[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.

THE END