Part 3 (2/2)
Once, however, as he used to tell, it brought him perilously near to disaster He was in the middle of his sermon one Sunday afternoon in Golden Square It was a hot summer day, and all the doors and ere open Froht out into the square, and as he looked he becaorously on the pave as she pecked All at once an overwhel sense of the difference between the torlds in which he and that hen were living took possession of him, and it ith the ut into a shout of laughter As it was, he recovered hiulp and finished the service decorously enough
Cairns was also assisted in his work by his pheno sermon once, or at most twice over, he could repeat it verbatied by a friend to do so, he repeated, without stopping, the na only for his imperfect acquaintance with two families who had recently come Another instance of this is perhaps not so rerounds Five-and-thirty years after the ti, when he was a professor in Edinburgh, so district of the city An iron church was erected for thelishman, before his as finished was seized with illness and died He was buried in one of the Edinburgh ce ascertained froed to the Church of England, he repeated at the grave-side the whole of the Anglican Burial Service When he was asked afterwards how he had thus come to know that Service without book, he replied that he had unconsciously got it by heart in the early days of his Berwick ministry, before there was either a cemetery or a Burials Act, when he had been compelled to stand silent and hear it read at the funerals of ation in the parish churchyard
Rather more than a year and a half after his ordination, in May 1847, the Secession Church in which he had been brought up, and of which he was now a minister, entered into a union with another of the Scottish non-Established Churches, the Synod of Relief There was thus formed the United Presbyterian Church, hich his name was afterwards to be so closely associated The United Church coations, of which about fifty were, like those in Berwick, in England; the nucleus of that English Synod which, thirty years later, colish Presbyterian Church to forland References in his correspondence show that this union of 1847, which afterwards had such happy results, excited at the tiely as a matter of duty ”It is,” he writes, ”like the union, not of two globules of quicksilver which run together of themselves, but of two soballs or cakes of h outward pressure I hope that the friction will elicit heat, since this neither cold nor hot spirit is not to edification”
The other letters of this period range over a wide variety of subjects With John Clark he compares experiences of ministerial work; with John Nelson he discusses European politics as these have been affected by the events of the ”year of revolutions,” 1848; with George Wilson he discourses on every conceivable topic, fro of the North British Railhile his mother and his brothers, William and David, the latter of wholass woods to study for the ministry, are kept in touch with all that he knows they will best like to hear about But in all this wide field of huerly traverses, it is quite evident that what attracts hiher and an eternal order With hiious one Without an ato that is at all morbid on his part, he reveals this at a hundred points In this connection a letter which he wrote to Sir William Hamilton and which has since become well known, may be quoted here; and it, with Sir Willialy conclude the present chapter This letter bears date November 16, 1848, and is as follows:--
”I herewith enclose the state the Calabar Mission of our Church, which I take bla delayed to send My avocations are very nu is to be written, has sadly grown on me with ti, what I could not so well utter in your presence, enius and learning, and rateful sense of the important benefits received by me both from your instructions and private friendshi+p, I am more indebted to you for the foundation of my intellectual habits and tastes than to any other person, and shall bear, by the will of the Ale of existence It is a relief to ive one of the most favoured of your pupils if he seeks another kind of relief--a relief which he has long sought an opportunity to obtain--the expression of a wish that his honoured master were one with himself in the exercise of the convictions, and the enjoy Christianity, or as far before himself as he is in all other particulars This is a wish, a prayer, a fervent desire often expressed to the Alled with the hope that, if not already, at least some ti union realised with the great Teacher, Sacrifice, and Restorer of our fallen race You will pardon this ratitude and affection of your pupil and friend, who, if he knew a higher, would gladly give it as a payo been taught to feel the vanity of the world in all its forms--to renounce the hope of intellectual distinction, and to exalt love above knowledge Philosophy has been to me much; but it can never be all, never the ood in another quarter This is mysticism--the mysticism of the Bible--the mysticis Persons of the Godhead--a ular and incommunicable intuition, but open to all, wise and unwise, who take the highway of humility and prayer If I were not truly and profoundly happy in my faith--the faith of the universal Church--I would not speak of it The greatest increase which it ad in the hearts of others, not least of those who know by experience the pain of speculation, the truth that he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow I know you will indulge these expressions to one more in earnest than in former years, more philanthropic, more confident that he knows in who everywhere a testiiven him a positive hold at once of truth and happiness
”But I check -continued and singular kindness could have emboldened me to attempt; and with the utterance of the most fervent wishes for your health, acadeed friend and grateful pupil”
To which Sir W Hamilton replied as follows:--
”EDINBURGH, _Dec_ 4, 1848
”I feel deeply obliged to you for the kindness of your letter, and trust that I shall not prove wholly unworthy of the interest you take in me There is indeed no one hom I am acquainted whose sentihly, for there is no one who, I am sure, is more earnest for the truth, and no one who pursues it with reater confidence in the promised aid of God May this promised aid be vouchsafed to me”[7]
[Footnote 7: _Memoir of Sir W Hamilton_, pp 299-301]
CHAPTER VI
THE CENTRAL PROBLEM
It was confidently expected, not merely by Cairns's personal friends but by others in a much wider circle, that he would make a naht It was not only the brilliance of his University career that led to this expectation, for, remarkable as that career had been, there have beenis concerned, have equalled or surpassed hih-pitched hopes about their future But Cairns, in addition to gaining academic distinctions, seems to have iree with a sense of his power and pro of him as he was in his student days, thus describes hiular degree Tall, strong-boned, and granite-headed, he was the student whonalised and honoured as already a sterling thinker, and the strength of whose logic, when you grappled with hith of his hand-grip when you rity and nobleness of his character”[8] And again, writing of hiives this estimate of his old fellow-student's mental calibre: ”I can name one former student of Sir Willialand one of the straitest sects of Scottish Puritanis athe noblest I have known and the most learned in pure philosophy Any man who on any subject of metaphysical speculation should contend with Dr Cairns of Berwick-on-Tweed, would have reason to know, ere he had done with hith for offence and defence there rip”[9]
[Footnote 8: _Macazine_, December 1864, p 139]
[Footnote 9: _Recent British Philosophy_, pp 265-66]
That this is no mere isolated estimate of a partial friend it would not be difficult to prove This hat his friends thought of hiht others outside to think of him too The time, however, had now co the first five years of his ministry at Berwick, as we have seen, Cairns devoted himself entirely to his work in Golden Square He must learn to know accurately how much of his time that ould take up, before he could venture to spend any of it in other fields But in 1850 he felt that he had an to write for the Press The ten years between 1850 and 1860 were years of considerable literary activity with him, and it may be said at once that their output sustained his reputation, and even added to it There falls to be mentioned first a Memoir of his friend John Clark, who, after a brief and troubled ministerial career, had died of cholera in 1849 Cairns's Life of him, prefixed to a selection froes, and it is in forainst those who regard theerous to the Christian student But it contains reat beauty and tenderness, and delineates in exquisite colours the poetry and roreatly charmed,” wrote the author of _Rab and his Friends_ to Cairns, ”with your pages on the romance of your youthful fellowshi+p--that sweet hour of prime I can remember it, can feel it, can scent the morn”[10]
[Footnote 10: See above, pp 44-45]
In 1850 the _North British Reviehich had been started some years previously in the interests of the Free Church, came under the editorshi+p of Cairns's friend Cah he was a Free Church professor, he resolved to widen the basis of the _Review_, and he asked Cairns to join his staff, offering hiy Cairns assented, and promised to furnish two articles yearly The first and most important of these was one which appeared in 1850 on Julius Muller's _Christian Doctrine of Sin_ This article, which is well and brightly written, ereat hose name stands at the head of it, but also an elaborate yet most lucid and ht which were then grouping themselves in Ger the next four years included articles on ”British and Continental Ethics and Christianity,” on ”The Reawakening of Christian Life in Germany,” and on ”The Life and Letters of Niebuhr”; while yet other articles saw the light in the _British Quarterly Review_, the _United Presbyterian Magazine_, and other periodicals In 1858 appeared the ihth edition of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, which ritten at the urgent request of his friend Ada and preparation
As has been already said, his reputation appears to have been fully ht hi people, such as Bunsen and FD Maurice; and, in Scotland, deepened the impression that he was a ned the Professorshi+p of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and the Town Council, ere the patrons of the chair, took occasion to let Cairns know that he ht have the appointment if he desired it He declined their offer, and with characteristic reticence said nothing about it either to his relatives or to his congregation He threw hireat ardour into the support of the candidature of his friend Professor PC
M'Dougall, who ultimately was elected to the post
Four years later Sir Williaht ensued as to as to be his successor The two most prominent candidates were Cairns's friend Cae, Edinburgh, and Professor James Frederick Ferrier of St
Andrews Fraser was then a Hareat hubbub arose between the adherents of the two schools This was increased and embittered by the i into the contest; Fraser being a Free Church the support of the Established Church and Tory party The Town Council were very ard to the philosophical controversy, and, through Dr John Brown, they requested Cairns to explain itsa pamphlet entitled _An_ _Exa_ This pamphlet had for its object to show that Ferrier's election would mean a renunciation of the doctrines which, as expounded by Hae of the University in recent times as a school of philosophy, and also to expose what the writer conceived to be the dangerous character of Ferrier's teaching in relation to religious truth It increased the storm tenfold Replies were published and letters sent to the newspapers abusing Cairns, and insinuating that he had been led by a private grudge against Ferrier to take the step he had taken It was also affiration of the Free Church, anted to abolish their chair of Logic in the New College, but could not well do so so long as they had its present incuerel parody on _John Gilpin_, entitled ”The Diverting History of John Cairns,” in which a highly coloured account is given of the supposed genesis of the pamphlet, ritten and found wide circulation The first two stanzas of this effusion were the following:--
”John Cairns was a clergyman Of credit and renown, A first-rate UP Church had he In far-famed Berwick town