Part 3 (1/2)

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, so 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 ht not render better service by devoting hiical and literary work in behalf of the Christian faith His friend Clark, whoed 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 Noveh 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 feeeks 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 holass His brother William, whose illness has been already referred to, had now passed beyond all hope of recovering the use of his li set himself resolutely to a course of study and uidance, he was able to accept a kindly proposal lass, that he should become the teacher of the little roadside school at Oldcae of his eldest brother in the summer of 1845 the ed mother came to keep house for him, and henceforth the Oldcambus schoolhouse becaht sorroell as change

Another brother, Jainally of stalwart physique, who had been working at his trade as a tailor in Glasgow, fell into bad health, which soon showed the sy to benefit by the change, but it becaly clear that he had only coered till the autumn, and passed away at Oldcaround 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 reland of the Scottish conquests of Edward I, it was until the Union of the Crowns the Calais of Scotland It thus cah belonging to it, and was for a long tilish Acts of Parlialish Royal Procla enjoyed has helped to give it an individuality lish towns

In religious land John Knox preached in the town for two years by appointment of the Privy Council of Edward VI, and in harious 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 flourishi+ng congregations in the town in communion with the Church of Scotland

But as these soon became infected with the Moderatisations 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 lish tohich still retain their ancient fortifications The circuit of the walls, which were built in the reign of Elizabeth, with their bastions, ”ates, 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 es of the once inable 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 fro across the tidal river to the villages of Tweedmouth and Spittal, have a picturesqueness of their ohether they are seen when the lights and shadows of a su 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 coood qualities of their Scotch and Northuhbours

Their dialect is in some respects akin to the Lowland Scotch, hich it has many words in co intonation, passing so 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 reues 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 naot 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 aabout a _boy_ until he discovered from the context that his theme was a _brewery_]

In 1845 the population of Beras 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 Freeht 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 Free this, were quite prepared to presue 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 hiht not that vote turn the election?

At the other end of the social scale were the half-pay officers, thecounty faree constituted the aristocracy of Berwick, and most of whom attended the Episcopalian Parish Church The bulk of the shopkeepers and tradese 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 thea membershi+p of about six hundred

The church was in Golden Square, of which it olden, but a dingy close or court opening by an archway frohfare of Berwick The building was till recently a tannery, but the uishable It stood on the left as one entered froh pulpit at its farther end, with a precentor's desk beneath it, and the usual deep gallery supported onround three of its four sides The manse, its door adorned with a decent brass knocker, stood next to the church, on the side farthest fro it to find that only its back s 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 her 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 e Street; and when at length he did remove into it, he took his landlady with hier

For the first five years of his ministry Cairns devoted himself entirely to the hich it entailed upon him, and steadily refused to be drawn aside to the literary and philosophical tasks which ed him to undertake He had decided that his work in Berwick demanded his first attention, and, until he could ascertain how o 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 co to memory his two sermons, each of which occupied about fifty ave 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 fro the old Seceder tradition, and the exalis, and of his professor Dr Brown, his discourse in the forenoon was always a ”lecture” expository of so one of a consecutive series; while that in the afternoon followed the fa quite ordinary in his preaching at any tiht of eloquence, there was always to be noted the steadymind 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 Soraphs--when he had properly warh all restraints and co contact with his hearers

His action sermon, _ie_ 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 Co week to its preparation His action sermons, which were those he usually preached on special occasions when he ay from home, dealt alith some theme connected with the Person or Work of Christ They were frequently apologetic in their conception and structure, full of u and presenting so as to be understood by all; but the argued on the, exaltation of the Redeeht so much of him as I do to-day,” said one of his hearers to another after one of these serht 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 ser Cairns had a Bible-class of over one hundred young reat care and attention

”It was the best hour of the day to us,” wrote one as a member of this class ”He was nearer us, and ere nearer hirandeur 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 infor hearts and consciences, which left an unfading impression”

But Cairns was no th 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 Dece 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 froins three miles out from the town These country visitations usually concluded with a service in a barn or farm-kitchen, to which worshi+ppers 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 ofas this did with the reserved and so 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 hiht both with himself and with his people