Part 5 (2/2)
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 handsoentleman appeared at an open , and with hat in hand and a charraceful salutation We could not be insensible to so much courtesy--since it was Sir ---- himself who thus welcomed us; but as aved our hats in reply, one of our party, who had actually a writ out against the fine old Irish gentleman at the very ti between his teeth and pressed his hat firmer down on his head than usual Such landlordism is still not uncoentlemen whose house is their castle, and to who period of Dr Cairns's ious revival in the town Following on a brief visit in January 1874 from Messrs Moody and Sankey, who had then just closed their first an which lasted nearly two years With so that time mostly by the ministers of the town, assisted by layan occupied a foremost place Dr Cairns threw hih he did not intend it, and probably was not aware of it, he was its real leader, giving it at once the i present, and taking soelistic htly, and in the prayer-, attended by from one hundred and fifty to two hundred, which met every day at noon, hedirection on religiousthat , he ation, in the course of which by gentle and tactful means he found out those who really desired to be spoken to, and spoke to the, and were, in his opinion, wholly good
His own congregation profited greatly by it, and on the Sunday before one of the Wallace Green Co men and women were received into the fellowshi+p 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 baptis 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 enrol 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 professorshi+ps, which his views of the ministry and of his consecration to it constrained hiical chairs, the acceptance of which did not involve the same interference with the plan of his life, carounds 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 su accepted its call, he began his neork 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 regation were very proud of the new honour that had coree reflected on them Instead of ”the Doctor”
they now spoke of him habitually as ”the Professor,” and presented hied but soown 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 for at second-hand led him to make a renewed and laborious study of the Fathers, ere already, to a far greater extent than with e 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 tihted 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 fronostic standpoint had not yet beco the traditional division of the Evidences into Internal and External, he classified the to their relation to the different Attributes of God, as nity 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 reat ”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 thetowards 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 iifts and learning, and the wide charity whichOne student's appreciation of this latter quality found whihtedly passed from hand to hand in the class, and which represented Dr
Cairns cordially shaking hands with the Devil A ”balloon” issuing froend as this: ”I hope you are very well, sir I ahted 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 nu reforms in the United Presbyterian Church were kept back frootiations, and because it was felt that such ht 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 ical Education As has been already ical curriculum extended over five sessions of two months It was now proposed to substitute for this a curriculu more in accordance with the require the Hall into line with the Universities and the Free Church Colleges A sche feature, was finally adopted by the Synod in May 1875
It necessarily involved the separation of the professors froly the Synod addressed a call to Dr Cairns to leave Berwick and becoetics 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, as the senior professor in the old Hall, and as now appointed the first Principal of the new College
Dr Cairns had thus to ation and his professorshi+p, and, with rets, he decided in favour of the latter This decision, which he announced to his people towards the close of the su hi year the English congregations of that Church were severed from the parent body to forland; and Wallace Green congregation, soely in response to Dr Cairns's wishes, ith 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 seration froospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation unto every one that believeth” ”For ospel a you, and I bless His narace proved the power of God unto salvation To Him I ascribe all the praise; and I would rather on such an occasion res 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 ard to whoet thee, O Jerusale,' inclines me rather to self-exa you should have suffered through ospel of salvation If then any of you should be in this case, through ospel of Christ, I address to you in Christ's nath receive the truth”
A feeeks later he and his sister reh, 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 , he had set hieneral inforenial, and intensely hue circle of friends, many of ere 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 Oldcah The house No 10 Spence Street, in which for sixteen years the brothers and sister lived together, is aoff 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 froood walk every day in going there and back; and the other, that its internal arrange 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 lightsomillar woods, North Berwick Law, and even the distant Lammermoors, could be obtained--a viehich was, alas! soon blocked up by the erection of tall buildings At the back of the house, downstairs, was the sitting-room, where the fa at his desk He had been fortunate enough to secure, alh, 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 perforh the whole of the twenty-five volumes of the Encyclopaedia, and thus added considerably to his already encyclopaedic stock of -roo 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 s peal of laughter would bring the professor down from his study to find out as the matter, and to join in theto the visitors, he would plead the pressure of his work and return to the corius
His three nepheho 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 proble theave an ie masses of rock His part in these discussions co back in his chair, with his shoulders resting on the top bar of it, and which he soht ar A _snell_ re some new and comic association with a philosophic ter hihter to the actual world and tomen rose to leave he always accoood-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