Inglis's advice was
+unhesitatingly given in the same direction. With his father, the old
+scruples arose about setting one of his children above the rest; but
+again his mother's chief concern was more about ways and means. His
+father's question was, _Ought_ it to be done? his mother's, _Can_ it
+be done? There were great difficulties in the way of answering this
+practical question in the affirmative. There were then no bursaries
+open for competition; and though the expenses at home were not so
+great as they had once been, now that three of the family had been so
+far placed in life, the University class-fees and the cost of living,
+even in the most frugal way, entailed an expense which was formidable
+enough. Still, the mother thought that this could be faced, and,
+in order to acquaint herself more fully with all the facts of the
+situation, she resolved to pay a long-promised visit to her youngest
+brother, who with his family was now living in Edinburgh. He was a
+carrier between that city and Jedburgh, and, though still in a
+comparatively humble way, was said to be doing well.
+
+The visit was a great success. Mrs. Cairns was most warmly received
+by her brother and his wife, who proposed that John should stay with
+them and share with their own family in what was going. This offer was
+gratefully accepted, so far as the question of lodging was concerned.
+As to board, John's mother had ideas of her own, and insisted on
+paying for it, if not in money at least in kind. Thus it was settled
+that John was to go to College, but nothing was settled beyond this.
+Perhaps his parents may have had their own wishes, and his minister
+and his schoolmaster their own expectations, about a career for him;
+but in the boy's unworldly heart there was nothing as yet beyond the
+desire for further learning and the earnest resolution to be not
+unworthy of the sacrifices which had made the realisation of this
+desire possible. He worked at his herding up till the day before
+he left for the University, in the end of October 1834; and then,
+starting in the middle of the night with William Christison, the
+Cockburnspath carrier, he trudged beside the cart that conveyed the
+box containing his clothes and his scanty stock of books all the
+thirty-five miles between Dunglass and Edinburgh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+COLLEGE DAYS
+
+
+When John Cairns entered the University of Edinburgh in November 1834
+he passed into a world that was entirely strange to him. It would be
+difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between the
+low-roofed village school and the spacious quadrangle surrounded by
+heavily balustraded stone terraces and stately pillared façades, into
+which, at the booming of the hourly bell, there poured from the
+various classrooms a multitudinous throng of eager young humanity. And
+he himself in some mysterious way seemed to be changed almost beyond
+his own recognition. Instead of being the Jock Cairns who had herded
+sheep on the braes of Dunglass, and had carried butter to the
+Cockburnspath shop, he was now, as his matriculation card informed
+him, "Joannes Cairns, Civis Academiae Edinburgeniae;" he was addressed
+by the professor in class as "Mr. Cairns," and was included in his
+appeal to "any gentleman in the bench" to elucidate a difficult
+passage in the lesson of the day.
+
+He attended two classes this winter--that of "Humanity" or Latin
+taught by Professor Pillans, and that of Greek under the care of
+Professor George Dunbar. Pillans had been a master at Eton, and at a
+later period Rector of the Edinburgh High School. He was a little man
+with rosy cheeks, and was a sound scholar and an admirable teacher,
+whose special "fad" was Classical Geography. Dunbar had begun life as
+a working gardener at Ayton Castle. He had compiled a Greek Lexicon
+which had some repute in its day, but he was not an inspiring teacher,
+and his gruff manners made him far from popular.
+
+Trained by a country schoolmaster, and having no experience of
+competition except what a country school affords, John Cairns had
+until now no idea of his own proficiency relatively to that of others;
+and it was something of a revelation to him when he discovered how far
+the grounding he had received from Mr. M'Gregor enabled him to go. His
+classical attainments soon attracted notice, and at the end of the
+session, although he failed to win the Class Medals, he stood high
+in the Honours Lists, and was first in private Latin studies and in
+Greek prose. Nor were these the only interests that occupied him. A
+fellow-student, the late Dr. James Hardy, writes of him that from the
+first he was great in controversy, and that in the classroom during
+the ten minutes before the appearance of the professor, he was always
+the centre of a knot of disputants on the Voluntary Church question or
+some question of politics. Also it is recorded that, on the day after
+a Parliamentary election for the city, he had no voice left, having
+shouted it all away the day before in honour of the two successful
+Whig candidates.
+
+During this session, as had been previously arranged, he lodged in
+Charles Street with his mother's brother, whose eldest son, John
+Murray, shared his room. For this cousin, who was about his own age,
+he had always the greatest regard, and he was specially grateful
+to him for the kindness with which he helped him over many of the
+difficulties which, as a raw lad from the country, he experienced
+when he first came to live in the city. The friendship between the
+cousins remained unbroken--though their paths in life were widely
+different--till they died, within a fortnight of each other, nearly
+sixty years later.
+
+All through the winter a box travelled with the Cockburnspath carrier
+every three or four weeks between Edinburgh and Dunglass, taking with
+it on the outward journey clothes to be washed and mended, and on the
+return journey always including a store of country provisions--scones,
+oatmeal, butter, cheese, bacon, and potatoes. The letters that passed
+between the student and his family were also sent in the box, for
+as yet there was no penny post, and the postage of a letter between
+Dunglass and Edinburgh cost as much as sixpence halfpenny or
+sevenpence. Often, too, John would send home some cheap second-hand
+books, for he had a general commission to keep his eye on the
+bookstalls. Amongst these purchases was sometimes included a Bible,
+so that before the end of the winter each member of the family had
+a separate Bible to take to church or Sunday school.
+
+At the close of the winter session he accepted the invitation of
+another brother of his mother, who was a farmer at Longyester, near
+Gifford in East Lothian, on the northern fringe of the Lammermoors, to
+come and be tutor to his three boys during the summer. At Longyester
+he spent four very happy months in congenial work among kind people.
+He learned to ride, and more than once he rode along the hill-foots to
+Dunglass, twenty miles to the eastward, to spend the Sunday with his
+father and mother.
+
+During these months he also came into personal contact with a family
+whose influence on him during these early years was strong and
+memorable--the Darlings of Millknowe. Millknowe is a large sheep-farm
+in the heart of the Lammermoors, just where the young Whitadder winds
+round the base of Spartleton Law. The family at Millknowe, consisting
+at this time of three brothers and two sisters, all of whom had
+reached middle life, were relatives of his father, the connection
+dating from the time when his forebears were farmers in the same
+region. They were a notable family, full of all kinds of interesting
+lore, literary, scientific, and pastoral, and they exercised a
+boundless hospitality to all, whether gentle or simple, who came
+within their reach. One of them, a maiden sister, Miss Jean Darling,
+took a special charge of her young cousin, and in a special degree won
+his confidence. From the first she understood him. She saw the power
+that was awakening within him, and was, particularly in his student
+days, his friend and adviser.
+
+As the summer of 1835 advanced, it came to be a grave question with
+him whether he could return to college in the ensuing winter. His
+father had had a serious illness; and, though he was now recovering,
+there was a doctor's bill to settle, and he still required more care
+and better nourishment than ordinary. Cairns was afraid that, with
+these extra expenses to be met, his own return to College might
+involve too serious a drain on the family resources. While matters
+were in this state, and while he was still at Longyester, he received
+a request from Mr. Trotter, the schoolmaster of his native parish of
+Ayton, to come and assist him in the school and with the tuition of
+boarders in his house. This offer was quite in the line of the only
+ideas as to his future life he had as yet entertained; for, so far
+as he had thought seriously on the subject, he had thought of being a
+teacher. On the other hand, while his great ambition was to return to
+the University, the fact that most of his class-fellows in the past
+session had been older than himself suggested to him that he could
+quite well afford to delay a year before he returned.
+
+So he went to Ayton, lodging while there with his father's youngest
+sister, Nancy, who had come thither from Ayton Hill along with her
+mother, when her brother John was married in 1814, and had remained
+there ever since. Cairns had not been two months in Ayton before his
+responsibilities were considerably increased. Mr. Trotter resigned his
+office, and the heritors asked the assistant to take charge of the
+school until a new teacher should be appointed. There were between one
+hundred and fifty and two hundred children in the school; he was the
+sole teacher, and he was only seventeen. Moreover, some delay occurred
+before the teacher who had been appointed to succeed Mr. Trotter could
+come to take up his work. But Cairns proved equal to the situation.
+The tradition is that his rule was an exceedingly stern one, that he
+kept the children hard at work, and that he flogged extensively and
+remorselessly.
+
+When the new master arrived upon the scene, he subsided into his
+original post of assistant. It had been his original intention to go
+back to the University in November 1836; but as that date approached
+it became evident that the financial difficulty was not yet removed,
+so he accepted an engagement to continue his work in Ayton for another
+year.
+
+His stay in Ayton was a very happy one. He liked his work, and had
+several warm friends in the village and district. Among these were Mr.
+Ure, the kindly old minister who had married his parents and baptized
+himself. Then there was Mr. Stark, minister of another Secession
+church in the village--a much younger man than Mr. Ure, but a good
+scholar and a well-read theologian. There was also a fellow-student,
+Henry Weir, whose parents lived in Berwick, and who used often to walk
+out to Ayton to see him, Cairns returning the visits, and seeing for
+the first time, under Weir's auspices, the old Border town in which
+so much of his own life was to be spent.
+
+All this while he was working hard at his private studies. To these
+studies he gave all the time that was not taken up by his teaching.
+He read at his meals, and so far into the night that his aunt became
+alarmed for his health. He worked his way through a goodly number of
+the Greek and Latin classics, in copies borrowed from the libraries of
+the two ministers; and he not only read, but analysed and elaborately
+annotated what he read. But in the notes of the books read during the
+year 1837 a change becomes evident. It can be seen that he took more
+and more to the study of theology and Christian evidences, and his
+note-books are full of references to Baxter and Jeremy Taylor, to
+Robert Hall, Chalmers, and Keith.
+
+At length in the summer a crisis was reached. A letter to his father,
+which has not been preserved, announced that his views and feelings
+with regard to spiritual things had undergone a great and far-reaching
+change, and that religion had become to him a matter of personal and
+paramount concern. Another letter to Henry Weir on the same subject is
+of great interest. It is written in the unformed and somewhat stilted
+style which he had not yet got rid of, and, with characteristic
+reticence, it deals only indirectly with the details of the experience
+through which he has passed, being in form a disquisition on the
+importance of personal religion, and a refutation of objections which
+might occur to his correspondent against making it the main interest
+of his life.
+
+"My dear Henry," the letter concludes, "I most earnestly wish that you
+would devote the energies of your mind to the attentive consideration
+of religion, and I have no doubt that, through the tuition of the
+Divine Spirit, you would speedily arrive at the same conviction of the
+importance of the subject with myself, and then our friendship would,
+by the influence of those feelings which religion implants, be more
+hallowed and intimate than before. I long ardently to see you."
+
+The experience which has thus been described caused no great rift with
+the past, nor did it produce any great change in his outward life. He
+did not dedicate himself to the ministry; he did not, so far as can be
+gathered, even become a member of the Church; and although for a short
+time he talked of concentrating his energies on the Greek Testament,
+to the disparagement of the Greek and Latin classical writers, within
+two months we find him back at his old studies and strenuously
+preparing for the coming session at College. But a new power had
+entered into his life, and that power gradually asserted itself as
+the chief and dominating influence there.
+
+Cairns returned to the University in the late autumn of 1837,
+enrolling himself in the classes of Latin, Greek, and Logic. Although
+he maintained his intimacy with his uncle's family, he now went into
+lodgings in West Richmond Street, sharing a room with young William
+Inglis, son of the minister at Stockbridge, then a boy at the High
+School. Here is the description he gives to his parents of his
+surroundings and of the daily routine of his life: "The lodging which
+we occupy is a very good room, measuring 18 feet by 16 feet, in every
+way neat and comfortable. The walls are hung with pictures, and the
+windows adorned with flowers. The rent is 3s. 6d., with a promise of
+abatement when the price of coals is lowered. This is no doubt a great
+sum of money, but I trust it will be amply compensated by the honesty,
+cleanliness, economy, and good temper of the landlady.... I shall give
+you the details of my daily life:--Rise at 8; 8.30-10, Latin class;
+10-1, private study; 1-2, Logic; 2-3, Greek class; 4-12.30, private
+study. As to meals--breakfast on porridge and treacle at 8.15; dine on
+broth and mutton, or varieties of potatoes with beef or fish, at 3.15;
+coffee at 7; if hungry, a little bread before bed. I can live quite
+easily and comfortably on 3s. or 3s. 6d. per week, and when you see
+me you will find that I have grown fat on students' fare."
+
+At the close of the session he thus records the result of his work in
+one of the classes:--
+
+"There is a circumstance which but for its connection with the subject
+of clothes I should not now mention. You are aware that a gold medal
+is given yearly by the Society of Writers to the Signet to the best
+scholar in the Latin class. Five are selected to compete for it by
+the votes of their fellow-students. Having been placed in the number
+a fortnight ago, I have, after a pretty close trial, been declared
+the successful competitor. The grand sequence is this, that at the
+end of the session I must come forward in the presence of many of
+the Edinburgh grandees and deliver a Latin oration as a prelude to
+receiving the medal. Although I have little fear that an oration will
+be forthcoming of the ordinary length and quality, I doubt that the
+trepidation of so unusual a position will cause me to break down in
+the delivery of it; but we shall see. The reference of this subject
+to the clothes you will at once discern. The trousers are too tight,
+and an addition must be made to their length. The coat is too wide in
+the body, too short and tight in the sleeves, and too spare in the
+skirt. As to my feelings I shall say nothing, because I do not look
+upon the honour as one of a kind that ought to excite the least
+elation ... I would not wish you to blazon it, nor would I, but for
+the cause mentioned, have taken any notice of it."
+
+Besides this medal, he obtained the first place in the Greek class. In
+Logic he stood third, and he carried off a number of other prizes. He
+had been in every way the better for the interruption in his course;
+his powers had matured, he knew what he could do, and he was able to
+do it at will, and from this point onward he was recognised as easily
+the first man of his time in the University. But he had now to look
+about him for employment in the vacation; and for a while, in spite
+of the successes of the past session, he was unable to find it, and
+was glad to take some poorly paid elementary teaching. But at length,
+by the good offices of one of the masters in the Edinburgh Academy,
+backed by the strong recommendation of Professor Pillans, he became
+tutor in the family of Mr. John Donaldson, W.S., of whose house, 124
+Princes Street, he became an inmate. "What I want," said Mr. Donaldson
+to the professor, "is a gentleman." "Well," replied Pillans, "I am
+sending you first-rate raw material; we shall see what you will make
+of it." He retained this situation till the close of his University
+course, to the entire satisfaction of his employer and his family, and
+with great comfort to himself--the salary being more than sufficient
+for his simple needs.
+
+He had, as we have seen, attended the class of Logic during his
+second session; but as he was then devoting his main strength to
+classics, and as the subject was as yet quite unfamiliar to him, he
+did not fully give himself up to it nor yield to the influence of
+the professor, Sir William Hamilton. But during the summer, while he
+was at Mr. Donaldson's, in going again over the ground that he had
+traversed during the past session, he was led to read the works of
+Descartes, Bacon, and Leibnitz, with the result that mental philosophy
+at once became the supreme interest of his academic life, and, when
+the winter came round again, he yielded entirely to its spell and to
+that of the great man who was then its most distinguished British
+exponent.
+
+The class of Hamilton's that he attended in the session of 1838-39 was
+that of Advanced Metaphysics. It so happened that at that time a hot
+controversy was going on about this very class. The Edinburgh Town
+Council, who were the patrons of Hamilton's chair, claimed also the
+right to decide as to what subjects the professor should lecture on,
+and pronounced Metaphysics to be "an abstruse subject, not generally
+considered as of any great or permanent utility." But, while this
+controversy was raging without, within all was calm. "We were quietly
+engaged"--wrote Cairns twenty years later--"in our discussions as
+to the existence of the external world while the storm was raging
+without, and only felt it to be another form of the _non-ego_; while
+the contrast between the singular gentleness and simplicity of our
+teacher in his dealings with his pupils, and his more impassioned
+qualities in controversy, became more remarkable."[1] Hamilton's
+philosophy may not now command the acceptance that once belonged to
+it, and that part of it which has been most influential may be put
+to-day to a use of which he did not dream, and of which he would not
+have approved, but Hamilton himself--"the black eagle of the desert,"
+as the "Chaldee Manuscript" calls him--was a mighty force. The
+influence of that vehement and commanding personality on a generation
+of susceptible young men was deep and far-reaching. He seized and held
+the minds of his students until they were able to grasp what he had to
+give them,--until, in spite of the toil and pain it cost them, they
+were _made_ to grasp it. And he further trained them in habits of
+mental discipline and intellectual integrity, which were of quite
+priceless value to them. "I am more indebted to you," wrote Cairns to
+him in 1848, "for the foundation of my intellectual habits and tastes
+than to any other person, and shall bear, by the will of the Almighty,
+the impress of your hand through any future stage of existence."
+
+[Footnote 1: _Memoir of Sir W. Hamilton_, p. 231.]
+
+Cairns was first in Hamilton's class at the close of the session, and
+also first in Professor John Wilson's Moral Philosophy Class. "Of the
+many hundreds of students," Wilson wrote four years later, "whose
+career I have watched during the last twenty years, not one has given
+higher promise of excellence than John Cairns; his talents are of the
+highest order; his attainments in literature, philosophy, and science
+rare indeed; and his character such as to command universal respect."
+
+This winter he joined with eight or nine of Hamilton's most
+distinguished students in forming the "Metaphysical Society," which
+met weekly for the purpose of discussing philosophical questions. In a
+Memoir which he afterwards wrote of John Clark, one of the founders of
+this Society, he thus describes the association that led to its being
+formed, and that was further cemented by its formation: "Willingly
+do I recall and linger upon these days and months, extending
+even to years, in which common studies of this abstract nature bound
+us together. It was the romance--the poetry--of speculation and
+friendship. All the vexed questions of the schools were attempted by
+our united strength, after our higher guide had set the example. The
+thorny wilds of logic were pleasant as an enchanted ground; its driest
+technicalities treasured up as unspeakably rare and precious. We
+stumbled on, making discoveries at every step, and had all things
+common. Each lesson in mental philosophy opened up some mystery of our
+immortal nature, and seemed to bring us nearer the horizon of absolute
+truth, which again receded as we advanced, and left us, like children
+pursuing the rainbow, to resume the chase. In truth, we had much of
+the character of childhood in these pursuits--light-heartedness,
+wonder, boundless hope, engrossment with the present, carelessness
+of the future. Our old world daily became new; and the real world of
+the multitude to us was but a shadow. It was but the outer world,
+the _non-ego_, standing at the mercy of speculation, waiting to be
+confirmed or abolished in the next debate; while the inner world, in
+which truth, beauty, and goodness had their eternal seat, should still
+survive and be all in all. The play of the intellect with these subtle
+and unworldly questions was to our minds as inevitable as the stages
+of our bodily growth. Happy was it for us that the play of affection
+was also active--nay, by sympathy excited to still greater liveliness;
+and that a higher wisdom suffered us not in all these flowery mazes
+to go astray."[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Fragments of College and Pastoral Life_, pp. 24-25.]
+
+From indications contained in the brief Memoir from which this
+extract is taken, as well as from references in his correspondence,
+it would appear that about this time he subjected his religious beliefs
+to a careful scrutiny in the light cast upon them by his philosophical
+studies. From this process of testing and strain he emerged with his
+faith established on a yet firmer basis than before. One result of
+this experience may perhaps be found in a letter to his father,
+in which he tells him that he has been weighing the claims of the
+Christian ministry as his future calling in life. He feels the
+force of its incomparable attractions, but doubts whether he is
+fitted in elevation and maturity of character to undertake so vast
+a responsibility. Besides, he is painfully conscious of personal
+awkwardness in the common affairs of life, and unfitness for the
+practical management of business. And so he thinks he will take
+another year to think of it, during which he will complete his
+College course.
+
+He spent the summer of 1839 with the Donaldson family at their country
+seat at Auchairn, near Ballantrae, in south Ayrshire, occupying
+most of his leisure hours in mathematical and physical studies in
+preparation for the work of the coming winter. In the session of
+1839-40, his last at the University, he attended the classes of
+Natural Philosophy and Rhetoric, taking the first place in the latter
+and only just missing it in the former. He attended, besides, Sir
+William Hamilton's private classes, and was much at his house and in
+his company. In April 1841 he took his M.A. degree, coming out first
+in Classics and Philosophy, and being bracketed first in Mathematics.
+Among his fellow-students his reputation was maintained not merely by
+the honours he gained in the class lists, but by his prowess in the
+debating arena. Besides continuing his membership in the Metaphysical
+Society, he had also been, since the spring of 1839, a member of
+the Diagnostic, one of the most flourishing of the older students'
+debating societies. Of the Diagnostic he speedily became the life and
+soul, and discussed with ardour such questions as the Repeal of the
+Corn Laws, Vote by Ballot, and the Exclusion of Bishops from the
+House of Lords. One memorable debate took place on the Spiritual
+Independence of the Church, then the most burning of all Scottish
+public questions. The position of the Non-Intrusion party in the
+Established Church was maintained by Cairns's friend Clark, while he
+himself led on the Voluntary side. The debate lasted two nights, and,
+to quote the words of one who was present, "Cairns in reply swept all
+before him, winning a vote from those who had come in curiosity, and
+securing a large Liberal majority. Amidst a scene of wild enthusiasm
+we hoisted his big form upon our shoulders, and careered round the old
+quadrangle in triumph. Indeed he was the hero of our College life,
+leaving all others far behind, and impressing us with the idea that
+he had a boundless future before him."[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Life and Letters_, pp. 94-95.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE STUDENT OF THEOLOGY
+
+
+Over Cairns's life during his last session at the University there
+hung the shadow of a coming sorrow. His father's health, which had
+never been robust, and had been failing for some time, at length quite
+broke down; and it soon became apparent that, although he might linger
+for some time, there was no hope of his recovery. In the earlier days
+of his illness the father was able to write, and many letters passed
+between him and his student son. The following extracts from his
+letters reveal the character of the man, and surely furnish an
+illustration of what was said in a former chapter about the educative
+effect of religion on the Scottish working-man:--
+
+
+"DUNGLASS, _Dec_, 23,1839.
+
+"I would not have you think that I am overlooking the Divine agency in
+what has befallen me. I desire to ascribe all to His glory and praise,
+who can bring order out of confusion and light out of darkness; and I
+desire to look away from human means to Him who is able to kill and to
+make alive, knowing that He doth not grieve willingly nor afflict the
+children of men."
+
+
+"DUNGLASS, _Jan_. 5, 1840.
+
+"As I have no great pain except what arises from coughing, I have
+reason to bless the Lord, who is dealing so bountifully with me....
+It would be unpardonable in me were I not endeavouring to make myself
+familiar with death in the forms and aspects in which he presents
+himself to the mind. Doubts and fears sometimes arise lest I should
+be indulging in a false and presumptuous hope, and, as there is great
+danger lest we should be deceived in this momentous concern, we cannot
+be too anxious in ascertaining whether our hope be that of the Gospel,
+as set forth in His Word of truth. Still, through the grace and mercy
+of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom, I trust upon scriptural grounds, I
+can call my Saviour, I am enabled to view death as a friend and as
+deprived of its sting, and this is a source of great comfort to me and
+cheers my drooping mind. I can say that my Beloved is mine and I am
+His, and that He will make all things to work together for His own
+glory and my eternal good. Dear son, I have thus opened my mind to
+you, and I trust that your prayers will not be wanting that my faith
+may be strengthened, and that all the graces of the Holy Spirit may
+abound in me, to the glory of God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
+
+
+During this and part of the next year Cairns remained in Mr.
+Donaldson's family, and his relations with that family as a whole, as
+well as his special work in the tuition of the young son and daughter
+of the house, were of the most agreeable kind. He had by this time,
+however, formed some intimate friendships in Edinburgh, and there were
+several pleasant and interesting houses that were always open to him.
+One of these deserves special mention. Among his most intimate College
+friends was James McGibbon Russell, a distinguished student of Sir
+William Hamilton, and one of the founders of the Metaphysical Society.
+Russell was the son of a Perthshire parish minister, but his parents
+were dead, and he lived with an uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Archibald
+Wilson, whose own family consisted of two sons and three daughters.
+Cairns was introduced by Russell to the Wilson family, and soon became
+intimate with them. His special friend--at last the dearest friend
+he had in this world--was the younger son, George, afterwards the
+well-known chemist and Professor of Technology in the University
+of Edinburgh. No two men could be less alike--George Wilson with a
+bright, alert, nimble mind; Cairns with an intellect massive like his
+bodily frame, and characterised chiefly by strength and momentum; and
+yet the two fitted into each other, and when they really got to know
+each other it might truly be said of them that the love between them
+was wonderful, passing the love of women.
+
+By the midsummer of 1840 Cairns had come to a final decision about his
+future calling. "I have," he wrote to his father on 13th June, "after
+much serious deliberation and prayer to God for direction, made up my
+mind to commence this year the study of divinity, with a view to the
+office of the ministry of the Gospel. I pray you, do implore the grace
+of God on my behalf, after this very grave and solemn determination."
+
+The Secession Church, to which he belonged, and to whose ministry he
+desired to seek admission, had no theological tutors who were set
+apart for the work of teaching alone. Its professors, of whom there
+were four, were ministers in charges, who lectured to the students
+during the two holiday months of August and September. The curriculum
+of the "Divinity Hall," as it was called, consisted of five of these
+short sessions. During the remaining ten months of each year the
+student, except that he had to prepare a certain number of exercises
+for the Presbytery which had him under its charge, was left very much
+to do as he pleased.
+
+Cairns entered the Hall, at that time meeting in Glasgow, in the
+August of 1840. Of the four professors who were on the staff of the
+institution, and all of whom were capable men, only two need here
+be mentioned. These were Dr. Robert Balmer of Berwick and Dr.
+John Brown of Edinburgh. Dr. Balmer was a clear-headed, fair-minded
+theologian--in fact, so very fair, and even generous, was he wont
+to be in dealing with opponents that he sometimes, quite unjustly,
+incurred the suspicion of being in sympathy, if not in league, with
+these opponents. He is specially interesting to us in this place,
+because Cairns succeeded him first in his pulpit, and then, after a
+long interval, in his chair. Dr. Brown, the grandson and namesake of
+the old commentator of Haddington, was a man of noble presence and
+noble character, whose personality "embedded in the translucent amber
+of his son's famous sketch" is familiarly known to all lovers of
+English literature. He was the pioneer of the scientific exposition
+of the Scriptures in the Scottish pulpit, and was one of the first
+exegetical theologians of his time. His point of view may be seen in a
+frequent criticism of his on a student's discourse: "That is truth and
+very important truth, but it is not _the_ truth that is taught in this
+passage." Being so, it was simply "matter in the wrong place," _dirt_
+to be cleared away as speedily as possible.
+
+Cairns had been first attracted to Dr. Brown by his speeches on the
+Annuity Tax, an Edinburgh ecclesiastical impost for which he had
+suffered the spoiling of his goods, and he had been for more than a
+year a member of his church in Broughton Place; but it was only now
+that he came to know him really well. Henceforth his admiration for
+Dr. Brown, and the friendship to which Dr. Brown admitted him, were
+to be amongst the most powerful influences of his life. Among his
+fellow-students at the Hall were several young men of brilliant
+promise, such as John Ker, who had been first prizeman in the Logic
+class in Hamilton's first session, W.B. Robertson, Alexander MacEwen,
+Joseph Leckie, and William Graham. Of these, Graham, bright, witty,
+versatile, the most notorious of punsters and the most illegible of
+writers, was his chief intimate, and their friendship continued
+unbroken and close for half a century.
+
+But meanwhile the shadow was deepening over the home at Dunglass. All
+through the autumn and early winter his father was slowly sinking. He
+was only fifty-one, but he was already worn out; and his disease, if
+disease it might be called, had many of the symptoms of extreme old
+age. His son saw him for the last time near the close of the year.
+"I cannot say," he wrote to Miss Darling, "that depression of spirits
+was the only, or even the chief, emotion with which I bade farewell
+to my father. There was something so touching in his patience and
+resignation, so calm and inwrought in his meek submission to the
+Divine will, that it affected me more strongly than raptures of
+religious joy could have done. He displays the same evenness of temper
+in the sight of death as has marked his equable and consistent life."
+
+He died in the early morning of 3rd January 1841. His son William thus
+describes the scene: "It was the first time any of us except our
+mother had looked on the face of the dying in the act of departing,
+and that leaves an impression that can never be effaced. When the end
+came, and each had truly realised what had happened, our mother in a
+broken voice asked that 'the Books' might be laid on the table; then
+she gave out that verse in the 107th Psalm--
+
+  'The storm is changed into a calm
+    At his command and will;
+  So that the waves that raged before,
+    Now quiet are and still.'
+
+
+It was her voice, too, that raised the tune. Then she asked Thomas to
+read a chapter of the Bible and afterwards to pray. We all knelt down,
+and Thomas made a strong effort to steady his voice, but he failed
+utterly; then the dear mother herself lifted the voice of thanksgiving
+for the victory that had been won, and after that the neighbours were
+called in."[4]
+
+Cairns was soon to have further experience of anxiety in respect to
+the health of those who were near to him. Towards the close of the
+year in which his father died, his brother William, who had almost
+completed his apprenticeship to a mason at Chirnside, in Berwickshire,
+was seized with inflammation, and for some weeks hung between life and
+death. At length he recovered sufficiently to be removed under his
+elder brother's careful and loving supervision to the Edinburgh
+Infirmary, where he remained for four months. During all that time
+Cairns visited his brother twice every day, he taught himself to apply
+to the patient the galvanic treatment which had been prescribed, and
+brought him an endless supply of books, periodicals, and good things
+to eat and smoke.
+
+
+[Footnote 4: It would appear that it was not an uncommon custom in
+Scotland in former times to have family worship immediately after
+a death. Perhaps, too, this verse from the 107th Psalm was the one
+usually sung on such occasions. There may be a reminiscence of this,
+due to its author's Seceder training, in a passage in Carlyle's
+_Oliver Cromwell_, where, after describing the Protector's death,
+and the grief of his daughter Lady Fauconberg, he goes on to say,
+"Husht poor weeping Mary! Here is a Life-battle right nobly done.
+Seest thou not
+
+  'The storm is changed into a calm
+    At his command and will;
+  So that the waves that raged before,
+    Now quiet are and still.
+
+  Then are _they_ glad, because at rest
+    And quiet now they be:
+  So to the haven he them brings,
+    Which they desired to see.'"
+
+
+In the end of 1842 George Wilson was told by an eminent surgeon that
+he must choose between certain death and the amputation of a foot
+involving possible death. He agreed at once to the operation being
+performed, but begged for a week in which to prepare for it. He had
+always been a charming personality, and had lived a life that was
+outwardly blameless; but he had never given very serious thought to
+religion. Now, however, when he was face to face with death, the great
+eternal verities became more real to him, and during the week of
+respite the study of the New Testament and the counsel and sympathy
+and prayers of his friend Cairns prepared him to face his trial with
+calmness, and with "a trembling hope in Christ" in his heart. The
+two friends, who had thus been brought so closely together, were
+henceforth to be more to each other than they had ever been before.
+
+The next year, 1843, was a memorable one in the ecclesiastical history
+of Scotland. Cairns, though not sympathising with the demand of the
+Non-Intrusion party in the Church of Scotland for absolute spiritual
+independence within an Established Church, had an intense admiration
+for Chalmers, and was filled with the greatest enthusiasm when he
+and the party whom he led on the great 18th of May clung fast to
+the Independence and left the Establishment behind them. Indeed his
+enthusiasm ran positively wild, for it is recorded that, when the
+great procession came out of St. Andrew's Church, Cairns went
+hurrahing and tossing up his hat in front of it and all the way down
+the hill to Tanfield Hall. To Miss Darling, who had no sympathy with
+the Free Church movement, he wrote: "I know our difference of opinion
+here. But you will pardon me for saying that I have never felt more
+profound emotions of gratitude to God, of reverence for Christianity,
+of admiration of moral principle, and of pride in the honesty and
+courage of Scotsmen, than I did on that memorable day."
+
+In the autumn of this year he was able to carry out a project which
+he had had before him, and for which he had been saving up his money
+for a long time. This was the spending of a year on the Continent.
+It was by no means so common in those days as it has since become for
+a Scottish theological student to attend a German University. Indeed,
+until the early Forties of last century, such a thing was scarcely
+known. Then, however, the influence of Sir William Hamilton, and the
+interest in German thought which his teaching stimulated, created the
+desire to learn more about it at its source.
+
+It is natural that this movement should have affected the students of
+the Secession Church before it reached those of the Establishment; for
+not only were they less occupied with the great controversy of the day
+and its consequences, but their short autumn session left them free
+to take either a winter or a summer _semester_, or both, at a German
+University without interrupting their course at home. The late Dr.
+W.B. Robertson of Irvine used to lay claim to having been the pioneer
+of these "landlouping students of divinity." John Ker and others
+followed him; and when Cairns set out in 1843, quite a large company
+of old friends were expected to meet at Berlin. Cairns's departure was
+delayed by the illness of James Russell, who was to have accompanied
+him, but he set out towards the end of October. He had accepted an
+appointment as _locum tenens_ for four weeks in an English Independent
+chapel at Hamburg, which delayed his arrival at Berlin until after
+the winter _semester_ had commenced. But this interlude was greatly
+enjoyed both by himself and by the little company of English merchants
+who formed his first pastoral charge, and who, on a vacancy occurring,
+made a strong but fruitless attempt to induce him to remain as their
+permanent minister.
+
+Arrived in Berlin, he joined his friends--Nelson, Graham, Wallace,
+and Logan Aikman. With Nelson he shared a room in the Luisenstrasse,
+where they set up that household god of all German students--a
+"coffee-machine," with the aid of which, and some flaming _spiritus_,
+they brewed their morning and evening beverage. They dined in the
+middle of the day at a neighbouring restaurant, on soup, meat,
+vegetables, and black bread, at a cost of threepence.
+
+At the University, Cairns heard four or five lectures daily,
+taking among others the courses of Neander on Christian Dogmatics,
+Trendelenburg on History of Philosophy, and Schelling, the last of
+the great philosophers of the preceding generation, on Introduction
+to Philosophy. Of these, Schelling impressed him least, and Neander
+most. Through life he had a deep reverence for Neander, whom he
+regarded, with perhaps premature enthusiasm, as the man who shared
+with Schleiermacher the honour of restoring Germany to a believing
+theology.
+
+Here is the description he gives of him in a letter from Berlin to
+George Wilson: "Suppose yourself in a large square room filled with
+Studiosi, each with his inkstand and immense _Heft_ before him and
+ready to begin, when precisely at 11.15 a.m. in shuffles a little
+black Jew, without hat in hand or a scrap of paper, and strides up to
+a high desk, where he stands the whole time, resting his elbows upon
+it and never once opening his eyes or looking his class in the face;
+the worst type of Jewish physiognomy in point of intellect, though
+without its cunning or sensuality; the face meaningless, pale, and
+sallow, with low forehead, and nothing striking but a pair of enormous
+black eyebrows. The figure is dressed in a dirty brown surtout, blue
+plush trousers, and dirty top-boots. It begins to speak. The voice is
+loud and clear, and marches on with academic stateliness and gravity,
+and even something of musical softness mixes with its notes. Suddenly
+the speaker turns to a side. It is to spit, which act is repeated
+every second sentence. You now see in his hands a twisted pen, which
+is gradually stripped of every hair and then torn to pieces in the
+course of his mental working. His feet, too, begin to turn. The left
+pirouettes round and round, and at the close of an emphatic period
+strikes violently against the wall. When he has finished his lecture,
+you see only a mass of saliva and the rags of his pen. Neander is
+out of all sight the most wonderful being in the University. For
+knowledge, spirituality, good sense, and indomitable spirit of the
+finest discretion on moral subjects, the old man is a real marvel
+every way. In private he is the kindest but also the most awkward of
+mortals. His lectures on _Dogmatik_ and _Sittenlehre_ I value beyond
+all others, and I would gladly have come to Berlin to hear him alone."
+
+Besides hearing these University lectures, Cairns read German
+philosophy and theology for nine or ten hours daily, took lessons in
+Hebrew from a young Christian Jew named Biesenthal,[5] and in these
+short winter months acquired such a mastery of German as a spoken
+language that in the spring he was urged by Professor Tholuck of
+Halle to remain and qualify as a Privatdocent at a German University.
+He also gained a knowledge of men and things German, and a living
+interest in them, which he retained through life.
+
+[Footnote 5: Afterwards author of a learned but fantastic Commentary
+on the Epistle to the Hebrews. Biesenthal had an enthusiastic
+reverence for what in the hands of others were the dry details of
+Hebrew Grammar. "Herr Doctor," a dense pupil once asked him, "ought
+there not to be a Daghesh in that Tau?" "God forbid!" was the
+horrified reply.]
+
+At the close of the winter _semester_, the last weeks of which had
+been saddened by the news of James Russell's death; he set out on a
+tour extending over three months, and planned to include the principal
+cities and sights of Central and Southern Europe. He had only about
+£20 in his pocket, but he made this cover all the expenditure that
+was necessary for his modest wants. He travelled alone and, whenever
+it was possible, on foot, in the blouse and peaked cap of a German
+workman, and with a light knapsack strapped on his shoulders. He
+avoided hotels and lived cheaply, even meanly; but, with his splendid
+health, simple tastes, and overflowing interest in all that he saw,
+this did not greatly matter.
+
+His classical studies, and an already wide knowledge of European
+history, suggested endless interesting associations with the places
+through which he passed; and the picture galleries furnished him with
+materials for art criticisms which, considering that he had had few
+opportunities of seeing paintings, surprise one by their insight and
+grasp. At Wittenberg we find him standing by the grave of Luther
+in the Castle Church, and reflecting on the connection between his
+presence there and the life and work of the man whose body lay below.
+"But for him there had neither been a Scotland to send out pilgrim
+students of theology, nor a Germany to receive them."
+
+At Halle he has interesting interviews with Tholuck and Julius
+Müller; from Dresden he diverges to Herrnhut, where he witnesses the
+ordination of a Moravian missionary and takes part in a love-feast. At
+Prague, that wonderful city where the barbaric East begins, he finds
+his deepest interest stirred by the Jewish burying-ground and the
+hoary old synagogue. And so he passes on from city to city, and from
+land to land, by Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich, to Innsbruck, thence
+over the Brenner to Trent and Venice, and by Bologna to Florence and
+Rome. Returning by Genoa, Milan, and the Italian Lakes, he passes into
+Switzerland, and travels homeward by the Rhine. During this tour,
+when, in spite of the heat, he frequently walked forty-five or fifty
+miles a day, he had little time for letter-writing; but a small
+paper-covered book, in which he each night jotted down in pencil his
+impressions of what he had seen during the past day, has fortunately
+been preserved. From this three brief extracts may be made, and may
+serve as specimens of the whole, which is virtually reproduced entire
+in Dr. MacEwen's Biography. The first contains a description of the
+Jewish cemetery at Prague: "Through winding, filthy, pent-up, and
+over-peopled lanes, in the part of the old town next the river, heaped
+up with old clothes, trinket-ware, villainous-looking bread, and
+horrid sausages, one attains to an open space irregularly and rudely
+walled in and full of graves. The monuments date from the tenth
+century. No language can give an idea of its first impression. At one
+end one sees innumerable masses of grey weather-beaten stones in every
+grotesque angle of incidence and coincidence, but all rude and mean,
+covered with mystic Hebrew letters and half-buried amid long grass,
+nettles, and weeds. The place looks exactly as if originally a
+collection of dunghills or, perhaps, of excavated earth, left to its
+natural course after the corpses had been thrown in and the rude
+billets set over them. The economy of the race is visible in their
+measure for the dead, and contrasts wonderfully with the roominess
+and delicate adornment of German churchyards in general. The hoar
+antiquity of the place is increased by a wilderness of alders which
+grow up around the walls and amidst the stones, twisted, tangled,
+stunted, desolately old and yet renewing their youth, a true type of
+the scattered, bruised, and peeled, yet ineradicable Israel itself."
+
+An incident at Novi, between Genoa and Milan, is thus described:
+"I had strolled into a vineyard behind the town, quite lonely and
+crowned with one cottage. On one of the secluded paths I found a little
+girl lying on the grass, with her face turned up to the sun and fast
+asleep. The breeze played beautifully with her hair, and her dress
+fluttered and rustled, but there she lay, and nothing but the heaving
+of her frame, which could hardly be distinguished from the agitation
+of the wind, proved that she was only asleep. I stood gazing for a
+long while, thinking of the Providence that watched alike over the
+child in its slumberings and the pilgrim in his wanderings; and as
+I saw her companions playing at no great distance, I left the spot
+without awakening the absent little one. As I was passing the cottage
+door, however, I was overtaken by the mother in evident agitation. She
+pointed along the path I had come by, as if she feared her child had
+wandered to the highway or been lost amid the wild brushwood that grew
+on that side of the vineyard. I soon made her understand that the
+_piccolina_ was just behind her, and waited till she bounded away and
+returned with the crying thing in her arms, loading it with gentle
+reproaches and me with warm expressions of gratitude."
+
+At Milan it must be admitted that he goes into raptures over the
+Cathedral, but one is glad to note that he reserves an ample tribute
+of enthusiasm for the old church of St. Ambrose: "In the cloister of
+St. Ambrose I saw the famous cypress doors which the saint closed
+against Theodosius, time-worn but solid; the brazen serpent, the fine
+pulpit with the bas-relief of the Agape, and the veritable Episcopal
+chair of marble, with solid back and sides, and lions embossed at the
+corners, in which he sat in the councils of his presbyters. It is
+almost the only relic I have done any honour to. I knelt down and
+kissed it, and forgot for the time that I was both Protestant and
+Presbyterian."
+
+After a stormy and perilous voyage from Antwerp, he reached Newcastle
+in the first week of August, and started at once for Edinburgh to
+be present at the opening of the Divinity Hall. At the Dunglass
+lodge-gate his brother David, who was waiting for a letter which he
+had promised to throw down from the "Magnet" coach as he passed,
+caught a hurried glimpse of him, lean and brown as a berry after his
+exertions and his exposure to the Italian sun. On the following
+Saturday he put his pedestrian powers to the proof by walking from
+Edinburgh to Dunglass, when he covered the thirty-five and a half
+miles in seven hours and fifty minutes, having stopped only twice on
+the way--once in Haddington to buy a biscuit, and once at a wayside
+watering-trough to take a drink.
+
+The Hall session of 1844 was Cairns's last, and the next step for him
+to take in ordinary course was to apply to a Presbytery for license as
+a probationer. He had, however, some hesitation in taking this step,
+mainly because he was not quite clear whether the real work of his
+life lay in the discharge of the ordinary duties of the ministry, or
+whether he might not render better service by devoting himself, as
+opportunity offered, more exclusively to theological and literary work
+in behalf of the Christian faith. His friend Clark, whom he consulted
+in the matter, strongly urged him to decide in favour of the latter
+alternative. His speculative and literary faculties, he urged, had
+already been tested with brilliant results; his powers as a preacher,
+on the other hand, were as yet an unknown quantity, and Clark thought
+it doubtful if they would be appreciated by an average congregation.
+The struggle was severe while it lasted, but it ended in Cairns
+deciding to go on to the ministry in the ordinary way. In November
+1844 be applied to the Edinburgh Presbytery of the Secession Church
+for license, and he received it at their hands in the following
+February. He had not long to wait for a settlement. Dr. Balmer of
+Berwick, one of his divinity professors, had died while he was in
+Switzerland, and on his deathbed had advised his congregation to wait
+until Cairns had finished his course before electing a successor.
+Accordingly, it was arranged that he should preach in Golden Square
+Church, Berwick, a few weeks after he received license. The result
+was that a unanimous and enthusiastic call was addressed to him. He
+received another invitation from Mount Pleasant Church, Liverpool,
+of which his friend Graham was afterwards minister; but, after some
+hesitation, he decided in favour of Berwick.
+
+Meanwhile changes had been taking place in the home circle at
+Dunglass. His brother William, whose illness has been already
+referred to, had now passed beyond all hope of recovering the use of
+his limbs. Having set himself resolutely to a course of study and
+mental improvement under his brother John's guidance, he was able to
+accept a kindly proposal made to him by Sir John Hall of Dunglass,
+that he should become the teacher of the little roadside school at
+Oldcambus, which John had attended as a child. On the marriage of his
+eldest brother in the summer of 1845 the widowed mother came to keep
+house for him, and henceforth the Oldcambus schoolhouse became the
+family headquarters. But that summer brought sorrow as well as change.
+Another brother, James, a young man of vigorous mental powers, and
+originally of stalwart physique, who had been working at his trade as
+a tailor in Glasgow, fell into bad health, which soon showed the
+symptoms of rapid consumption. He came home hoping to benefit by the
+change, but it became increasingly clear that he had only come home
+to die. He lingered till the autumn, and passed away at Oldcambus
+at the end of September. It was with this background of change and
+shadow that the ordination of John Cairns took place at Berwick on
+August 6, 1845.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GOLDEN SQUARE
+
+
+Berwick is an English town on the Scottish side of the Tweed. As all
+that remained to England of the Scottish conquests of Edward I., it
+was until the Union of the Crowns the Calais of Scotland. It thus came
+to be treated as in a measure separate from England although belonging
+to it, and was for a long time separately mentioned in English Acts of
+Parliament, as it still is in English Royal Proclamations. This status
+of semi-independence which it so long enjoyed has helped to give it an
+individuality more strongly marked than that of most English towns.
+
+In religious matters Berwick has more affinity to Scotland than to
+England. John Knox preached in the town for two years by appointment
+of the Privy Council of Edward VI., and in harmony with his influence
+its religious traditions were in succeeding generations strongly
+Puritan, and one of its vicars, Luke Ogle, was ejected for
+Nonconformity in 1662.
+
+After the Revolution of 1688 this tendency found expression in the
+rise and growth of a vigorous Presbyterian Dissent; and in the
+early years of the eighteenth century there were two flourishing
+congregations in the town in communion with the Church of Scotland.
+But as these soon became infected with the Moderatism which prevailed
+over the Border, new congregations were formed in connection with
+the Scottish Secession and Relief bodies, and it was of one of
+these--Golden Square Secession Church--that John Cairns became
+the fourth minister in 1845.
+
+Berwick is one of the very few English towns which still retain their
+ancient fortifications. The circuit of the walls, which were built in
+the reign of Elizabeth, with their bastions, "mounts," and gates, is
+still practically complete, and is preserved with care and pride. A
+few ruins of the earlier walls, which Edward I. erected, and which
+enclosed a much wider area than is covered by the modern town, still
+remain; also such vestiges of the once impregnable Castle as have not
+been removed to make way for the present railway-station. Beyond this,
+there is little about Berwick to tell of its hoary antiquity and its
+eventful history. But its red-roofed houses, rising steeply from the
+left bank of the Tweed, and looking across the tidal river to the
+villages of Tweedmouth and Spittal, have a picturesqueness of their
+own, whether they are seen when the lights and shadows of a summer day
+are playing upon them, or when they are swathed in the white folds of
+a North Sea _haar_.
+
+The Berwick people are shrewd, capable, and kindly, and combine many
+of the good qualities of their Scotch and Northumbrian neighbours.
+Their dialect is in some respects akin to the Lowland Scotch, with
+which it has many words in common; and it has also as a prominent
+feature that rising intonation, passing sometimes almost into a
+wail, which one hears all along the eastern Border. But the great
+outstanding characteristic of Berwick speech is the _burr_ a rough
+guttural pronunciation of the letter "i." With nothing but the scanty
+resources of our alphabet to fall back upon, it is quite impossible to
+represent this peculiarity phonetically, but it was once remarked by a
+student of Semitic tongues that the sound of the Hebrew letter 'Ayin
+is as nearly as possible that of the burr, and that, if you want
+to ascertain the correct Hebrew pronunciation of the name _Ba'al_,
+all you have got to do is to ask any Alderman of Berwick to say
+"_Barrel"_[6]
+
+[Footnote 6: Some words are very hard to pronounce with a burr in
+one's throat. Dr. Cairns used to tell that on one occasion, long after
+he had got well used to the sound of the Berwick speech, he was under
+the belief that a man with whom he was conversing was talking about
+a _boy_ until he discovered from the context that his theme was
+a _brewery_.]
+
+In 1845 the population of Berwick was between 8000 and 9000. "It
+included," says Dr. MacEwen, "some curious elements." Not the least
+curious and dubious of these was that of the lower class of the old
+Freemen of the Borough. These men had an inherited right to the use of
+lands belonging to the Corporation, which they let; and to a vote at a
+Parliamentary election, which they sold. When an election drew near,
+it was a maxim with both political parties that the Freemen must be
+conciliated at all costs; and the Freemen, knowing this, were quite
+prepared to presume on their knowledge. Once, at an election time, it
+happened that in the house of a prominent political leader in Berwick
+a fine roast of beef was turning before the kitchen fire, and was
+nearly ready for the dinner table, when a Freeman walked in, lifted
+it from the spit, and carried it off. No one dared to say him nay,
+for had he not a vote? and might not that vote turn the election?
+
+At the other end of the social scale were the half-pay officers,
+the members of neighbouring county families, and the attorneys and
+doctors, who in some degree constituted the aristocracy of Berwick,
+and most of whom attended the Episcopalian Parish Church. The bulk
+of the shopkeepers and tradesmen, with some of the professional men
+and a large proportion of the working people, were Dissenters, and
+were connected with one or other of the half-dozen Presbyterian
+congregations in the town. Of these that of which Cairns was the
+minister was the most influential and the largest, having a membership
+of about six hundred.
+
+The church was in Golden Square, of which it may be said that it is
+neither a square nor yet golden, but a dingy close or court opening by
+an archway from the High Street, the main thoroughfare of Berwick. The
+building was till recently a tannery, but the main features of it are
+still quite distinguishable. It stood on the left as one entered from
+High Street, and it had the usual high pulpit at its farther end, with
+a precentor's desk beneath it, and the usual deep gallery supported on
+metal pillars running round three of its four sides. The manse, its
+door adorned with a decent brass knocker, stood next to the church, on
+the side farthest from the street. It gave one a pleasant surprise on
+entering it to find that only its back windows looked out on the dim
+little "square." In front it commanded a fine view of the river, here
+crossed by a quaint old bridge of fifteen arches, which, owing to the
+exigencies of the current, is much higher at the Berwick end than at
+the other, and, as an Irishman once remarked, "has its middle all on
+one side." For some little time, however, after Cairns's settlement,
+he did not occupy the manse, but lived in rooms over a shop in Bridge
+Street; and when at length he did remove into it, he took his landlady
+with him and still remained her lodger.
+
+For the first five years of his ministry Cairns devoted himself
+entirely to the work which it entailed upon him, and steadily refused
+to be drawn aside to the literary and philosophical tasks which many
+of his friends urged him to undertake. He had decided that his work in
+Berwick demanded his first attention, and, until he could ascertain
+how much of his time it would absorb, he felt that he could not go
+beyond it. On the early days of the week he read widely and hard on
+the lines of his Sunday work, and the last three days he devoted to
+writing out and committing to memory his two sermons, each of which
+occupied about fifty minutes in delivery. The "committing" of his
+sermons gave him little or no trouble, and he soon found that it could
+be relegated without anxiety to Saturday evening. And he got into the
+habit of preparing for it by a Saturday afternoon walk to the little
+yellow red-capped lighthouse at the end of Berwick Pier. At the upper
+end of the pier was a five-barred gate, and on the way back, when
+he thought that nobody was looking, he would vault over it with a
+running leap.
+
+His preaching from the first made a deep impression. Following the
+old Seceder tradition, and the example of his boyhood's minister Mr.
+Inglis, and of his professor Dr. Brown, his discourse in the forenoon
+was always a "lecture" expository of some extended passage of
+Scripture, and forming one of a consecutive series; while that in the
+afternoon followed the familiar lines of an ordinary sermon. But there
+was nothing quite ordinary in his preaching at any time. Even when
+there was no unusual flight of eloquence, there was always to be
+noted the steady march of a strong mind from point to point till the
+conclusion had been reached; always a certain width and elevation of
+view, and always the ring of irresistible conviction. And although the
+discourse had been committed to memory and was reproduced in the very
+words that had been written down in the study, no barrier was thereby
+interposed between the preacher and his hearers. Somehow--at least
+after the first few paragraphs--when he had properly warmed to his
+work, the man himself seemed to break through all restraints and
+come into direct and living contact with his hearers.
+
+His action sermon, _i.e._ the sermon preached before the Communion,
+was always specially memorable and impressive. He had the subject
+chosen weeks, and sometimes even months, beforehand, and, as he had no
+other sermon to write for the Communion Sunday, he devoted the whole
+of the preceding week to its preparation. His action sermons, which
+were those he usually preached on special occasions when he was away
+from home, dealt always with some theme connected with the Person or
+Work of Christ. They were frequently apologetic in their conception
+and structure, full of massive argument, which he had a remarkable
+power of marshalling and presenting so as to be understood by all; but
+the argument, reinforced by bursts of real eloquence, always converged
+on the, exaltation of the Redeemer. "I never thought so much of him as
+I do to-day," said one of his hearers to another after one of these
+sermons, "I never thought so much of Christ as I do to-day," replied
+the other; and that reply showed that in at least one case the purpose
+of the preacher in preparing and delivering his sermon had been
+fulfilled.
+
+On the Sunday evening Cairns had a Bible-class of over one hundred
+young men and women, to which he devoted great care and attention.
+"It was the best hour of the day to us," wrote one who was a member of
+this class. "He was nearer us, and we were nearer him, than in church.
+The grandeur and momentum of his pulpit eloquence were not there, but
+we had instead a calm, rich, conversational instruction, a quiet
+disclosure of vast stores of information, as well as a definite
+dealing with young hearts and consciences, which left an unfading
+impression."
+
+But Cairns was no mere preacher and teacher. He put out his full
+strength as truly in his pastoral work as in his work for and in
+the pulpit. He visited his large congregation statedly once a year,
+offering prayer in each house, and hearing the children repeat a psalm
+or portion of Scripture which he had prescribed the year before. He
+timed these visits so accurately that he could on one occasion banter
+one of his elders on the fact that he had received more than his
+due in one year, because the last visitation had been on the 1st of
+January and this one was on the 31st of December. A good part of his
+visiting had to be done in the country, because a considerable section
+of his congregation consisted of farmers or hinds from Northumberland,
+from the "Liberties of Berwick," and even from Scotland, which first
+begins three miles out from the town. These country visitations
+usually concluded with a service in a barn or farm-kitchen, to which
+worshippers came from far and near.
+
+But besides this stated and formal visitation, which was intimated
+from the pulpit, constant attention was bestowed on the sick, the
+bereaved, the poor, the tempted, and all others who appealed specially
+to the minister's heart or his conscience. And yet there was no sense
+of task-work or of a burden to be borne about his relations to his
+congregation. His exuberant frankness of manner, contrasting as this
+did with the reserved and somewhat stiff bearing of his predecessor
+Dr. Balmer, won the hearts of all. And his keen sense of the ludicrous
+side of things often acted as an antiseptic, and kept him right both
+with himself and with his people.
+
+Once, however, as he used to tell, it brought him perilously near to
+disaster. He was in the middle of his sermon one Sunday afternoon in
+Golden Square. It was a hot summer day, and all the doors and windows
+were open. From the pulpit he could look right out into the square,
+and as he looked he became aware of a hen surrounded by her young
+family pecking vigorously on the pavement in search of food, and
+clucking as she pecked. All at once an overwhelming sense of the
+difference between the two worlds in which he and that hen were living
+took possession of him, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he
+restrained himself from bursting into a shout of laughter. As it was,
+he recovered himself with a mighty gulp and finished the service
+decorously enough.
+
+Cairns was also assisted in his work by his phenomenal powers of
+memory. After reading a long sermon once, or at most twice over, he
+could repeat it verbatim. Once when he was challenged by a friend to
+do so, he repeated, without stopping, the names of all the children
+in his congregation, apologising only for his imperfect acquaintance
+with two families who had recently come. Another instance of this is
+perhaps not so remarkable in itself, but it is worth mentioning on
+other grounds. Five-and-thirty years after the time with which we
+are now dealing, when he was a professor in Edinburgh, some of his
+students were carrying on mission work in a growing district of the
+city. An iron church was erected for them, but the contractor, an
+Englishman, before his work was finished was seized with illness and
+died. He was buried in one of the Edinburgh cemeteries, and Dr. Cairns
+attended the funeral. Having ascertained from the widow of the dead
+man that he had belonged to the Church of England, he repeated at the
+grave-side the whole of the Anglican Burial Service. When he was asked
+afterwards how he had thus come to know that Service without book, he
+replied that he had unconsciously got it by heart in the early days of
+his Berwick ministry, before there was either a cemetery or a Burials
+Act, when he had been compelled to stand silent and hear it read at
+the funerals of members of his own congregation in the parish
+churchyard.
+
+Rather more than a year and a half after his ordination, in May 1847,
+the Secession Church in which he had been brought up, and of which he
+was now a minister, entered into a union with another of the Scottish
+non-Established Churches, the Synod of Relief. There was thus formed
+the United Presbyterian Church, with which his name was afterwards to
+be so closely associated. The United Church comprised five hundred
+and eighteen congregations, of which about fifty were, like those in
+Berwick, in England; the nucleus of that English Synod which, thirty
+years later, combined with the English Presbyterian Church to form
+the present Presbyterian Church of England. References in his
+correspondence show that this union of 1847, which afterwards had such
+happy results, excited at the time little enthusiasm, and was entered
+into largely as a matter of duty. "It is," he writes, "like the union,
+not of two globules of quicksilver which run together of themselves,
+but of two snowballs or cakes of mud that need in some way very tough
+outward pressure. I hope that the friction will elicit heat, since
+this neither cold nor hot spirit is not to edification."
+
+The other letters of this period range over a wide variety of
+subjects. With John Clark he compares experiences of ministerial
+work; with John Nelson he discusses European politics as these have
+been affected by the events of the "year of revolutions," 1848; with
+George Wilson he discourses on every conceivable topic, from abstruse
+problems of philosophy and theology to the opening of the North
+British Railway; while his mother and his brothers, William and David,
+the latter of whom about this time left his work in the Dunglass woods
+to study for the ministry, are kept in touch with all that he knows
+they will best like to hear about. But in all this wide field of human
+life and thought and activity, which he so eagerly traverses, it is
+quite evident that what attracts him most is the relation of it all
+to a higher and an eternal order. With him the main interest is a
+religious one. Without an atom of affectation, and without anything
+that is at all morbid on his part, he reveals this at a hundred
+points. In this connection a letter which he wrote to Sir William
+Hamilton and which has since become well known, may be quoted here;
+and it, with Sir William's reply, will fittingly conclude the present
+chapter. This letter bears date November 16, 1848, and is as
+follows:--
+
+"I herewith enclose the statement respecting the Calabar Mission of
+our Church, which I take blame to myself for having so long delayed to
+send. My avocations are very numerous, and a habit of procrastination,
+where anything is to be written, has sadly grown on me with time. I
+cannot even send you this brief note without testifying, what I could
+not so well utter in your presence, my unabated admiration of your
+philosophical genius and learning, and my profoundly grateful sense of
+the important benefits received by me both from your instructions and
+private friendship, I am more indebted to you for the foundation of
+my intellectual habits and tastes than to any other person, and shall
+bear, by the will of the Almighty, the impress of your hand through
+any future stage of existence. It is a relief to my own feelings to
+speak in this manner, and you will forgive one of the most favoured
+of your pupils if he seeks another kind of relief--a relief which he
+has long sought an opportunity to obtain--the expression of a wish
+that his honoured master were one with himself in the exercise of
+the convictions, and the enjoyment of the comforts, of living
+Christianity, or as far before himself as he is in all other
+particulars. This is a wish, a prayer, a fervent desire often
+expressed to the Almighty Former and Guide of the spirits of men,
+mingled with the hope that, if not already, at least some time, this
+accordance of faith will be attained, this living union realised with
+the great Teacher, Sacrifice, and Restorer of our fallen race. You
+will pardon this manifestation of the gratitude and affection of your
+pupil and friend, who, if he knew a higher, would gladly give it as
+a payment of a debt too great to be expressed. I have long ago been
+taught to feel the vanity of the world in all its forms--to renounce
+the hope of intellectual distinction, and to exalt love above
+knowledge. Philosophy has been to me much; but it can never be all,
+never the most; and I have found, and know that I have found, the true
+good in another quarter. This is mysticism--the mysticism of the
+Bible--the mysticism of conscious reconciliation and intimacy with the
+living Persons of the Godhead--a mysticism which is not like that of
+philosophy, an irregular and incommunicable intuition, but open to
+all, wise and unwise, who take the highway of humility and prayer. If
+I were not truly and profoundly happy in my faith--the faith of the
+universal Church--I would not speak of it. The greatest increase which
+it admits of is its sympathetic kindling in the hearts of others, not
+least of those who know by experience the pain of speculation, the
+truth that he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. I know you
+will indulge these expressions to one more in earnest than in former
+years, more philanthropic, more confident that he knows in whom he
+has believed, more impressed with the duty of bearing everywhere a
+testimony to the convictions which have given him a positive hold
+at once of truth and happiness.
+
+"But I check myself in this unwonted strain, which only your
+long-continued and singular kindness could have emboldened me to
+attempt; and with the utterance of the most fervent wishes for your
+health, academical success, and inward light and peace, I remain your
+obliged friend and grateful pupil."
+
+
+To which Sir W. Hamilton replied as follows:--
+
+"EDINBURGH, _Dec_. 4, 1848.
+
+"I feel deeply obliged to you for the kindness of your letter, and
+trust that I shall not prove wholly unworthy of the interest you take
+in me. There is indeed no one with whom I am acquainted whose
+sentiments on such matters I esteem more highly, for there is no one
+who, I am sure, is more earnest for the truth, and no one who pursues
+it with more independence and, at the same time, with greater
+confidence in the promised aid of God. May this promised aid be
+vouchsafed to me."[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Memoir of Sir W. Hamilton_, pp. 299-301.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE CENTRAL PROBLEM
+
+
+It was confidently expected, not merely by Cairns's personal friends
+but by others in a much wider circle, that he would make a name for
+himself in the world of letters and speculative thought. It was not
+only the brilliance of his University career that led to this
+expectation, for, remarkable as that career had been, there have been
+many men since his time who, so far as mere prize taking is concerned,
+have equalled or surpassed him--men who never aroused and would not
+have justified any high-pitched hopes about their future. But Cairns,
+in addition to gaining academic distinctions, seems to have impressed
+his contemporaries in a quite exceptional degree with a sense of his
+power and promise. Professor Masson, writing of him as he was in
+his student days, thus describes him: "There was among us one whom
+we all respected in a singular degree. Tall, strong-boned, and
+granite-headed, he was the student whom Sir William Hamilton himself
+had signalised and honoured as already a sterling thinker, and the
+strength of whose logic, when you grappled with him in argument,
+seemed equalled only by the strength of his hand-grip when you met him
+or bade him good-bye, or by the manly integrity and nobleness of his
+character."[8] And again, writing of him as he was at a later date,
+the same critic gives this estimate of his old fellow-student's mental
+calibre: "I can name one former student of Sir William Hamilton's, now
+a minister in what would be accounted in England one of the straitest
+sects of Scottish Puritanism, and who has consecrated to the duties of
+that calling a mind among the noblest I have known and the most
+learned in pure philosophy. Any man who on any subject of metaphysical
+speculation should contend with Dr. Cairns of Berwick-on-Tweed, would
+have reason to know, ere he had done with him, what strength for
+offence and defence there may yet be in a Puritan minister's
+hand-grip."[9]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Macmillan's Magazine_, December 1864, p. 139.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Recent British Philosophy_, pp. 265-66.]
+
+That this is no mere isolated estimate of a partial friend it would
+not be difficult to prove. This was what his friends thought of him,
+and what they had taught others outside to think of him too. The time,
+however, had now come when it had to be put to the proof. During the
+first five years of his ministry at Berwick, as we have seen, Cairns
+devoted himself entirely to his work in Golden Square. He must learn
+to know accurately how much of his time that work would take up,
+before he could venture to spend any of it in other fields. But in
+1850 he felt that he had mastered the situation, and accordingly he
+began to write for the Press. The ten years between 1850 and 1860 were
+years of considerable literary activity with him, and it may be said
+at once that their output sustained his reputation, and even added
+to it. There falls to be mentioned first a Memoir of his friend John
+Clark, who, after a brief and troubled ministerial career, had died of
+cholera in 1849. Cairns's Life of him, prefixed to a selection from
+his Essays and Sermons, fills only seventy-seven small pages, and it
+is in form to a large extent a defence of metaphysical studies against
+those who regard them as dangerous to the Christian student. But it
+contains many passages of great beauty and tenderness, and delineates
+in exquisite colours the poetry and romance of College friendships.
+"I am greatly charmed," wrote the author of _Rab and his Friends_
+to Cairns, "with your pages on the romance of your youthful
+fellowship--that sweet hour of prime. I can remember it, can feel it,
+can scent the morn."[10]
+
+[Footnote 10: See above, pp. 44-45.]
+
+In 1850 the _North British Review_, which had been started some years
+previously in the interests of the Free Church, came under the
+editorship of Cairns's friend Campbell Fraser. Although he was a Free
+Church professor, he resolved to widen the basis of the _Review_, and
+he asked Cairns to join his staff, offering him as his province German
+philosophy and theology. Cairns assented, and promised to furnish two
+articles yearly. The first and most important of these was one which
+appeared in 1850 on Julius Müller's _Christian Doctrine of Sin_. This
+article, which is well and brightly written, embraces not merely a
+criticism of the great work whose name stands at the head of it, but
+also an elaborate yet most lucid and masterly survey of the various
+schools of theological thought which were then grouping themselves in
+Germany. Other contributions to the _North British_ during the next
+four years included articles on "British and Continental Ethics and
+Christianity," on "The Reawakening of Christian Life in Germany," and
+on "The Life and Letters of Niebuhr"; while yet other articles saw
+the light in the _British Quarterly Review_, the _United Presbyterian
+Magazine_, and other periodicals. In 1858 appeared the important
+article on "Kant," in the eighth edition of the _Encyclopedia
+Britannica_, which was written at the urgent request of his friend
+Adam Black, and which cost him ten months reading and preparation.
+
+As has been already said, his reputation appears to have been fully
+maintained by these articles. They brought him into touch with many
+interesting people, such as Bunsen and F.D. Maurice; and, in Scotland,
+deepened the impression that he was a man with a future. In 1852
+John Wilson resigned the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in the
+University of Edinburgh, and the Town Council, who were the patrons
+of the chair, took occasion to let Cairns know that he might have
+the appointment if he desired it. He declined their offer, and with
+characteristic reticence said nothing about it either to his relatives
+or to his congregation. He threw himself, however, with great ardour
+into the support of the candidature of his friend Professor P.C.
+M'Dougall, who ultimately was elected to the post.
+
+Four years later Sir William Hamilton died, and a fierce fight ensued
+as to who was to be his successor. The two most prominent candidates
+were Cairns's friend Campbell Fraser, then Professor of Logic in the
+New College, Edinburgh, and Professor James Frederick Ferrier of St.
+Andrews. Fraser was then a Hamiltonian and Ferrier was a Hegelian, and
+a great hubbub arose between the adherents of the two schools. This
+was increased and embittered by the importation of ecclesiastical and
+political feeling into the contest; Fraser being a Free Churchman,
+and Ferrier receiving the support of the Established Church and Tory
+party. The Town Council were very much at sea with regard to the
+philosophical controversy, and, through Dr. John Brown, they requested
+Cairns to explain its merits to them. Cairns responded by publishing
+a pamphlet entitled _An_ _Examination of Professor Ferrier's Theory
+of Knowing and Being_. This pamphlet had for its object to show that
+Ferrier's election would mean a renunciation of the doctrines which,
+as expounded by Hamilton, had added so greatly to the prestige of the
+University in recent times as a school of philosophy, and also to
+expose what the writer conceived to be the dangerous character of
+Ferrier's teaching in relation to religious truth. It increased
+the storm tenfold. Replies were published and letters sent to the
+newspapers abusing Cairns, and insinuating that he had been led by
+a private grudge against Ferrier to take the step he had taken. It
+was also affirmed that he was acting at the instigation of the Free
+Church, who wanted to abolish their chair of Logic in the New College,
+but could not well do so so long as they had its present incumbent
+on their hands. A doggerel parody on _John Gilpin_, entitled "The
+Diverting History of John Cairns," in which a highly coloured account
+is given of the supposed genesis of the pamphlet, was written and
+found wide circulation. The first two stanzas of this effusion were
+the following:--
+
+  "John Cairns was a clergyman
+    Of credit and renown,
+  A first-rate U.P. Church had he
+    In far-famed Berwick town.
+
+  John likewise had a loving friend,
+    A mighty man of knowledge,
+  The Rev. A.C. Fraser, he
+    Of the sanctified New College."
+
+
+Cairns found it needful to issue a second pamphlet, _Scottish
+Philosophy: a Vindication and Reply_, in which, while tenaciously
+holding to what he had said in the last one, he challenged Ferrier to
+mention one single instance in which he had made a personal attack
+on him. When at length the vote came to be taken, and Fraser was
+elected by a majority of three, there were few who doubted that the
+intervention of the Berwick minister had been of critical importance
+in bringing about this result.
+
+Two years later George Wilson, who was now a professor in the
+University, had the satisfaction of intimating to his friend that
+his _alma mater_ had conferred on him the degree of D.D., and in the
+following year (1859) a much higher honour was placed within his
+reach. The Principalship of the University became vacant by the death
+of Dr. John Lee, and the appointment to the coveted post, like that
+to the two professorships, was in the hands of the Town Council. It
+was informally offered to Cairns through one of the councillors, but
+again he sent a declinature, and again he kept the matter carefully
+concealed. It was not, in fact, until after his death, when the
+correspondence regarding it came to light, that even his own brothers
+knew that at the age of forty this great and dignified office might
+have been his.
+
+These declinatures on Cairns's part of philosophical posts, or posts
+the occupation of which would give him time and opportunity for doing
+original work in philosophy, are not on the whole difficult to
+understand when we bear in mind his point of view. He had, after
+careful deliberation, given himself to the Christian ministry, and
+he meant to devote the whole of his life to its work. He was not to
+be turned aside from it by the attractions of any employment however
+congenial, or of any leisure however splendid. His speculative powers
+had been consecrated to this object, as well as his active powers, and
+would find their natural outlet in harmony with it. And so the hopes
+of his friends and his own aspirations must be realised in his work,
+not in the field of philosophy but in that of theology. Accordingly,
+he decided to follow up his work in the periodicals by writing a book.
+He took for his subject "The Difficulties of Christianity," and made
+some progress with it, getting on so far as to write several chapters.
+Then he was interrupted and the work was laid aside. The great book
+was never written, nor did he ever write a book worthy of his powers.
+A moderate-sized volume of lectures on "Unbelief in the Eighteenth
+Century," a volume of sermons, most of which were written in the first
+fifteen years of his ministry, a Memoir of Dr. Brown,--these, with the
+exception of a quantity of pamphlets, prefaces, and magazine articles,
+were all that he gave to the world after the time with which we are
+now dealing. How are we to account for this? The time in which he
+lived was a time of great intellectual activity and unsettlement--time
+that, in the opinion of most, needed, and would have welcomed, the
+guidance he could have given; and yet he stayed his hand. Why did he
+do so? This is the central problem which a study of his life presents,
+and it is one of no ordinary complexity; but there are some
+considerations relating to it which go far to solve it, and these
+it may be worth while for us at this point to examine.
+
+At the outset, something must be allowed for the special character
+of the influence exerted on Cairns by Sir William Hamilton. That
+influence was profound and far-reaching. In the letter to Hamilton
+which was quoted at the end of the preceding chapter, Cairns tells his
+master that he must "bear, by the will of the Almighty, the impress of
+his hand through any further stage of existence," and, strong as the
+expression is, it can scarcely be said to be an exaggeration. But
+Hamilton's influence, while it called out and stimulated his pupil's
+powers to a remarkable degree, was not one which made for literary
+productiveness. He was a great upholder of the doctrine that truth is
+to be sought for its own sake and without reference to any ulterior
+end, and he had strong ideas about the discredit--the shamefulness,
+as it seemed to him--of speaking or writing on any subject until it
+had been mastered down to its last detail. This attitude prevented
+Hamilton himself from doing full justice to his powers and learning,
+and its influence could be seen in Cairns also--in his delight in
+studies the relevancy of which was not always apparent, and in a
+certain fastidiousness which often delayed, and sometimes even
+prevented, his putting pen to paper.
+
+But another and a much more important factor in the problem is to be
+found in the old Seceder ideal of the ministry in which he was trained
+and which he never lost. It has been truly said of him that "he never
+all his life got away from David Inglis and Stockbridge any more than
+Carlyle got away from John Johnston and Ecclefechan." According to the
+Seceder view, there is no more sublime calling on earth than that of
+the Christian ministry, and that calling is one which concerns itself
+first and chiefly with the conversion of sinners and the edifying of
+saints. This work is so awful in its importance, and so beneficent
+in its results, that it must take the chief place in a minister's
+thoughts and in the disposition of his time; and if it requires the
+sole place, that too must be accorded to it. "To me," wrote Cairns to
+George Gilfillan in 1849, "love seems infinitely higher than knowledge
+and the noblest distinction of humanity--the humble minister who wears
+himself out in labours of Christian love in an obscure retreat as a
+more exalted person than the mere literary champion of Christianity,
+or the recondite professor who is great at Fathers and Schoolmen. I
+really cannot share those longings for intellectual giants to confront
+the Goliath of scepticism--not that I do not think such persons useful
+in their way, but because I think Christianity far more impressive
+as a life than as a speculation, and the West Port evangelism of
+Dr. Chalmers far more effective than his Astronomical Discourses."[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: _Life and Letters_, p. 307.]
+
+It was to the ministry, as thus understood, that Cairns had devoted
+himself at the close of his University course and again just before he
+took license as a probationer, when for a short time, as we have seen,
+he had been drawn aside by the attractions of "sacred literature." He
+never thought of becoming a minister and was putting his main strength
+into philosophy and theology. Not that he now forswore all interest in
+either, but from the moment of his final decision, he had determined
+that the mid-current of his life should run in a different direction.
+
+Yet another important factor in the case is to be found in the
+circumstances of his Berwick ministry. Had his lot been cast in a
+quiet country place, with only a handful of people to look after, the
+great book might yet have been written. But he had to attend to a
+congregation whose membership was at first nearly six hundred, and
+afterwards rose to seven hundred and eighty and, with his standard
+of pastoral efficiency, this left him little leisure. Indeed it is
+wonderful that, under these conditions, he accomplished so much as
+he did--that he wrote his _North British_ articles, maintained a
+reputation which won for him so many offers of academic posts, and at
+the same time laid the foundation of a vast and spacious learning in
+Patristic and Reformation theology. Akin to his strictly ministerial
+work, and flowing out of it, was the work he did for his Church as
+a whole--the share he took in the Union negotiations with the Free
+Church during the ten years that these negotiations lasted, and the
+endless round of church openings and platform work to which his
+growing fame as a preacher and public speaker laid him open.
+
+But there is one other consideration which, although it is to some
+extent involved in what has already been said, deserves separate and
+very special attention. Although his friends and the public regretted
+his withdrawal from the speculative field, it is not so clear that he
+regretted it himself. He had, it is true, worked in it strenuously
+and with conspicuous success, and had revealed a natural aptitude for
+Christian apologetics of a very high order. But it does not appear
+that either his heart or his conscience were ever fully engaged in the
+work. He never seemed as if he were fighting for his life, because he
+always seemed to have another and an independent ground of certainty
+on which he based his real defence. There is a passage in his Life of
+Clark which bears upon this point so closely that it will be well to
+quote it here:--
+
+"The Christian student is as conscious of direct intercourse with
+Jesus Christ as with the external world, or with other minds. This is
+the very postulate of living Christianity. It is a datum or revelation
+made to a spiritual faculty in the soul, as real as the external
+senses or any of the mental or moral faculties, and far more exalted.
+This living contact with a living person by faith and prayer is, like
+all other life, ultimate and mysterious, and must be accepted by him
+in whom it exists as its own sufficient explanation and reason, just
+as the principles of natural intelligence and conscience, to which it
+is something superadded, and with which, in this point of view, though
+in other respects higher, it is co-ordinate. No one who is living in
+communion with Jesus Christ, and exercising that series of affections
+towards Him which Christianity at once prescribes and creates, can
+doubt the reality of that supernatural system to which he has been
+thus introduced; and nothing more is necessary than to appeal to his
+own experience and belief, which is here as valid and irresistible as
+in regard to the existence of God, of moral distinctions, or of the
+material world. He has no reason to trust the one class of beliefs
+which he has not, to trust the other.... To minds thus favoured, this
+forms a _point d'appui_ which can never be overturned--an _aliquid
+inconcussum_ corresponding to the '_cogito ergo sum_' of Descartes.
+Their faith bears its own signature, and they have only to look within
+to discover its authenticity. Philosophy must be guided by experience,
+and must rank the characters inscribed on the soul by grace at least
+as sacred as those inscribed by nature. Such persons need not that any
+man should teach them, for they have an unction from the Holy One; and
+to them applies the highest of all congratulations: 'Blessed art thou;
+for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father
+which is in heaven.'"[12]
+
+[Footnote 12: _Fragments of College and Pastoral Life_, pp. 38-40.]
+
+These words contain the true explanation of Cairns's life. There was
+in it the "_aliquid inconcussum_"--the "unshaken somewhat"--which made
+him independent of other arguments, and which kept him untouched by
+all the intellectual attacks on Christianity. Other people who had
+not this inward testimony, or who, having it, could not regard it as
+unshaken by the assaults of infidelity, he could argue with and seek
+to meet them on their own intellectual ground; but for himself, any
+victories gained here were superfluous, any defects left him unmoved.
+Was it always so with him? Or was there ever a time when he was
+carried off his feet and had to struggle for dear life for his
+Christian faith amid the dark waters of doubt?
+
+There are indications that on at least one occasion he subjected his
+beliefs to a careful scrutiny, and, referring to this later, he spoke
+of himself as one who, in the words of the Roman poet, had been "much
+tossed about on land and on the deep ere he could build a city."
+This, coming from one who was habitually reticent about his religious
+experiences, may be held as proving that there was no want of rigour
+in the process, no withholding of any part of the structure from the
+strain. But that that structure ever gave way, that it ever came
+tumbling down in ruins about him so that it had to be built again
+on new foundations, there is no evidence to show. The "_aliquid
+inconcussum_" appears to have remained with him all through the
+experience. This seems clear from a passage in a letter written in
+1848 to his brother David, then a student in Sir William Hamilton's
+class, in which he says; "I never found my religious susceptibilities
+injured by metaphysical speculations. Whether this was a singular
+felicity I do not know, but I have heard others complain."[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: _Life and Letters_, p. 295.]
+
+This, taken in conjunction with the passage quoted above from
+Clark's Life, in which it is hard to believe that he is not speaking
+of himself, seems decisive enough, and in a mind of such speculative
+grasp and activity it is remarkable. "Right down through the
+storm-zone of the nineteenth century," writes one who knew him well,
+"he comes untroubled by the force of the '_aliquid inconcussum_.'
+Edinburgh, Germany, Berwick; Hamilton, Kant, Hegel, Strauss, Renan, it
+is all the same. The cause seems to me luminously plain. Saints are
+never doubters. His religious intuitions were so deep and clear that
+he was able always to find his way by their aid. They gave him his
+independent certainty, his '_aliquid inconcussum_.'"
+
+His influence on the religious life of his time was largely due to
+the spiritual faculty in him that is here referred to. He was the
+power he was, not so much because of his intellectual strength as
+because of his character,--because he was "a great Christian." But
+in this respect he had the defects of his qualities; and it is open
+to question whether he ever truly appreciated the formidable character
+of modern doubt, just because he himself had never had full experience
+of its power, because the iron of it had never really entered into
+his soul.
+
+George Gilfillan, who, with all his defects, had often gleams of real
+insight, wrote thus in his diary 14th January 1863: "I got yesterday
+sent me, per post, a lecture by John Cairns on 'Rationalism,
+Ritualism, and Pure Religion,' or some such title, and have read it
+with interest, attention, and a good deal of admiration of its ability
+and, on the whole, of its spirit. But I can see from it that he is
+not the man to grapple with the scepticism of the age. He has not
+sufficient sympathy with it, he has not lived in its atmosphere, he
+has not visited its profoundest or tossed in its stormiest depths.
+Intellectually and logically he understands it as he understands most
+other matters, but sympathetically and experimentally he does not."
+
+There is a considerable amount of truth in this, although it is
+lacking somewhat in the sympathy which the critic desiderates in the
+man he is criticising. Cairns did not feel that the battle with modern
+doubt was of absolutely overwhelming importance, and this, along with
+the other things to which reference has been made, kept him from
+giving to the world that new statement of the Christian position which
+his friends hoped to get from him, and which he at one time hoped to
+be able to give.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE APOSTLE OF UNION
+
+
+The close of the period dealt with in the last chapter was made sadly
+memorable to Cairns by the death of some of his closest friends. In
+October 1858 died the venerable Dr. Brown, with whom, since he was a
+student, he had stood in the closest relations, and whom he revered
+and habitually addressed as a father. In November 1859 the bright
+spirit of George Wilson, the dearest of all his friends, passed away;
+and in the same year he had to mourn the loss of Miss Darling, the
+correspondent and adviser of his student days. His brave old mother
+died in the autumn of 1860, and in the following year he lost another
+old and dear friend in Mrs. Balmer, the widow of his predecessor in
+Golden Square, who perhaps knew him better than his own mother, and
+had been deeper in his confidence than anyone since he came to
+Berwick. From this period he became more reserved. With all his
+frankness there was always a characteristic reticence about him, and
+this was less frequently broken now that those to whom he had so
+freely poured out his soul had been taken from him. But he drew closer
+to those who were still left--especially to his own kindred, to his
+sisters, to his brother William at Oldcambus, and to his brother
+David, who had now been settled for some years as minister at
+Stitchel, near Kelso.[14]
+
+[Footnote 14: His eldest brother, Thomas, had died from the effects of
+an accident in 1856.]
+
+Dr. Brown had nominated him as one of his literary executors, and
+his family were urgent in their request that he should write their
+father's Life. With great reluctance he consented, and for eighteen
+months this task absorbed the whole of his leisure, to the complete
+exclusion of the work on "The Difficulties of Christianity," with
+which he had already made some progress. The undertaking was a labour
+of love, but it cannot be said to have been congenial. Memoir writing
+was not to his taste, and in this case he had made a stipulation that
+still further hampered him and made success very difficult. This was
+that he should omit, as far as possible, all personal details, and
+leave these to be dealt with in a separate chapter which Dr. Brown's
+son John undertook to furnish. This chapter was not forthcoming when
+the volume had to go to press, and was separately issued some months
+later. When the inspiration did at length come to "Dr. John," it came
+in such a way as to add a new masterpiece to English literature, and
+one which, while it gave a wonderfully living picture of the writer's
+father, disclosed to the world as nothing else has ever done the true
+_ethos_ and inner life of the Scottish Secession Church. The Memoir
+itself, of which this "Letter to John Cairns, D.D." is the
+supplementary chapter, is a sound and solid bit of work, giving an
+accurate and interesting account of the public life of Dr. Brown and
+of the movements in which he took part. It is, as William Graham said
+of it, "a thoughtful, calm, conclusive book, perhaps too reticent and
+colourless, but none the less like Dr. Brown because of that."
+
+No sooner was this book off his hands than Cairns was urged to
+undertake another biographical work--the Life of George Wilson. But
+this, in view of his recent experience, he steadfastly refused to
+do, and contented himself with writing a sketch of his friend for the
+pages of _Macmillan's Magazine_. When, however, Wilson's biography
+was taken in hand by his sister, Cairns promised to help her in every
+possible way with his advice and guidance, and this he did from week
+to week till the book was published. This help on his part was
+continued by his seeing through the press Wilson's posthumous book,
+_Counsels of an Invalid_, which appeared in 1862. With the completion
+of this task he seemed to be free to return to his theological work,
+and he did return to it; but his release turned out to be only a brief
+respite. In 1863 the ten years' negotiations for Union between the
+Free and United Presbyterian Churches, in which he felt impelled to
+take a prominent and laborious part, were begun, and they absorbed
+nearly all of his leisure during what might have been a productive
+period of his life. When he emerged from them he was fifty-four years
+of age, he had passed beyond the time of life when his creative powers
+were at their freshest, and the general habits of his life and lines
+of his activity had become settled and stereotyped.
+
+This is not the place in which to enter into a detailed account of the
+Union negotiations. That has been done with admirable lucidity and
+skill by such writers as Dr. Norman Walker in his Life of Dr. Robert
+Buchanan, and by Dr. MacEwen in his Life of the subject of the present
+sketch, and it does not need to be done over again. But something
+must be said at this point to indicate the general lines which the
+negotiations followed and to make Cairns's relation to them clear.
+That he should have taken a keen and sympathetic interest in any great
+movement for ecclesiastical union was quite what might have been
+expected. What interested him in Christian truth, and what he had,
+ever since he had been a student, set himself specially to expound and
+defend, were the great catholic doctrines which are the heritage of
+the one Church of Christ. Constitutionally, he was disposed to make
+more of the things that unite Christians than of those which divide
+them; and, while he was loyally attached to his own Church, many of
+his favourite heroes, as well as many of his warmest personal friends,
+belonged to other Churches. Hence anything that made for Union was
+entirely in line with his feelings and his convictions. Thus he had
+thrown himself heartily into the work of the Evangelical Alliance, and
+at its memorable Berlin Meeting of 1857 had created a deep impression
+by an address which he delivered in German on the probable results of
+a closer co-operation between German and British Protestantism. In the
+same year he took part in a Conference in Edinburgh which had been
+summoned by Sir George Sinclair of Ulbster to discuss the possibility
+of Church Union at home. And when in 1859 the Union took place in the
+Australian Colonies of the Presbyterian Churches which bore the names
+of the Scottish Churches from which they had sprung, it was to a large
+extent through his influence that the Australian United Presbyterians
+took part in the Union.
+
+His ideal at first was of one great Presbyterian Communion co-extensive
+with the English language, and separately organised in the different
+countries and dependencies in which its adherents were to be found,
+but having one creed and one form of worship and complete freedom from
+all State patronage and control. But, as the times did not seem ripe
+for such a vast consummation, he made no attempt to give his ideal a
+practical form, and concentrated his energies on the lesser movement
+which was beginning to take shape for a union of the Presbyterian
+Churches in England and the non-Established Presbyterian Churches in
+Scotland. He was one of those who brought this project before the
+Synod of the United Presbyterian Church in May 1863, when he appeared
+in support of an overture from the Berwick Presbytery in favour of
+Union. The overture was adopted with enthusiasm, and the Synod agreed
+by a majority of more than ten to one to appoint a committee to confer
+with a view to Union with any committee which might be appointed by
+the Free Church General Assembly. The Free Church Assembly, which met
+a fortnight later, passed a similar resolution unanimously, although
+not without a keen discussion revealing elements of opposition which
+were afterwards to gather strength.
+
+It is quite possible that, as competent observers have suggested,
+if the enthusiasm for the project which then existed had been taken
+advantage of at once, Union might have been carried with a rush.
+But the able men who were guiding the proceedings thought it safer
+to advance more slowly; and, when the Joint Union Committee met,
+they went on to consider in detail the various points on which the
+two Churches differed. These had reference almost entirely to the
+relations between Church and State. The United Presbyterians were,
+almost to a man, "Voluntaries," _i.e._ they held that the Church ought
+in all cases to support itself without assistance from the State, and
+free from the interference which, in their view, was the inevitable
+and justifiable accompaniment of all State establishments. The Free
+Churchmen, on the other hand, while maintaining as their cardinal
+principle that the Church must be free from all State interference,
+and while therefore protesting against the existing Establishment,
+held that the Church, if its freedom were adequately guaranteed,
+might lawfully accept establishment and endowment from the State. An
+elaborate statement was drawn up exhibiting first the points on which
+the two Churches were agreed with regard to this question, and then
+the points on which they differed. From this it appeared that they
+were at one as to the duty of the State--or, in the language of the
+Westminster Confession, the "Civil Magistrate"--to make Christian laws
+and to administer them in a Christian spirit. The Civil Magistrate
+ought, it was agreed, to be a Christian, not merely as a man but as a
+magistrate. The only vital point of difference was with regard to the
+question of Church establishments--as to whether it was part of the
+Christian Civil Magistrate's duty to establish and endow the Church.
+But, as it seemed to be a vain hope that the Free Church would ever
+get an Establishment to its mind, it was urged that this was a mere
+matter of theory, and might be safely left as an "open question" in a
+United Church. The statement referred to, which is better known as the
+"Articles of Agreement," was not ready to be submitted in a final form
+to the Synod and Assembly of 1864, and the Committee, which was now
+reinforced by representatives from the Reformed Presbyterian Church
+and from the Presbyterian Church in England, was reappointed to carry
+on its labours.
+
+But meanwhile clouds were beginning to appear on the horizon. In
+the United Presbyterian Synod there was a small minority of sturdy
+Voluntaries who, while not opposed to Union, were apprehensive that
+the price to be paid for it would be the partial surrender of their
+testimony in behalf of their distinctive principle. They did not wish
+to impose their beliefs on others, but they were anxious to reserve
+to themselves full liberty to hold and propagate their views in the
+United Church, and they were not sure that, by accepting the Articles
+of Agreement, they were in fact doing this. The efforts of Dr. Cairns
+and others were directed, not without success, to meeting their
+difficulties. But in the Free Church a more formidable opposition
+began to show itself. There had always been a conservative element
+in that Church, represented by men who held tenaciously to the more
+literal interpretation of its ecclesiastical documents and traditions;
+and, as the discussions went on, it became clear that the hopelessness
+of a reconciliation with the Establishment was not so universally felt
+as had been at first supposed. The supporters of the Union movement
+included almost all the trusted leaders of the Church--men like Drs.
+Candlish, Buchanan, Duff, Fairbairn, Rainy, and Guthrie, Sir Henry
+Moncreiff, Lord Dalhousie, and Mr. Murray Dunlop, most of whom had
+got their ecclesiastical training in the great controversy which had
+issued in the Disruption; but all their eloquence and all their skill
+did not avail to allay the misgivings or silence the objections of the
+other party. At length in 1867 a crisis was reached. The Articles of
+Agreement, after having been finally formulated by the Committee,
+had been sent down to Presbyteries for their consideration; and the
+reports of the Presbyteries were laid on the table of the Assembly
+of that year. The question now arose, Was it wise, in view of the
+opposition, to take further steps towards Union? The Assembly by
+346 votes to 120 decided to goon; whereupon the Anti-Union leaders
+resigned the seats which up to this time they had retained on the
+Union Committee.
+
+It is true that, after the Committee had been relieved of this
+hostile element, considerable and rapid progress was made. Hopes were
+cherished for a time that the Union might yet be consummated, and
+the determination was expressed to carry it through at all hazards.
+But the Free Church minority, ably led and knowing its own mind,
+stubbornly maintained its ground. Its adherents, who included perhaps
+one-third of the ministers and people of the Church, were specially
+numerous in the Highlands, where United Presbyterianism was
+practically unrepresented.
+
+Here most distorted views were held of the Voluntaryism which most of
+its ministers and members professed. It was represented as equivalent
+to National Atheism, and from this the transition was an easy one,
+especially in districts where few of the people had even seen a United
+Presbyterian, to the position that an upholder of National Atheism
+must himself be an Atheist. It became increasingly clear, as the years
+passed, that if the Union were to be forced through, there must be
+a new Disruption, and a Disruption which would cost the Free Church
+those Highland congregations which for thirty years it had been its
+glory to maintain. Moreover, it was currently reported that the
+Anti-Union party had taken the opinion of eminent counsel, and that
+these had declared that, in the event of a Disruption taking place
+on this question of Union, the protesting minority would be legally
+entitled to take with them the entire property of the Church. The
+conviction was forced on the Free Church leaders (and in this they
+were supported by their United Presbyterian brethren) that the time
+was not yet ripe for that which they so greatly desired to see, and
+that even for Union the price they would have to pay was too great.
+And so with heavy hearts they decided in 1873 to abandon the
+negotiations which had been proceeding for ten years. All that they
+felt themselves prepared to carry was a proposal that Free Church
+or United Presbyterian ministers should be "mutually eligible" for
+calls in the two Churches--a proposal that did not come to much.
+
+Three years later, the Reformed Presbyterian Church united with the
+Free Church, and in the same year (1876) the United Presbyterian
+Church gave up one hundred and ten of its congregations, which united
+with the English Presbyterian Church and thus formed the present
+Presbyterian Church of England. The original idea, at least on the
+United Presbyterian side, had been that all the negotiating bodies
+should be welded into one comprehensive British Church; but this,
+especially in view of the breakdown of the larger Union, proved to be
+unworkable, and the final result for the United Presbyterians was that
+they came out of the negotiations a considerably smaller and weaker
+Church than they had been when they went into them.
+
+In all the labours and anxieties of these ten years Dr. Cairns had
+borne a foremost part. At the meetings of the Union Committee he took
+an eager interest and a leading share in the discussions; and, while
+never compromising the position of his Church, he did much to set it
+in a clear and attractive light. In the United Presbyterian Synod,
+where it fell to his lot year by year to deliver the leading speech in
+support of the Committee's report, his eloquence, his sincerity, and
+his enthusiasm did not a little to reassure those who feared that
+there was a tendency on the part of their representatives to concede
+too much, and did a very great deal to keep his Church as a whole
+steadily in favour of Union in spite of many temptations to have done
+with it. Dr. Hutton, one of those advanced Voluntaries who had never
+been enthusiastic about the Union proposals, wrote to him at the close
+of the negotiations: "We have reached this stage through your vast
+personal influence more than through any other cause."
+
+Outside of the Church Courts he delivered innumerable speeches at
+public meetings which had been organised in all parts of the country
+in aid of the Union cause. These more than anything else led him to be
+identified in the public mind with that cause, and gained for him the
+name of the "Apostle of Union." The meetings at which these speeches
+were delivered were mostly got up on the Free Church side, where there
+seemed to be more need of missionary work of this kind than on his
+own, and his appearances on these occasions increased the favour with
+which he was already regarded in Free Church circles. "The chief
+attraction of Union for me," an eminent Free Church layman is reported
+to have said, "is that it will bring me into the same Church with John
+Cairns."
+
+That he was deeply disappointed by the failure of the enterprise on
+which his hopes had been so much set, he did not conceal; but he never
+believed that the ten years' work had been lost, and he never doubted
+that Union would come. He did not live to see it, but when, on October
+31, 1900, the two Churches at length became one, there were many in
+the great gathering in the Waverley Market who thought of him, and
+of his strenuous and noble labours into which they were on that day
+entering. Dr. Maclaren of Manchester gave expression to these thoughts
+in his speech in the evening of the day of Union, when, after paying
+a worthy tribute to the great leader to whose skill and patience the
+goodly consummation was so largely due, he went on to say: "But all
+during the proceedings of this day there has been one figure and one
+name in my memory, and I have been saying to myself, What would John
+Cairns, with his big heart and his sweet and simple nature, have said
+if God had given him to see this day! 'These all died in faith, not
+having received the promises... God having provided some better thing
+for us.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WALLACE GREEN
+
+
+All the time occupied by the events described in the last two
+chapters, Dr. Cairns was carrying on his ministry in Berwick with
+unflagging diligence. True to his principle, he steadily devoted to
+his pulpit and pastoral work the best of his strength, and always let
+them have the chief place in his thoughts. He gave to other things
+what he could spare, but he never forgot that he had determined to be
+a minister first of all. His congregation had prospered greatly under
+his care, and in 1859 the old-fashioned meeting-house in Golden Square
+was abandoned for a stately and spacious Gothic church with a handsome
+spire which had been erected in Wallace Green, with a frontage to the
+principal open square of the town. A few years earlier a new manse had
+been secured for the minister. This manse is the end house of a row of
+three called Wellington Terrace. These stand just within the old town
+walls, which are here pierced by wide embrasures. They are separated
+from the walls by a broad walk and a row of grass-plots, alternating
+with paved spaces opposite the embrasures, on which cannon were once
+planted. The manse faces south, and is roomy and commodious. When Dr.
+Cairns moved into it, he had an elderly servant as his housekeeper, of
+whom he is said to have been not a little afraid; but, after a couple
+of years or so, his sister Janet was installed as mistress of his
+house; and during the remaining thirty-six years of his life she
+attended to his wants, looked after his health, and in a hundred
+prudent and quiet ways helped him in his work.
+
+The study at Wellington Terrace is upstairs, and is a large room
+lighted by two windows. One of these looks across the river, which
+at this point washes the base of the town walls, to the dingy village
+of Tweedmouth, rising towards the sidings and sheds of a busy
+railway-station and the Northumberland uplands beyond. The other looks
+right out to sea, and when it is open, and sometimes when it is shut,
+"the rush and thunder of the surge" on Berwick bar or Spittal sands
+can be distinctly heard. In front, the Tweed pours its waters into the
+North Sea under the lee of the long pier, which acts as a breakwater
+and shelters the entrance to the harbour. Far away to the right, Holy
+Island, with the castle-crowned rock of Bamborough beyond it, are
+prominent objects; and at night, the Longstone light on the Outer
+Farne recalls the heroic rescue by Grace Darling of the shipwrecked
+crew of the _Forfarshire_.
+
+Opposite this window stood the large bookcase in which Dr. Cairns's
+library was housed. The books composing the library were neither
+very numerous, very select, nor in very good condition. Although he
+was a voracious reader, it must be admitted that Dr. Cairns took
+little pride in his books. It was a matter of utter indifference to
+him whether he read a favourite author in a good edition or in a cheap
+one. The volumes of German philosophy and theology, of which he had a
+fair stock, remained unbound in their original sober livery, and when
+any of them threatened to fall to pieces he was content to tie them
+together with string or to get his sister to fasten them with paste.
+One or two treasures he had, such as a first edition of Bacon's
+_Instauratio Magna_, a first edition of Butler's _Analogy_, and a
+Stephens Greek Testament; also a complete set of the Delphin Classics,
+handsomely bound, and some College prizes. These, with the Benedictine
+edition of Augustine, folio editions of Athanasius, Chrysostom, and
+other Fathers, some odd volumes of Migne, and a considerable number
+of books on Reformation and Secession theology, formed the most
+noteworthy elements in his collection. He added later a very complete
+set of the writings of the English Deists, and the works of Voltaire,
+Rousseau, and Renan. Side by side with these was what came to be a
+vast accumulation of rubbish, consisting of presentation copies of
+books on all subjects which his anxious conscience persuaded him that
+he was bound to keep on his shelves, since publishers and authors
+had been kind enough to send them to him. Nearly all the books that
+belonged to his real library he had read with care. Most of them
+were copiously annotated, and his annotations were, as a rule,
+characterised by a refreshing trenchancy,--in the case of some,
+as of Gibbon, tempered with respect; in the case of others, as of
+F.W. Newman and W.R. Greg, bordering on truculence. The only other
+noteworthy objects in the study were two splendid engravings of
+Raphael's "Transfiguration" and "Spasimo" (the former bearing the
+signature of Raphael Morghen), which had been a gift to him from Mrs.
+Balmer.
+
+The greater part of each day was spent in this room. He could get
+along with less sleep than most men; and however late he might have
+sat over his books at night, he was frequently in his study again long
+before breakfast. After breakfast came family worship, each item of
+which was noteworthy. Although passionately fond of sacred music, he
+had a wild, uncontrollable kind of voice in singing. He seemed to have
+always a perfectly definite conception of what the tune ought to be,
+but he was seldom able to give this idea an accurate, much less a
+melodious, expression. Yet he never omitted the customary portion of
+psalm or hymn, but tackled it with the utmost gallantry, fervour, and
+enthusiasm, although he scarcely ever got through a verse without
+going off the tune.
+
+His reading of Scripture had no elocutionary pretensions about it;
+it was quiet, and to a large extent gone through in a monotone; but
+two things about it made it very impressive. One of these was the deep
+reverence that characterised it, and the other was a note of subdued
+enthusiasm that ran all through it. It was clear to the listener that
+behind every passage read, whether it was history, psalm, or prophecy,
+or even the driest detail of ritual, there was visible to him a great
+world-process going on that appealed to his imagination and influenced
+even the tones of his voice. And his prayers, quite unstudied as they
+of course were, brought the whole company right into the presence of
+the Unseen. They were usually full of detail,--he seemed to remember
+everybody and everything,--but each petition was absolutely
+appropriate to the special case with which it dealt, and all were
+fused into a unity by the spirit of devotion that welled up through
+all. After prayers he went back to his study, and nothing was heard or
+seen of him for some hours, except when his heavy tread was heard
+upstairs as he walked backwards and forwards, or when the strains of
+what was meant to be a German choral were wafted down from above.
+
+The afternoon he usually spent in visiting, and, so long as he
+remained in Berwick, there was no more familiar figure in its streets
+than his. The tall, stalwart form, already a little bent,--but bent,
+one thought, not so much by the weight of advancing years as by way
+of making an apology for its height,--the hair already white, the
+mild and kindly blue eye, the tall hat worn well back on the head,
+the swallow-tail coat, the swathes within swathes of broad white
+neckcloth, the umbrella carried, even in the finest weather, under the
+arm with the handle downward, the gloves in the hands but never on
+them, the rapid eager stride,--all these come back vividly to those
+who can remember Berwick in the Sixties and early Seventies of last
+century. His visitations were still carried out with the method and
+punctuality which had characterised them in the early days of his
+ministry, and he usually arranged to make a brief pause for tea with
+one of the families visited. On these occasions he would frequently be
+in high spirits, and his hearty and resounding laughter would break
+out on the smallest provocation. That laugh of his was eminently
+characteristic of the man. There was nothing smothered or furtive
+about it; there was not even the vestige of a chuckle in it. Its deep
+"Ah! hah! hah!" came with a staccato, quacking sound from somewhere
+low down in the chest, and set his huge shoulders moving in unison
+with its peals. The whole closed with a long breath of purest
+enjoyment--a kind of final licking of the lips after the feast
+was over.
+
+Returning to his house, he always entered it by the back door,
+apparently because he did not wish to put the servant to the trouble
+of going upstairs to open the front door for him. It does not seem
+to have occurred to him to use a latch-key. In the evening there was
+generally some meeting to go to, but after his return, when evening
+worship and the invariable supper of porridge and milk were over, he
+always went back to his study, and its lights were seldom put out
+until long past midnight.
+
+Although his reading in these solitary hours was of course mainly
+theological, he always kept fresh his interest in the classical
+studies of his youth. He did not depend on his communings with Origen
+and Eusebius for keeping up his Greek, but went back as often as he
+could find time to Plato and to the Tragedians. Macaulay has defined a
+Greek scholar as one who can read Plato with his feet on the fender.
+Dr. Cairns could fully satisfy this condition; indeed he went beyond
+it, for when he went from home he was in the habit of taking a volume
+of Plato or Aeschylus with him to read in the train. One of his
+nephews, at that time a schoolboy, remembers reading with him, when
+on a holiday visit to Berwick, through the _Alcestis_ of Euripides.
+It may have been because he found it necessary to frighten his young
+relative into habits of accuracy, or possibly because an outrage
+committed against a Greek poet was to him the most horrid of all
+outrages; but anyhow, during these studies, he altogether laid aside
+that restraint which he was usually so jealous to maintain over his
+powers of sarcasm and invective. He lay on the study sofa while the
+lesson was going on, with a Tauchnitz Euripides in his hand; but
+sometimes, when a false quantity or a more than usually stupid
+grammatical blunder was made, he would spring to his feet and fairly
+shout with wrath. Only once had he to consult a Greek lexicon for the
+meaning of a word; and then it turned out that the meaning he had
+assigned to it provisionally was the right one. A Latin lexicon he
+did not possess.
+
+On Sunday, Wallace Green Church was a goodly sight. Forenoon and
+afternoon, streams of worshippers came pouring by Ravensdowne, Church
+Street, and Walkergate Lane across the square and into the large
+building, which was soon filled to overflowing. Then "the Books" were
+brought in by the stately beadle, and last of all "the Doctor" came
+hurriedly in, scrambled awkwardly up the pulpit stair, and covered his
+face with his black gloved hands.[15] Then he rose, and in slow
+monotone gave out the opening psalm, during the singing of which his
+strong but wandering voice could now and again be distinctly heard
+above the more artistic strains of the choir and congregation
+rendering its tribute of praise. The Scripture lessons were read in
+the same subdued but reverent tones, and the prayers were simple and
+direct in their language, the emotion that throbbed through them being
+kept under due restraint. The opening periods of the sermon were
+pitched in the same note, but when the preacher got fairly into his
+subject he broke loose from such restraints, and his argument was
+unfolded, and then massed, and finally pressed home with all the
+strength of his intellect, reinforced at every stage by the play of
+his imagination and the glow of a passionate conviction. His "manner"
+in the pulpit was, it is true, far from graceful. His principal
+gesture was a jerking of the right arm towards the left shoulder,
+accompanied sometimes by a bending forward of the upper part of the
+body; and when he came to his peroration, which he usually delivered
+with his eyes closed and in lowered tones, he would clasp his hands
+and move them up and down in front of him. But all these things seemed
+to fit in naturally to his style of oratory; there was not the
+faintest trace of affectation in any of them, and, as a matter of
+fact, they added to the effectiveness of his preaching.
+
+[Footnote 15: In accordance with the old Scottish custom, Dr. Cairns
+wore gloves during the "preliminary exercises," but took them off
+before beginning the sermon. On the Sunday after a funeral he
+discarded his Geneva gown in the forenoon, and, as a mark of respect
+to the deceased, wore over his swallow-tail coat the huge black silk
+sash which it was then customary in Berwick to send to the minister
+on such occasions.]
+
+In Wallace Green Dr. Cairns was surrounded by a devoted band of
+office-bearers and others, who carried on very successful Home
+Mission work in the town, and kept the various organisations of the
+church in a vigorous and flourishing state. He had himself no faculty
+for business details, and he left these mostly to others; but his
+influence was felt at every point, and operated in a remarkable degree
+towards the keeping up of the spiritual tone of the church's work.
+With his elders, who were not merely in regard to ecclesiastical
+rank, but also in regard to character and ability, the leaders of the
+congregation, he was always on the most cordial and intimate terms. In
+numerical strength they usually approximated to the apostolic figure
+of twelve, and Dr. Cairns used to remark that their Christian names
+included a surprisingly large number of apostolic pairs. Thus there
+were amongst them not merely James and John, Matthew and Thomas, but
+even Philip and Bartholomew.
+
+The Philip here referred to was Dr. Philip Whiteside Maclagan, a
+brother of the present Archbishop of York and of the late Professor
+Sir Douglas Maclagan. Dr. Maclagan had been originally an army
+surgeon, but had been long settled in general practice in Berwick in
+succession to his father-in-law, the eminent naturalist, Dr. George
+Johnstone. It was truly said of him that he combined in himself the
+labours and the graces of Luke the beloved physician and Philip the
+evangelist. When occasion offered, he would not only diagnose and
+prescribe but pray at the bedsides of his patients, and his influence
+was exerted in behalf of everything that was pure and lovely and of
+good report in the town of Berwick. His delicately chiselled features
+and fine expression were the true index of a devout and beautiful soul
+within. Dr. Cairns and he were warmly attached to one another, and he
+was his minister's right-hand man in everything that concerned the
+good of the congregation.
+
+It will readily be believed that Dr. Cairns had not been suffered to
+remain in Berwick during all these years without strong efforts being
+made to induce him to remove to larger spheres of labour. As a matter
+of fact, he received in all some half-dozen calls during the course of
+his ministry from congregations in Edinburgh and Glasgow; while at one
+period of his life scarcely a year passed without private overtures
+being made to him which, if he had given any encouragement to them,
+would have issued in calls. These overtures he in every case declined
+at once; but when congregations, in spite of him or without having
+previously consulted him, took the responsibility of proceeding
+to a formal call, he never intervened to arrest their action.
+He had a curious respect for the somewhat cumbrous and slow-moving
+Presbyterian procedure, and when it had been set in motion he felt
+that it was his duty to let it take its course.
+
+Once when a call to him was in process which he had in its initial
+stages discouraged, and which he knew that he could not accept, his
+sister, who had set her heart on furnishing an empty bedroom in the
+manse at Berwick, was peremptorily bidden to stay her hand lest he
+might thereby seem to be prejudging that which was not yet before him.
+Two of the calls he received deserve separate mention. One was in 1855
+from Greyfriars Church, Glasgow, at that time the principal United
+Presbyterian congregation in the city. All sorts of influences were
+brought to bear upon him to accept it, and for a time he was in
+grave doubt as to whether it might not be his duty to do so. But two
+considerations especially decided him to remain in Berwick. One was
+the state of his health, which was not at that time very good; and the
+other was the pathetic one, that he wanted to write that book which
+was never to be written.
+
+Nine years later, in 1864, a yet more determined attempt was made
+to secure him for Edinburgh. A new congregation had been formed at
+Morningside, one of the southern suburbs of the city, and it was
+thought that this would offer a sphere of work and of influence worthy
+of his powers. A call was accordingly addressed to him, and it was
+backed up by representations of an almost unique character and weight.
+The Free Church leaders, with whom he was then brought into close
+touch by the Union negotiations, urged him to come to Edinburgh. A
+memorial, signed by one hundred and sixty-seven United Presbyterian
+elders in the city, told him that, in the interests of their
+Church, it was of the utmost importance that he should do so. Another
+memorial, signed by several hundred students at the University, put
+the matter from their point of view. A still more remarkable document
+was the following:--
+
+"The subscribers, understanding that the Rev. Dr. Cairns has received
+a call to the congregation of Morningside, desire to express their
+earnest and strong conviction that his removal to Edinburgh would
+be a signal benefit to vital religion throughout Scotland, and more
+especially in the metropolis, where his great intellectual powers, his
+deep and wide scholarship, his mastery of the literature of modern
+unbelief, and the commanding simplicity and godly sincerity of his
+personal character and public teaching, would find an ample field
+for their full and immediate exercise."
+
+This was signed (amongst others) by three Judges of the Court of
+Session, by the Lord Advocate, by the Principal and seven of the
+Professors of the University, and by such distinguished ministers
+and citizens as Dr. Candlish, Dr. Hanna, Dr. Lindsay Alexander, Adam
+Black, Dr. John Brown, and Charles Cowan. It was a remarkable tribute
+(Adam Black in giving his name said, "This is more than ever was done
+for Dr. Chalmers"), and it made a deep impression on Dr. Cairns. The
+Wallace Green congregation, however, sought to counteract it by an
+argument which amusingly shows how well they knew their man. They
+appealed to that strain of anxious conscientiousness in him which he
+had inherited from his father, by urging that all these memorials were
+"irregular," and that therefore he had no right to consider them in
+coming to his decision. They also undertook to furnish him with the
+means of devoting more time to theological study than had hitherto
+been at his disposal. After a period of hesitation, more painful and
+prolonged than he had ever passed through on any similar occasion, he
+decided to remain in Berwick. He was moved to this decision, partly by
+his attachment to his congregation; partly by a feeling that he could
+do more for the cause of Union by remaining its minister than would
+be possible amid the labours of a new city charge; and partly by the
+hope, which was becoming perceptibly fainter and more wistful, that
+he might at last find leisure in Berwick to write his book.
+
+But, although he did not become a city minister, he preached very
+frequently in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and indeed all over the country.
+His services were in constant request for the opening of churches and
+on anniversary occasions. He records that in the course of a single
+year he preached or spoke away from home (of course mostly on week
+days) some forty or fifty times. Wherever he went he attracted
+large crowds, on whom his rugged natural eloquence produced a deep
+impression. It has been recorded that on one occasion, while a vast
+audience to which he had been preaching in an Edinburgh church was
+dispersing, a man was overheard expressing his admiration to his
+neighbour in language more enthusiastic than proper: "He's a deevil
+o' a preacher!"
+
+With all this burden of work pressing on him, it was a relief when the
+annual holiday came round and he could get away from it. But this
+holiday, too, was usually of a more or less strenuous character, and
+embraced large tracts of country either at home or, more frequently,
+on the Continent. On these tours his keen human interest asserted
+itself. He loved to visit places associated with great historic
+events, or that suggested to him reminiscences of famous men and
+women. And the actual condition of the people, how they lived, and
+what they were thinking about, interested him deeply. He spoke to
+everybody he met, in the train, in the steamboat, or in hotels, in
+fluent if rather "bookish" German, in correct but somewhat halting
+French, or, if it was a Roman Catholic priest he had to deal with,
+in sonorous Latin. And, without anything approaching cant or
+officiousness, he always tried to bring the conversation round to
+the subject of religion--to the state of religion in the country in
+which he was travelling, about which he was always anxious to gain
+first-hand information, and, if possible and he could do it without
+offence, to the personal views and experiences of those with whom he
+conversed. He rarely or never did give offence in this respect, for
+there was never anything aggressive or clamorous or prying in his
+treatment of the subject.
+
+On his return to Berwick his congregation usually expected him to give
+them a lecture on what he had seen, and the MSS. of several of these
+lectures, abounding in graphic description and in shrewd and often
+humorous observation of men and things, have been preserved. It must
+suffice here to give an extract from one of them on a tour in the West
+of Ireland in 1864, illustrating as it does a curious phase of Irish
+social life at that time. Dr. Cairns and a small party of friends had
+embarked in a little steamer on one of the Irish lakes, and were
+taking note of the gentlemen's seats, varied with occasional ruins,
+which were coming in view on both sides.
+
+"A fine ancient castle," he goes on to say, "surrounded by trees
+and almost overhanging the lough, attracted our gaze for some time ere
+we passed it. The owner's name and character were naturally brought
+under review. 'Is not Sir ---- a Sunday man?' says one of the company
+to another. 'He is.' The distinction was new to me, and I inferred
+something good, perhaps some unusual zeal for Sabbath observance
+or similar virtue. But, alas! for the vanity of human judgments.
+A 'Sunday man' in the West of Ireland is one who only appears on the
+Sunday outside his own dwelling, because on any other day he would be
+arrested for debt. Even on a week day he is safe if he keeps to his
+own house, where in Ireland, as in England, no writ can force its way.
+Sir ---- was also invulnerable while sitting on the grand jury, where
+quite lately he had protracted the business to an inordinate length in
+order to extend his own liberty. As the boat passed close beside his
+castle, a handsome elderly gentleman appeared at an open window, and
+with hat in hand and a charming smile on his face made us a most
+profound and graceful salutation. We could not be insensible to so
+much courtesy--since it was Sir ---- himself who thus welcomed us; but
+as we waved our hats in reply, one of our party, who had actually a
+writ out against the fine old Irish gentleman at the very time, with
+very little prospect of execution, muttered something between his
+teeth and pressed his hat firmer down on his head than usual. Such
+landlordism is still not uncommon. The same friend is familiar with
+writs against other gentlemen whose house is their castle, and to whom
+Sunday is 'the light of the week.'"
+
+The closing period of Dr. Cairns's ministry at Berwick was made
+memorable by a remarkable religious revival in the town. Following on
+a brief visit in January 1874 from Messrs. Moody and Sankey, who had
+then just closed their first mission in Edinburgh, a movement began
+which lasted nearly two years. With some help from outside it was
+carried on during that time mostly by the ministers of the town,
+assisted by laymen from the various churches, among whom Dr. Maclagan
+occupied a foremost place. Dr. Cairns threw himself into this movement
+with ardour, and although he did not intend it, and probably was not
+aware of it, he was its real leader, giving it at once the impetus and
+the guidance which it needed. Besides being present, and taking some
+part whenever he was at home in the crowded evangelistic meetings that
+for a while were held nightly, and in the prayer-meeting, attended by
+from one hundred and fifty to two hundred, which met every day at
+noon, he must have conversed with hundreds of people seeking direction
+on religious matters during the early months of 1874. And, knowing
+that many would shrink from the publicity of an Inquiry Meeting, he
+made a complete canvass of his own congregation, in the course of
+which by gentle and tactful means he found out those who really
+desired to be spoken to, and spoke to them. The results of the
+movement proved to be lasting, and were, in his opinion, wholly good.
+His own congregation profited greatly by it, and on the Sunday before
+one of the Wallace Green Communions, in 1874, a great company of young
+men and women were received into the fellowship of the Church. The
+catechumens filled several rows of pews in the front of the spacious
+area of the building, and, when they rose in a body to make profession
+of their faith, the scene is described as having been most impressive.
+Specially impressive also must have sounded the words which he always
+used on such occasions: "You have to-day fulfilled your baptism vow by
+taking upon yourselves the responsibilities hitherto discharged by
+your parents. It is an act second only in importance to the private
+surrender of your souls to God, and not inferior in result to your
+final enrolment among the saints.... Nothing must separate you from
+the Church militant till you reach the Church triumphant."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PROFESSOR
+
+
+It had all along been felt that Dr. Cairns must sooner or later find
+scope for his special powers and acquirements in a professor's chair.
+In the early years of his ministry he received no fewer than four
+offers of philosophical professorships, which his views of the
+ministry and of his consecration to it constrained him to set aside.
+Three similar offers of theological chairs, the acceptance of which
+did not involve the same interference with the plan of his life, came
+to him later, but were declined on other grounds. When, however, a
+vacancy in the Theological Hall of his own Church occurred by the
+death of Professor Lindsay, in 1866, the universal opinion in the
+Church was that it must be filled by him and by nobody else. Dr.
+Lindsay had been Professor of Exegesis, but the United Presbyterian
+Synod in May 1867 provided for this subject being dealt with
+otherwise, and instituted a new chair of Apologetics with a special
+view to Dr. Cairns's recognised field of study. To this chair the
+Synod summoned him by acclamation, and, having accepted its call,
+he began his new work in the following August.
+
+As in his own student days, the Hall met for only two months in each
+year, and the professors therefore did not need to give up their
+ministerial charges. So he remained in Berwick, where his congregation
+were very proud of the new honour that had come to their minister, and
+that was in some degree reflected on them. Instead of "the Doctor"
+they now spoke of him habitually as "the Professor," and presented him
+with a finely befrogged but somewhat irrelevant professor's gown for
+use in the pulpit at Wallace Green.
+
+Dr. Cairns prepared two courses of lectures for his students--one on
+the History of Apologetics, and the other on Apologetics proper, or
+Christian Evidences. For the former, his desire to go to the sources
+and to take nothing at second-hand led him to make a renewed and
+laborious study of the Fathers, who were already, to a far greater
+extent than with most theologians, his familiar friends. His knowledge
+of later controversies, such as that with the Deists, which afterwards
+bore fruit in his work on "Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century," was
+also widened and deepened at this time. These historical lectures were
+almost overweighted by the learning which he thus accumulated; but
+they were at once massive in their structure and orderly and lucid in
+their arrangement.
+
+In the other course, on Christian Evidences, he did not include
+any discussion on Theism which--probably because of his special
+familiarity with the Deistical and kindred controversies, and also
+because the modern assaults on supernatural Christianity from the
+Evolutionary and Agnostic standpoint had not yet become pressing--he
+postulated. And, discarding the traditional division of the Evidences
+into Internal and External, he classified them according to their
+relation to the different Attributes of God, as manifesting His
+Power, Knowledge, Wisdom, Holiness, and Benignity. With this course
+he incorporated large parts of his unfinished treatise on "The
+Difficulties of Christianity," which, after he had thus broken it
+up, passed finally out of sight.
+
+The impression which he produced on his students by these lectures,
+and still more by his personality, was very great. "I suppose," writes
+one of them, "no men are so hypercritical as students after they have
+been four or five years at the University. To those who are aware of
+this, it will give the most accurate impression of our feeling towards
+Dr. Cairns when I say that, with regard to him, criticism could not be
+said to exist. We all had for him an appreciation which was far deeper
+than ordinary admiration; it was admiration blended with loyalty and
+veneration."[16] Specially impressive were the humility which went
+along with his gifts and learning, and the wide charity which made
+him see good in everything. One student's appreciation of this latter
+quality found whimsical expression in a cartoon which was delightedly
+passed from hand to hand in the class, and which represented Dr.
+Cairns cordially shaking hands with the Devil. A "balloon" issuing
+from his mouth enclosed some such legend as this: "I hope you are very
+well, sir. I am delighted to make your acquaintance, and to find that
+you are not nearly so black as you are painted."
+
+[Footnote 16: _Life and Letters_, p. 560.]
+
+During the ten years' negotiations for Union a considerable number of
+pressing reforms in the United Presbyterian Church were kept back from
+fear of hampering the negotiations, and because it was felt that such
+matters might well be postponed to be dealt with in a United Church.
+But, when the negotiations were broken off, the United Presbyterians,
+having recovered their liberty of action, at once began to set their
+house in order. One of the first matters thus taken up was the
+question of Theological Education. As has been already mentioned, the
+theological curriculum extended over five sessions of two months. It
+was now proposed to substitute for this a curriculum extending over
+three sessions of five months, as being more in accordance with the
+requirements of the times and as bringing the Hall into line with the
+Universities and the Free Church Colleges. A scheme, of which this was
+the leading feature, was finally adopted by the Synod in May 1875.
+It necessarily involved the separation of the professors from their
+charges, and accordingly the Synod addressed a call to Dr. Cairns
+to leave Berwick and become Professor of Systematic Theology and
+Apologetics in the newly constituted Hall, or, as it was henceforth to
+be designated--"College." In this chair it was proposed that he should
+have as his colleague the venerable Dr. Harper, who was the senior
+professor in the old Hall, and who was now appointed the first
+Principal of the new College.
+
+Dr. Cairns had thus to make his choice between his congregation and
+his professorship, and, with many natural regrets, he decided in
+favour of the latter. This decision, which he announced to his people
+towards the close of the summer, had the incidental effect of keeping
+him in the United Presbyterian Church, for in the following year the
+English congregations of that Church were severed from the parent body
+to form part of the new Presbyterian Church of England; and Wallace
+Green congregation, somewhat against its will, and largely in response
+to Dr. Cairns's wishes, went with the rest. He had still a year to
+spend in Berwick, broken only by the last session of the old Hall in
+August and September, and that year he spent in quiet, steady, and
+happy work. In June 1876 he preached his farewell sermon to an immense
+and deeply moved congregation from the words (Rom. i. 16), "I am not
+ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto
+salvation unto every one that believeth." "For more than thirty
+years," he concluded, "I have preached this gospel among you, and I
+bless His name this day that to not a few it has by His grace proved
+the power of God unto salvation. To Him I ascribe all the praise; and
+I would rather on such an occasion remember defects and shortcomings
+than dwell even upon what He has wrought for us. The sadness of
+parting from people to whom I have been bound by such close and tender
+ties, from whom I have received every mark of respect, affection, and
+encouragement, and in regard to whom I feel moved to say, 'If I forget
+thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning,' inclines me
+rather to self-examination and to serious fear lest any among you
+should have suffered through my failure to set forth and urge home
+this gospel of salvation. If then any of you should be in this case,
+through my fault or your own, that you have not yet obeyed the gospel
+of Christ, I address to you in Christ's name one parting call that you
+may at length receive the truth."
+
+A few weeks later he and his sister removed to Edinburgh, where they
+were joined in the autumn by their brother William. William Cairns,
+who had been schoolmaster at Oldcambus for thirty-two years, was in
+many respects a notable man. Deprived, as we have seen, in early
+manhood of the power of walking, he had set himself to improve his
+mind and had acquired a great store of general information. He was
+shrewd, humorous, genial, and intensely human, and had made himself
+the centre of a large circle of friends, many of whom were to be found
+far beyond the bounds of his native parish and county. Since his
+mother's death an elder sister had kept house for him, but she had
+died in the previous winter, and at his brother's urgent request he
+had consented to give up his school al Oldcambus and make his home for
+the future with him in Edinburgh. The house No. 10 Spence Street, in
+which for sixteen years the brothers and sister lived together, is a
+modest semi-detached villa in a short street running off the Dalkeith
+Road, in one of the southern suburbs of the city. It had two great
+advantages in Dr. Cairns's eyes--one being that it was far enough away
+from the College to ensure that he would have a good walk every day in
+going there and back; and the other, that its internal arrangements
+were very convenient for his brother finding his way in his
+wheel-chair about it, and out of it when he so desired.
+
+The study, as at Berwick, was upstairs, and was a large lightsome
+room, from which a view of the Craigmillar woods, North Berwick Law,
+and even the distant Lammermoors, could be obtained--a view which was,
+alas! soon blocked up by the erection of tall buildings. At the back
+of the house, downstairs, was the sitting-room, where the family meals
+were taken and where William sat working at his desk. He had been
+fortunate enough to secure, almost immediately after his arrival in
+Edinburgh, a commission from Messrs. A. & C. Black to prepare the
+Index to the ninth edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, then in
+course of publication. During the twelve years that the work lasted he
+performed the possibly unique feat of reading through the whole of the
+twenty-five volumes of the Encyclopaedia, and thus added considerably
+to his already encyclopaedic stock of miscellaneous information.
+Opening off the sitting-room was a smaller room, or rather a large
+closet, commanding one of the finest views in Edinburgh of the
+lion-shaped Arthur's Seat; and here of an evening he would sit in his
+chair alone, or surrounded by the friends who soon began to gather
+about him,
+
+  "And smoke, yea, smoke and smoke."
+
+
+Sometimes a more than usually resounding peal of laughter would bring
+the professor down from his study to find out what was the matter, and
+to join in the merriment; and then, after a few hearty words of
+greeting to the visitors, he would plead the pressure of his work and
+return to the company of Justin or Evagrius.
+
+His three nephews, who during the Edinburgh period were staying in
+town studying for the ministry, always spent Saturday afternoon at
+Spence Street, and sometimes a student friend would come with them.
+Dr. Cairns was usually free on such occasions to devote an hour or two
+to his young friends. He was always ready to enter into discussions on
+philosophical problems that happened to be interesting them, and the
+power and ease with which he dealt with these gave an impression as of
+one heaving up and pitching about huge masses of rock. His part in
+these discussions commonly in the end became a monologue, which he
+delivered lying back in his chair, with his shoulders resting on the
+top bar of it, and which he sometimes accompanied with the peculiar
+jerk of his right arm habitual to him in preaching. A _snell_ remark
+of his brother William suggesting some new and comic association with
+a philosophic term dropped in the course of the discussion, would
+bring him back with a roar of laughter to the actual world and to
+more sublunary themes. When the young men rose to leave he always
+accompanied them to the front door, and bade each of them good-bye
+with a hearty "[Greek: Panta ta kala soi genoito],"[17] and an
+invariable injunction to "put your foot on it,"--"it" being the
+spring catch by which the gate was opened.
+
+[Footnote 17: "All fair things be thine."]
+
+Once a week during the session a party of six or eight students came
+to tea at Spence Street, until the whole of his two classes had been
+gone over. After tea in the otherwise seldom used dining-room of the
+house, some of the party accompanied the professor to the study.
+Here he would show them his more treasured volumes, such as his
+first edition of Butler, which he would tell them he made a point of
+reading through once a year. Others, who preferred a less unclouded
+atmosphere, withdrew with his brother into his sanctum. Soon all
+reassembled in the dining-room, and a number of hymns were sung--some
+of Sankey's, which were then in everybody's mouth, some of his
+favourite German hymns with their chorals, which might suggest
+references to his student days in Berlin or to later experiences in
+the Fatherland, and some by the great English hymn-writers. At last
+came family worship, always impressive as conducted by him, but often
+the most memorable feature by far in these gatherings. It was a very
+simple, and may seem a very humdrum, way of spending an evening; but
+the homely hospitality of the household--the conversational gifts,
+very different in kind as these were, of himself and his brother--and,
+above all, his genial and benignant presence, made everything go off
+well, and the students went away with a deepened veneration for their
+professor now that they had seen him in his own house.
+
+During his first two years in Edinburgh he was busily engaged
+in writing lectures and in adapting his existing stock to the
+requirements of the new curriculum. Of these lectures, and of others
+which he wrote in later years, it must be said that, while all of
+them were the fruit of conscientious and strenuous toil, they were
+of unequal merit, or at least of unequal effectiveness. Some of
+them, particularly in his Apologetic courses, were brilliant and
+stimulating. Whenever he had a great personality to deal with, such as
+Origen, Grotius, or Pascal, or, in a quite different way, Voltaire,
+he rose to the full height of his powers. His criticisms of Hume, of
+Strauss, and of Renan, were also in their own way masterly. But a
+course which he had on Biblical Theology seemed to be hampered by
+a too rigid view of Inspiration, which did not allow him to lay
+sufficient stress on the different types of doctrine corresponding
+to the different individualities of the writers. And when, after the
+death of Principal Harper, he took over the entire department of
+Systematic Theology, his lectures on this, the "Queen of sciences,"
+while full of learning and sometimes rising to grandeur, gave one on
+the whole a sense of incompleteness, even of fragmentariness. This
+impression was deepened by the oral examinations which he was in the
+habit of holding every week on his lectures.
+
+For these examinations he prepared most carefully, sitting up
+sometimes till two o'clock in the morning collecting material and
+verifying references which he deemed necessary to make them complete.
+His aim in them was not only to test the students' attention and
+progress, but to communicate information of a supplementary and
+miscellaneous character which he had been unable to work into his
+lectures. And so he would bring down to the class a tattered Father or
+two, and would regale its members with long Greek quotations and with
+a mass of details that were pure gold to him but were hid treasure
+to them. His examination of individual students was lenient in the
+extreme. It used to be said of him that if he asked a question to
+which the correct answer was Yes, while the answer he got was No,
+he would exert his ingenuity to show that in a certain subtle and
+hitherto unsuspected sense the real answer _was_ No, and that Mr.
+So-and-so deserved credit for having discovered this, and for having
+boldly dared to _say_ No at the risk of being misunderstood. This, of
+course, is caricature; but it nevertheless sufficiently indicates his
+general attitude to his students.
+
+It was the same with the written as with the oral examinations.
+In these he assigned full marks to a large proportion of the papers
+sent in. Once it was represented to him that this method of valuation
+prevented his examination results from having any influence on the
+adjudication of a prize that was given every year to the student who
+had the highest aggregate of marks in all the classes. He admitted the
+justice of this contention, and promised to make a change. When he
+announced the results of his next examination it was found that he
+had been as good as his word; but the change consisted in this: that
+whereas formerly two-thirds of the class had received full marks,
+now two-thirds of the class received ninety per cent.!
+
+And yet the popular idea of his inability to distinguish between a
+good student and a bad one was quite wrong. He was not so simple as he
+seemed. All who have sat in his classroom remember times when a sudden
+keen look from him showed that he knew quite well when liberties were
+being attempted with him, and gave rise to the uncomfortable suspicion
+that, as it was put, "he could see more things with his eyes shut than
+most men could see with theirs wide open." The fact is, that all his
+leniency with his students, and all his apparent ascription to them of
+a high degree of diligence, scholarship, and mental grasp, had their
+roots not in credulity but in charity--the charity which "believeth
+all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." His very defects
+came from an excess of charity, and one loved him all the better
+because of them. Hence it came about that his students got far more
+from contact with his personality than they got from his teaching.
+It is not so much his lectures as his influence that they look back
+to and that they feel is affecting them still.
+
+When Dr. Cairns came to Edinburgh from Berwick, it was only to a
+limited extent that he allowed himself to take part in public work
+outside that which came to him as a minister and Professor of
+Theology. There were, however, two public questions which interested
+him deeply, and the solution of which he did what he could by speech
+and influence to further. One of these was the question of Temperance.
+During the first twenty years of his ministry he had not felt called
+upon to take up any strong position on this question, although
+personally he had always been one of the most abstemious of men. But
+about the year 1864 he had, without taking any pledge or enrolling
+himself on the books of any society, given up the use of alcohol. He
+had done so largely as an experiment--to see whether his influence
+would thereby be strengthened with those in his own congregation and
+beyond it whom he wished to reclaim from intemperance.
+
+When he became a professor he was invited to succeed Dr. Lindsay
+as President of the Students' Total Abstinence Society, and, as no
+absolute pledge was exacted from the members, he willingly agreed
+to do so. From this time his influence was more and more definitely
+enlisted on behalf of Total Abstinence, and in 1874 he took a further
+step. In trying to save from intemperance a friend in Berwick who was
+not a member of his own congregation, he urged him to join the Good
+Templars, at that time the only available society of total abstainers
+in the town. In order to strengthen his friend's hands, he agreed to
+join along with him. This step happily proved to be successful as
+regarded its original purpose, and Dr. Cairns remained a Good Templar
+during the rest of his life.
+
+While there were some things about the Order that did not appeal to
+him, such as the ritual, the "regalia," and the various grades of
+membership and of office, with their mysterious initials, he looked
+upon these things as non-essentials, and was in hearty sympathy with
+its general principles and work. But, although he was often urged to
+do so, he never would accept office nor advance beyond the initiatory
+stage of membership represented by the simple white "bib" of infancy.
+On coming to Edinburgh, he looked about for a Lodge to connect himself
+with, and ultimately chose one of the smallest and most obscure in the
+city. The members consisted chiefly of men and women who had to work
+so late that the hour of meeting could not be fixed earlier than 9
+p.m. He was present at these meetings as often as he could, and only
+lamented that he could not attend more frequently.
+
+While fully recognising the right of others to come to a different
+conclusion from his own, and while uniformly basing his total
+abstinence on the ground of Christian expediency and not on that of
+absolute Divine law, his view of it as a Christian duty grew clearer
+every year. And he carried his principles out rigidly wherever he
+went. He perplexed German waiters by his elaborate explanations as to
+why he drank no beer; and once, as he came down the Rhine, he had a
+characteristically sanguine vision of the time when the vineyards on
+its banks would only be used for the production of raisins. At the
+same time his interest in Temperance work, alike in its religious,
+social, and political aspects, was always becoming keener. He was
+frequently to be found on Temperance platforms, and was in constant
+request for the preaching of Temperance sermons. Some of his speeches
+and sermons on the question have been reprinted and widely read, and
+one New Year's tract which he wrote has had a circulation of one
+hundred and eighty thousand.
+
+The other question in which he took a special interest was that of
+Disestablishment. To those who adopted the "short and easy method"
+of accounting for the Disestablishment movement in Scotland by
+saying that it was all due to jealousy and spite on the part of
+its promoters, his adhesion to that movement presented a serious
+difficulty. For no one could accuse him of jealousy or spite. Hence
+it was a favourite expedient to represent him as the tool of more
+designing men--as one whose simplicity had been imposed upon, and who
+had been thrust forward against his better judgment to do work in
+which he had no heart. This theory is not only entirely groundless,
+but entirely unnecessary; because the action which he took on this
+question can readily be explained by a reference to convictions he had
+held all his life, and to circumstances which seemed to him to call
+for their assertion.
+
+He had been a Voluntary ever since he had begun to think on such
+questions. His father, in the days of his boyhood, had subscribed,
+along with a neighbour, for the _Voluntary Church Magazine_, and the
+subject had often been discussed in the cottage at Dunglass. It will
+be remembered that during his first session at the University he was
+an eager disputant with his classmates on the Voluntary side, and that
+towards the close of his course, after a memorable debate in the
+Diagnostic Society, he secured a victory for the policy of severing
+the connection between Church and State. These views he had never
+abandoned, and in a lecture on Disestablishment delivered in Edinburgh
+in 1872 he re-stated them. While admitting, as the United Presbyterian
+Synod had done in adopting the "Articles of Agreement," that the State
+ought to frame its policy on Christian lines, he denied that it was
+its duty or within its competence to establish and endow the Church.
+This is, to quote his own words, "an overstraining of its province,--a
+forgetfulness that its great work is civil and not spiritual,--and an
+encroachment without necessity or call, and indeed, as I believe, in
+the face of direct Divine arrangements, on the work of the Christian
+Church."
+
+These, then, being his views, what led him to seek to make them
+operative by taking part in a Disestablishment campaign? Two things
+especially. One of these was the activity at that time of a Broad
+Church party within the Established Church. He maintained that this
+was no mere domestic concern of that Church, and claimed the right as
+a citizen to deal with it. In a national institution views were held
+and taught of which he could not approve, and which he considered
+compromised him as a member of the nation. He felt he must protest,
+and he protested thus.
+
+The other ground of his action was the conviction, which recent
+events had very much strengthened, that the continued existence of
+an Established Church was the great obstacle to Presbyterian Union
+in Scotland. It is true that there was nothing in the nature of things
+to prevent the Free and United Presbyterian Churches coming together
+in presence of an Established Church. As a matter of fact, they have
+done so since Dr. Cairns's death, though not without secessions,
+collective and individual. But experience had shown that it was the
+existence of an Established Church, towards which the Anti-Union
+party had turned longing eyes, which was the determining factor in
+the wrecking of the Union negotiations. Besides, Dr. Cairns looked
+forward to a wider Union than one merely between the Free and United
+Presbyterian Churches, and he was convinced that only on the basis of
+Disestablishment could such a Union take place. To the argument that,
+if the Church of Scotland were to be disestablished, its members would
+be so embittered against those who had brought this about that they
+would decline to unite with them, he was content to reply that that
+might safely be left to the healing power of time. The petulant threat
+of some, that in the event of Disestablishment they would abandon
+Presbyterianism, he absolutely declined to notice.
+
+The Disestablishment movement had been begun before Dr. Cairns left
+Berwick, and he supported it with voice and pen till the close of his
+life. He did so, it need not be said, without bitterness, endeavouring
+to make it clear that his quarrel was with the adjective and not with
+the substantive--with the "Established" and not with the "Church," and
+under the strong conviction that he was engaged "in a great Christian
+enterprise."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE PRINCIPAL
+
+
+During 1877 and 1878 the United Presbyterian Church was much occupied
+with a discussion that had arisen in regard to its relation to the
+"Subordinate Standards," i.e. to the Westminster _Confession of Faith_
+and the _Larger and Shorter Catechisms_. These formed the official
+creed of the Church, and assent to them was exacted from all its
+ministers, probationers, and elders. A change of opinion, perhaps
+not so much regarding the doctrines set forth in these documents as
+regarding the perspective in which they were to be viewed, had been
+manifesting itself with the changing times. It was felt that standards
+of belief drawn up in view of the needs, reflecting the thought,
+and couched in the language of the seventeenth century, were not an
+adequate expression of the faith of the Church in the nineteenth
+century. The points with regard to which this difficulty was more
+acutely felt were chiefly in the region of the "Doctrines of
+Grace"--the Divine Decrees, the Freedom of the Human Will, and the
+Extent of the Atonement. Accordingly, a movement for greater liberty
+was set on foot.
+
+There were many, of course, in the Church who had no sympathy with
+this movement, and who, if they had been properly organised and led,
+might have been able to defeat it. But the recognised and trusted
+leaders of the Church were of opinion that the matter must be
+sympathetically dealt with, and, on the motion of Principal Harper,
+the Synod of 1877 appointed a Committee to consider it, and to bring
+up a report. This Committee, of which Dr. Cairns was one of the
+conveners, soon found that, if relief were to be granted, they had
+only two alternatives before them. They must deal either with the
+Creed or with the terms of subscription to it. There were some who
+urged that an entirely new and much shorter Creed should be drawn up.
+Dr. Cairns was decidedly opposed to this proposal. The subject of the
+Creeds of the Reformed Churches was one of his many specialties in the
+field of Church History, and he had a reverence for those venerable
+documents, whose articles--so dry and formal to others--suggested to
+his imagination the centuries of momentous controversy which they
+summed up, and the great champions of the faith who had borne their
+part therein. Besides, he was very much alive to the danger of falling
+out of line with the other Presbyterian Churches in Great Britain and
+America, who still maintained, in some form or other, their allegiance
+to the Westminster Standards.
+
+His influence prevailed, and the second alternative was adopted.
+A "Declaratory Statement" was drawn up of the sense in which, while
+retaining the Standards, the Church understood them. This Statement
+dealt with the points above referred to in a way that would, it was
+thought, give sufficient relief to consciences that had shrunk from
+the naked rigour of the words of the _Confession_, It also contained
+a paragraph which secured liberty of opinion on matters "not entering
+into the substance of the faith," the right of the Church to guard
+against abuse of this liberty being expressly reserved. Dr. Cairns
+submitted this "Declaratory Statement" to the Synods of 1878 and 1879,
+in speeches of notable power and wealth of historic illustration,
+and, in the latter year, it was unanimously adopted and became a
+"Declaratory Act." The precedent thus set has been followed by nearly
+all the Presbyterian Churches which have since then had occasion to
+deal with the same problem.
+
+Except when he had to expound and recommend some scheme for which he
+had become responsible, or when he had been laid hold of by others
+to speak in behalf of a "Report" or a proposal in which they were
+interested, Dr. Cairns did not intervene often in the debates of the
+United Presbyterian Synod. He preferred, to the disappointment of
+many of his friends, to listen rather than to speak, and shrank from
+putting himself in any way forward. He had been Moderator of the Synod
+in 1872, and as an ex-Moderator he had the privilege, accorded by
+custom, of sitting on the platform of the Synod Hall on the benches
+to the right and left of the chair. But he never seemed comfortable
+up there. He would sit with his hands pressed together, and in a
+stooping posture, as if he wanted to make his big body as small and
+inconspicuous as possible; and, as often as he could, he would go down
+and take his place among the rank and file of the members far back in
+the hall. But he had all a true United Presbyterian's loyal affection
+for the Synod, and a peculiar delight in those reunions of old friends
+which its meetings afforded. Amongst his oldest friends was William
+Graham, who although, since the English Union, no longer a United
+Presbyterian, simply could not keep away from the haunts of his youth
+when the month of May came round. On such occasions he was always Dr.
+Cairns's guest at Spence Street. He kept things lively there with his
+nimble wit, and in particular subjected his host to a perpetual and
+merciless fire of "chaff." No one else ventured to assail him as
+Graham thus did; for, with all his geniality and unaffected humility,
+there was a certain personal dignity about him which few ventured to
+invade. But he took all his friend's banter with a smile of quiet
+enjoyment, and sometimes a more than usually outrageous sally would
+send him into convulsions of laughter, whose resounding peals filled
+the house with their echoes.
+
+In the spring of 1879 died the venerable Principal Harper.
+Dr. Cairns felt the loss very keenly, for Dr. Harper had been a loyal
+and generous friend and colleague, on whose clear and firm judgment
+he had been wont to rely in many a difficult emergency. Besides, as
+his biographer has truly said, "he was habitually thankful to have
+someone near him whom he could fairly ask to take the foremost
+place."[18] Now that Dr. Harper was gone, there seemed to be no doubt
+that that foremost place would be thrust upon him. These expectations
+were fulfilled by the Synod of that year, which unanimously and
+enthusiastically appointed him Principal of the College. His friend
+Dr. Graham, who, as a corresponding member from the Synod of the
+Presbyterian Church of England, supported the appointment, gave voice
+to the universal feeling when he described him as "a man of thought
+and labour and love and God, who had one defect which endeared him to
+them all--that he was the only man who did not know what a rare and
+noble man he was."
+
+[Footnote 18: _Life and Letters_, p. 661.]
+
+In the following year (1880) Principal Cairns delivered the Cunningham
+Lectures. These lectures were given on a Free Church foundation,
+instituted in memory of the distinguished theologian whose name it
+bears; and now for the first time the lecturer was chosen from beyond
+the borders of the Free Church. Dr. Cairns highly appreciated the
+compliment that was thus paid him, regarding it as a happy augury of
+the Union which he was sure was coming. He had chosen as his subject
+"Unbelief in the eighteenth century as contrasted with its earlier and
+later history"; and, although it was one in which he was already at
+home, he had again worked over the familiar ground with characteristic
+diligence and thoroughness. Thus, in preparing for one of the
+lectures, he read through twenty volumes of Voltaire, out of a set
+of fifty which had been put at his disposal by a friend. The first
+lecture dealt with Unbelief in the first four centuries, which he
+contrasted in several respects with that of the eighteenth. Then
+followed one on the Unbelief of the seventeenth century, then three
+on the Unbelief of the eighteenth century, in England, France, and
+Germany respectively; and, finally, one on the Unbelief of the
+nineteenth century, from whose representatives he selected three for
+special criticism as typical, viz. Strauss, Renan, and John Stuart
+Mill. These lectures, while not rising to the level of greatness,
+impress one with his mastery of the immense literature of the subject,
+and are characterised throughout by lucidity of arrangement and by
+sobriety and fairness of judgment. They were very well received when
+they were delivered, and were favourably reviewed when they were
+published a year later.[19]
+
+[Footnote 19: In the following year (1882) he received the degree of
+LL.D. from Edinburgh University.]
+
+Between the delivery and the publication of the Cunningham Lectures
+Dr. Cairns spent five months in the United States and Canada. The
+immediate object of this American tour was to fulfil an engagement to
+be present at the Philadelphia meeting of the General Council of the
+Presbyterian Alliance--an organisation in which he took the deepest
+interest, as it was in the line of his early aspirations after a great
+comprehensive Presbyterian Union. But he arranged his tour so as to
+enable him also to be present at the General Assembly of the American
+Presbyterian Church at Madison, and at that of the Presbyterian Church
+of Canada at Montreal. The rest of the time at his disposal he spent
+in lengthened excursions to various scenes of interest. He visited the
+historic localities of New England and crossed the continent to San
+Francisco, stopping on the way at Salt Lake City, and extending his
+journey to the Yo-Semite Valley. More than once he went far out of his
+way to seek out an old friend or the relative of some member of his
+Berwick congregation. Wherever he went he preached,--in fact every
+Sunday of these five months, including those he spent on the Atlantic,
+was thus occupied,--and everywhere his preaching and his personality
+made a deep impression. As regarded himself, he used to say that
+this American visit "lifted him out of many ruts" and gave him new
+views of the vitality of Christianity and new hopes for its future
+developments.
+
+After the publication of the Cunningham Lectures there was a widely
+cherished hope that Dr. Cairns would produce something still more
+worthy of his powers and his reputation. He was now free from the
+incessant engagements of an active ministry, and he had by this time
+got his class lectures well in hand. But, although the opportunity had
+come, the interest in speculative questions had sensibly declined.
+There is an indication of this in the Cunningham Lectures themselves.
+In the last of these, as we have seen, he had selected Mill as the
+representative of English nineteenth-century Unbelief. Even then Mill
+was out of date; but Mill was the last British thinker whose system
+he had thoroughly mastered. In the index to his _Life and Letters_
+the names of Darwin and Herbert Spencer do not occur, and even in an
+Apologetic tract entitled _Is the Evolution of Christianity from mere
+Natural Sources Credible_? which he wrote in 1887 for the Religious
+Tract Society, there is no reference whatever to any writer of the
+Evolutionary School. With his attitude to later German theological
+literature it is somewhat different, for here he tried to keep himself
+abreast of the times. Yet even here the books that interested him
+most were mainly historical, such as the first volume of Ritschl's
+great work on Justification (almost the only German book he read
+in a translation), and the three volumes of Harnack's _History
+of Dogma_.
+
+This decay of interest in speculative thought might be attributed to
+the decline of mental freshness and of hospitality to new ideas which
+often comes with advancing years, were it not that, in his case, there
+was no such decline. On the contrary, as his interest in speculative
+thought gradually withered, his interest on the side of scholarship
+and linguistics became greater than ever, and his energy here was
+always seeking new outlets for itself. When he was nearly sixty he
+began the study of Assyrian. He did so in connection with his lectures
+on Apologetics,--because he wanted to give his class some idea of the
+confirmation of the Scripture records, which he believed were to be
+found in the cuneiform inscriptions. But ere long the study took
+possession of him. His letters, and the little time-table diary of
+his daily studies, record the hours he devoted to it. When he went to
+America he took his Assyrian books with him, and pored over them on
+the voyage whenever the Atlantic would allow him to do so. And he was
+fully convinced that what interested him so intensely must interest
+his students too. One of them, the Rev. J.H. Leckie, thus describes
+how he sought to make them share in his enthusiasm:--
+
+"One day when we came down to the class, we found the blackboard
+covered with an Assyrian inscription written out by himself before
+lecture hour, and the zest, the joy with which he discoursed upon the
+strange figures and signs showed that, though white of hair and bent
+in frame, he was in the real nature of him very young. For two days he
+lectured on this inscription with the most assured belief that we were
+following every word, and there was deep regret in his face and in his
+voice when he said, 'And now, gentlemen, I am afraid we must return to
+our theology.'"[20]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Life and Letters_, p. 743.]
+
+Another of his students, referring to the same lectures, writes as
+follows:--
+
+"It was fine, and one loves him all the more for it, but it was
+exasperating too, with such tremendous issues at stake in the world of
+living thought, to see him pounding away at those truculent old Red
+Indians in their barbarian original tongue. Yet I would not for much
+forget those days when we saw him escaping utterly from all worries
+and troubles and perfectly happy before a blackboard covered with
+amazing characters. It was pure innocent delight in a new world of
+knowledge, like a child's in a new story-book."
+
+When he was sixty-three he added Arabic to his other acquirements. It
+is not quite clear whether he had in view any purpose in connection
+with his professional work beyond the desire to know the originals
+of all the authorities quoted in his lectures. But, when he had
+sufficiently mastered the language to be able to read the Koran,
+he knew that he had two grounds for self-congratulation, and these
+were sufficiently characteristic. One was that he had his revenge on
+Gibbon, who had described so triumphantly the career of the Saracens
+and who yet had not known a word of their language. The other was
+that he was now able to pray in Arabic for the conversion of the
+Mohammedans.
+
+About the same time he began to learn Dutch. He assigned as one reason
+for this that he wanted to read Kuenen's works. But as the only one of
+these that he had was in his library already, having come to him from
+the effects of a deceased friend, it is possible that this was just an
+unconscious excuse on his part for indulging in the luxury of learning
+a new language--that he read Kuenen in order to learn Dutch, instead
+of learning Dutch in order to read Kuenen. However, his knowledge of
+the language enabled him to follow closely a movement which excited
+his interest in no common degree, viz. the secession of a large
+evangelical party from the rationalistic State Church of Holland,
+under Abraham Kuyper, the present Prime Minister of that country,
+and their organisation into a Free Presbyterian Church.
+
+Other languages at which he worked during this period were Spanish,
+of which he acquired the rudiments during his tour in California;
+and Dano-Norwegian, which he picked up during a month's residence at
+Christiania in 1877, and furbished for a meeting of the Evangelical
+Alliance at Copenhagen in 1884. All this time he was pursuing his
+Patristic and other historical studies with unflagging vigour,
+always writing new lectures, always maintaining his love of abstract
+knowledge and his eager desire to add to his already vast stores of
+learning. When, a year and a half before his death, a vacancy occurred
+in the Church History chair in the College, he stepped into the breach
+and delivered a course of lectures on the Fathers, which took his
+class by storm.
+
+"His manner," says one who heard these lectures, "was quite different
+in the Church History classroom from what it was in that of Systematic
+Theology. In the latter he taught like a man who felt wearied and old;
+but in the former he showed a surprising freshness and enthusiasm.
+It was delightful to see him in the Church History class forgetting
+age and care, and away back in spirit with Origen and his other old
+friends."
+
+These lectures, while abounding in searching and masterly criticism
+of doctrinal views, are specially noticeable for their delineation of
+the living power of Christianity as exhibited in the men and the times
+with which they deal. This was the aspect of Christian truth which had
+all along attracted him. It was what had determined his choice of
+the ministry as the main work of his life, and in his later years it
+still asserted its power over him. Although he had now no longer a
+ministerial charge of his own, he could not separate himself from the
+active work of the Church--he could not withdraw from contact with the
+Christian life which it manifested.
+
+During the winter months he preached a good deal in Edinburgh,
+especially by way of helping young or weak congregations, more than
+one of which he had at different times under his immediate care until
+they had been lifted out of the worst of their difficulties. In summer
+he ranged over the whole United Presbyterian Church from Shetland to
+Galloway, preaching to great gatherings wherever he went. In arranging
+these expeditions, he always gave the preference to those applications
+which came to him from poor, outlying, and sparsely peopled districts,
+where discouragements were greatest and the struggle to "maintain
+ordinances" was most severe. His visits helped to lift the burden
+from many a weary back, and never failed to leave happy and inspiring
+memories behind them. Among these summer engagements he always kept a
+place for his old congregation at Berwick, which he regularly visited
+in the month of June, preaching twice in the church on Sunday, and
+finishing the day's work by preaching again from the steps of the Town
+Hall in the evening. On these occasions the broad High Street, at the
+foot of which the Town Hall stands, was always crowded from side to
+side and a long way up its course, while all the windows within
+earshot were thrown open and filled with eager listeners.
+
+In this continual pursuit of knowledge, and in the contemplation,
+whether in history or in the world around him, of Christianity as
+a Life, his main interests more and more lay. In the one we can
+trace the influence of Hamilton, in the other perhaps that of
+Neander--the two teachers of his youth who had most deeply impressed
+him. Relatively to these, Systematic Theology, and even Apologetics,
+receded into the background. Secure in his "_aliquid inconcussum_,"
+he came increasingly to regard the life of the individual Christian
+and the collective life of the Church as the most convincing of all
+witnesses to the Unseen and the Supernatural.
+
+Meanwhile the apologetic of his own life was becoming ever more
+impressive. In the years 1886 and 1887 he lost by death several of
+his dearest friends. In the former year died Dr. W.B. Robertson of
+Irvine; and, later, Dr. John Ker, who had been his fellow-student at
+the University and at the Divinity Hall, his neighbour at Alnwick in
+the early Berwick days, and at last his colleague as a professor in
+the United Presbyterian College. In the early part of the following
+year his youngest sister, Agnes, who with her husband, the Rev. J.C.
+Meiklejohn, had come to live in Edinburgh two years before for the
+better treatment of what proved to be a mortal disease, passed away.
+And in the autumn he lost the last and the dearest of the friends
+that had been left to him in these later years, William Graham. These
+losses brought him yet closer than he had been before to the unseen
+and eternal world.
+
+He was habitually reticent about his inner life and his habits of
+devotion. No one knew his times of prayer or how long they lasted.
+Once, indeed, his simplicity of character betrayed him in regard to
+this matter. The door of his retiring-room at the College was without
+a key, and he would not give so much trouble as to ask for one. So,
+in order that he might be quite undisturbed, he piled up some forms
+and chairs against the door on the inside, forgetting entirely that
+the upper part of it was obscure glass and that his barricade was
+perfectly visible from without. It need not be said that no one
+interrupted him or interfered with his belief that he had been
+unobserved by any human eye. But it did not require an accidental
+disclosure like this to reveal the fact that he spent much time in
+prayer. No one who knew him ever so little could doubt this, and no
+one could hear him praying in public without feeling sure that he
+had learned how to do it by long experience in the school of private
+devotion.
+
+Purified thus by trial and nourished by prayer, his character went
+on developing and deepening. His humility, utterly unaffected, like
+everything else about him, became if possible more marked. He was not
+merely willing to take the lowest room, but far happiest when he was
+allowed to take it. In one of his classes there was a blind student,
+and, when a written examination came on, the question arose, How was
+he to take part in it? Principal Cairns offered to write down the
+answers to the examination questions to his student's dictation, and
+it was only after lengthened argument and extreme reluctance on his
+part that he was led to see that the authorities would not consent
+to this arrangement.
+
+It was the same with his charity. He was always putting favourable
+constructions on people's motives and believing good things of them,
+even when other people could find very little ground for doing so.
+In all sincerity he would carry this sometimes to amusing lengths.
+Reference has been made to this already, but the following further
+illustration of it may be added here. One day, when in company with a
+friend, the conversation turned on a meeting at which Dr. Cairns had
+recently been present. At this meeting there was a large array of
+speakers, and a time limit had to be imposed to allow all of them
+to be heard. One of the speakers, however, when arrested by the
+chairman's bell, appealed to the audience, with whom he was getting
+on extremely well, for more time. Encouraged by their applause, he
+went on and finished his speech, with the result that some of his
+fellow-speakers who had come long distances to address the meeting
+were crushed into a corner, if not crowded out. Dr. Cairns somehow
+suspected that his friend was going to say something strong about this
+speaker's conduct, and, before a word could be spoken, rushed to his
+defence. "He couldn't help himself. He was at the mercy of that
+shouting audience--a most unmannerly mob!" And then, feeling that
+he had rather overshot the mark, he added in a parenthetic murmur,
+"Excellent Christian people they were, no doubt!"
+
+But not the least noticeable thing about him remains to be
+mentioned--the persistent hopefulness of his outlook. This became
+always more pronounced as he grew older. Others, when they saw the
+advancing forces of evil, might tremble for the Ark of God; but he saw
+no occasion for trembling, and he declined to do so. He was sure that
+the great struggle that was going on was bound sooner or later, and
+rather sooner than later, to issue in victory for the cause he loved.
+And although his great knowledge of the past, and his enthusiasm for
+the great men who had lived in it, might have been expected to draw
+his eyes to it with regretful longing, he liked much better to look
+forward than to look back, using as he did so the words of a favourite
+motto; "The best is yet to be."
+
+All these qualities found expression in a speech he delivered on
+the occasion of the presentation of his portrait to the United
+Presbyterian Synod in May 1888. This portrait had been subscribed for
+by the ministers and laymen of the Church, and painted by Mr. W.E.
+Lockhart, R.S.A. The presentation took place in a crowded house, and
+amid a scene of enthusiasm which no one who witnessed it can ever
+forget. Principal Cairns concluded a brief address thus: "I have now
+preached for forty-three years and have been a Professor of Theology
+for more than twenty, and I find every year how much grander the
+gospel of the grace of God becomes, and how much deeper, vaster, and
+more unsearchable the riches of Christ, which it is the function of
+theology to explore. I have had in this and in other churches a band
+of ministerial brethren, older and younger, with whom it has been a
+life-long privilege to be associated; and in the professors a body
+of colleagues so generous and loving that greater harmony could not
+be conceived. The congregations to which I have preached have far
+overpaid my labours; and the students whom I have taught have given me
+more lessons than many books. I have been allowed many opportunities
+of mingling with Christians of other lands, and have learned, I trust,
+something more of the unity in diversity of the creed, 'I believe in
+the Holy Catholic Church.' In that true Church, founded on Christ's
+sacrifice and washed in His blood, cheered by its glorious memories
+and filled with its immortal hopes, I desire to live and die. Life
+and labour cannot last long with me; but I would seek to work to the
+end for Christian truth, for Christian missions, and for Christian
+union. Amidst so many undeserved favours, I would still thank God and
+take courage, and under the weight of all anxieties and failures,
+and the shadows of separation from loved friends, I would repeat
+the confession, which, by the grace of God, time only confirms:
+'_In Te, Domine, speravi; non confundar in aeternum_.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE END OF THE DAY
+
+
+In May 1891 the report of an inquiry which had been instituted in the
+previous year into the working of the United Presbyterian College was
+submitted to the Synod. The portion of it which referred to Principal
+Cairns's department, and which was enthusiastically approved,
+concluded as follows: "The Committee would only add that the whole
+present inquiry has deepened its sense of the immense value of the
+services of Dr. Cairns to the College, both as Professor and as
+Principal, and expresses the hope that he may be long spared to adorn
+the institution of which he is the honoured head, and the Church of
+which he is so distinguished a representative." The hope thus
+expressed was not to be fulfilled.
+
+The specially heavy work of the preceding session--the session in
+which, as already described, he had undertaken part of the work of
+the Church History class in addition to the full tale of his own--had
+overtaxed his strength, and, acting on the advice of Dr. Maclagan and
+his Edinburgh medical adviser, he had cancelled all his engagements
+for the summer. Almost immediately after the close of the Synod an old
+ailment which he had contracted by over-exertion during a holiday tour
+in Wales reappeared, and yielded only partially to surgical treatment.
+But he maintained his cheerfulness, and neither he nor his friends had
+any thought that his work was done. In the month of July he paid a
+visit to his brother David at Stitchel. He had opened his brother's
+new church there thirteen years before, and it had come to be a
+standing engagement, looked forward to by very many in the district,
+that he should conduct special services every year on the anniversary
+of that occasion. But these annual visits were very brief, and they
+were broken into not only by the duties of the Sunday, but by the
+hospitalities usual in country manses at such times. This time,
+however, there were no anniversary sermons to be preached; he had
+come for rest, and there was no need for him to hasten his departure.
+The weather was lovely, and so were the views over the wide valley
+of the Tweed to the distant Cheviots. He would sit for hours
+reading under the great elm-tree in the garden amid the scents of
+the summer flowers. "I have come in to tell you," he said one day
+to his sister-in-law, "that this is a day which has wandered out of
+Paradise." "We younger people," wrote his niece, "came nearer to him
+than ever before. He was as happy as a child, rejoicing with every
+increase of strength. He greatly enjoyed my brother Willie's singing,
+especially songs like Sheriff Nicolson's 'Skye' and Shairp's 'Bush
+aboon Traquair.' We were astonished to find how familiar he was with
+all sorts of queer out-of-the-way ballads. Never had we seen him so
+free from care, so genial and even jubilant."[21] The summer Sacrament
+took place while he was at Stitchel, and he was able to give a brief
+address to the communicants from the words, "Ye do shew forth the
+Lord's death till He come," in a voice that was weak and tremulous,
+but all the more impressive on that account. One of his brother's
+elders, a farmer in the neighbourhood whom he had known since his
+schooldays, had arranged that he should address his work-people in the
+farmhouse, and to this quiet rural gathering he preached what proved
+to be his last sermon.
+
+[Footnote 21: _Life and Letters_, p, 769.]
+
+He himself, however, had no idea that this was the case; and when he
+left Stitchel he did so with the purpose of preparing for the work
+of another session. But as the autumn advanced and his health did
+not greatly improve, another consultation of his doctors was held,
+the result of which was that he was pronounced to be suffering
+from cardiac weakness, and quite unfit for the work of the coming
+winter. He at once acquiesced in this verdict, and, with unabated
+cheerfulness, set himself to bring his lectures into a state that
+would admit of their being easily read to his classes by two friends
+who had undertaken this duty. This done, he wrote out in full the
+Greek texts--some five hundred in all--quoted in his lectures on
+Biblical Theology. These two tasks kept him busy until about the end
+of the year 1891, when he began an undertaking which many of his
+friends had long been urging upon him--the preparation of a volume
+of his sermons for the press. He selected for this purpose those
+sermons which he had preached most frequently, and which he had,
+with few exceptions, originally written for sacramental occasions
+at Berwick--some of them far back in the old Golden Square days.
+These he carefully transcribed, altering them where he thought this
+necessary, and not always, in the opinion of many, improving them
+in the process.
+
+He found that his strength was not unduly strained when he worked thus
+six or seven hours a day. But he always, as hitherto, spent one hour
+daily in reading the Scriptures in the original tongues, in which time
+he could get through three pages of Hebrew and an indefinite quantity
+of Greek. There was, however, one change in his habits which had
+become necessary. He was forbidden by the doctors to study at night.
+And so, instead of going upstairs in the evening, he remained in the
+comfortable parlour, where he wrote his letters, talked to his brother
+and sister, or to visitors as they came in, and regaled himself with
+light literature. This last consisted sometimes of volumes of the
+Fathers, but more frequently of the Koran in the original. He would
+frequently read aloud extracts, translating from the Greek and Latin
+without ever pausing for a word; as regards the Arabic, he had Sale's
+translation at hand to help him through a tough passage, but he was
+always a very proud man when he could find his way out of a difficulty
+without its aid.
+
+As the winter advanced he felt that it was desirable that he should
+have another medical opinion, so that, in the event of his further
+incapacity, the Synod at its approaching meeting might make permanent
+arrangements for carrying on the work of his chair. On the 19th of
+February he was examined by Drs. Maclagan, Webster, and G.W. Balfour,
+who certified that he was "unfit for the discharge of any professional
+duty." After consulting his relatives, he decided to resign his
+Professorship and the Principalship of the College, and on the 23rd
+a letter intimating this intention was drafted and despatched. The
+committee to which it was sent received it with great regret, and a
+unanimous feeling found expression that, at anyrate, he should retain
+the office of Principal. This was echoed from every part of the
+United Presbyterian Church as soon as the news of his contemplated
+resignation became known; and in a wider circle adequate utterance
+was given to the public sympathy and regard.
+
+On the 3rd of March he was able to preside at the annual conversazione
+of his students, when he was in such genial spirits, and seemed to be
+so well, that humorous references were made by more than one speaker
+to his approaching resignation as clearly unnecessary, and indeed
+preposterous. On the following Saturday he travelled to Galashiels to
+attend the funeral of his cousin John Murray, whose room he had shared
+during his first session at the University, and in his prayer at the
+funeral service he referred in touching terms to the close of their
+life-long friendship. Returning to Edinburgh, he went to stay till
+Monday with an old friend, whose house afforded him facilities for
+attending the communion service at Broughton Place Church next day.
+For although this church, which he had attended as a student, and of
+which he had been a member since he came to live in Edinburgh, was
+more than two miles distant from Spence Street, his Puritan training
+and convictions with regard to the Sabbath would never allow him to
+go to it in a cab.
+
+On reaching home next week he resumed his work of transcription, and
+went on with it till Thursday, when, after taking a short walk, he
+became somewhat unwell. Next day he felt better, and did some writing
+in the forenoon; but in the afternoon the illness returned, and he
+went to bed. In the early hours of next morning, Saturday 12th March,
+his sister, who was watching beside him, saw that a change was coming,
+and summoned Mr. and Mrs. David Cairns, who had fortunately arrived
+the evening before. His brother William, on account of his bodily
+infirmity, remained below. The end was evidently near, but he was
+conscious at intervals, and his voice when he spoke was clear and
+firm. "You are very ill, John," said his brother. "Oh no," he replied,
+"I feel much better." "But you are in good hands?" "Yes, in the best
+of hands." Then his mind began to wander, and he spoke more brokenly:
+"There is a great battle to fight, but the victory is sure ... God
+in Christ ... Good men must unite and identify themselves with the
+cause." "What cause?" asked his brother. "The cause of God," he
+replied. "If they do so, the victory is sure; otherwise, all is
+confusion ... I have stated the matter; I leave it with you." Then,
+after a short pause, he suddenly said, "You go first, I follow."
+These eminently characteristic words were the last he spoke, and as
+David knelt and prayed at his bedside death came.
+
+The impression produced on the public mind by his life and character,
+and called into vivid consciousness by the news of his death, found
+memorable expression on his funeral day, Thursday 17th March. It
+had been the original intention of his relatives that the funeral
+arrangements should be carried out as simply as possible, with a
+service in Rosehall Church, which was close at hand, for those who
+desired to attend it, and thereafter a quiet walk down to Echo Bank
+Cemetery, where he was to rest beside his sister Agnes. It was thought
+that this would be most in accordance with his characteristic humility
+and shrinking from all that savoured of display. But the public
+feeling refused to be satisfied with this idea, and the relatives
+gave way.
+
+The Synod Hall of the United Presbyterian Church, to which the coffin
+had been removed in the early part of the day, and which holds three
+thousand, was crowded to its utmost capacity. The Moderator of Synod
+presided, and beside him on the platform were the Lord Provost,
+Magistrates and Council of the city, the Principal and Professors of
+the University, the Principal and Professors of the New College, and
+many other dignitaries. In the body of the hall were seated, row
+behind row, the members of the United Presbyterian Synod, who had
+come from all parts of the country, drawn by affection as well as
+veneration for him of whom their Church had been so proud. Along
+with them was a very large number of ministers of the other Scottish
+Churches, and representatives of public bodies. The galleries were
+thronged with the general public. The brief service was of that
+simple and moving kind with which Presbyterian Scotland is wont to
+commemorate her dead. There was no funeral oration, and the prayers,
+which were led by Dr. Macgregor, the Moderator of the Established
+Church General Assembly, by Principal Rainy, and by Dr. Andrew
+Thomson, while full of the sense of personal loss, gave expression
+to the deep thankfulness felt by all present that such a life had
+been lived, and lived for so long, among them. One incident created
+a deep impression. After the coffin had been removed, the various
+representative bodies successively left the hall to take their places
+in the procession that was being marshalled without. "Wallace Green
+Church, Berwick" was called. Then a great company of men rose to their
+feet, showing that, after an absence of sixteen years, their old
+minister still retained his hold on the affections of the people
+among whom he had lived and worked so long.
+
+Outside the hall the scenes were even more impressive, and were
+declared by those whose memories went back for half a century to have
+been unparalleled in Edinburgh since the funeral of Dr. Chalmers, in
+1847. Along the whole of the three miles between the Synod Hall and
+Echo Bank Cemetery traffic was suspended, flags were at half-mast, and
+all the shops were closed. As the procession, which was itself fully
+a mile in length, made its slow way along, the crowds which lined the
+pavements, filled the windows, and covered the tops of the arrested
+tramway cars, reverently saluted the coffin. When the gates of the
+University were passed, not a few thought of the time, more than
+fifty-seven years before, when he who was now being borne to his
+grave amid such great demonstrations of public homage, came up a shy,
+awkward country lad to begin within these walls the life of strenuous
+toil that had now closed. How much had passed since then! How great
+was the contrast between the two scenes! A little later, when
+the procession passed down the Dalkeith Road, everyone turned
+instinctively to the house in Spence Street, where he had lived his
+simple and godly life, unconscious that the eyes of men were upon him.
+As the afternoon shadows were lengthening he was laid in his grave;
+and many of those who stood near felt that a great blank had come into
+their lives, and that Scotland and the Church were the poorer for the
+loss of him who had followed his Master in simplicity of heart and had
+counted cheap those honours which the world so greatly desires.[22]
+
+[Footnote 22: Six years later the sister who had so long lived with him
+was laid in the same grave. William Cairns sleeps with his kindred in
+Cockburnspath churchyard.]
+
+It is difficult to count up the gains and losses of a life. He had
+great gifts,--gifts of abstract thinking and writing, powers of
+scholarly research and continuous labour,--but his life had followed
+another path determined by his early choice. Was this choice a wise
+one? It is difficult to say. But two things seem clear. One is that
+he never appears to have regretted it. At the public service in the
+Synod Hall, Principal Rainy gave thanks for "those seventy-four
+years of happy life." These words are entirely true. His life was
+an exceptionally happy one. This surely means a great deal. If he
+had missed his true vocation, he could not have had this happiness.
+
+The second noticeable point is, that his choice made the influence
+of his personality strong throughout Scotland. He seems to have
+recognised that his true home lay in the region of Christian faith
+and works, in the great common life of the Church; and so he made his
+appeal, not to the limited number of those who could read a learned
+theological treatise which the changing fortunes of the battle with
+Unbelief might soon have put out of date, but to the common heart of
+the whole Church. That great assemblage from all parts of the country
+on his funeral day was the response to this appeal, and the best
+answer to the question as to whether he had erred in the choice of a
+calling and wasted his powers. Waste there undoubtedly was. In every
+life this cannot but be so, for a man must limit himself; but, if it
+be for a high end, the renunciation will be blessed with some fruit
+of good. And so, although the memory and the name of John Cairns may
+become fainter as the years and generations pass, his influence will
+live on in the Christian Church, to whose ideal of goodness he brought
+the contribution of his character.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Principal Cairns, by John Cairns
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