Part 6 (2/2)

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 docuested to his iination the centuries of reat champions of the faith who had borne their part therein Besides, he was veryout of line with the other Presbyterian Churches in Great Britain and America, who still iance to the Westminster Standards

His influence prevailed, and the second alternative was adopted

A ”Declaratory State 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 froour of the words of the _Confession_, It also contained a paragraph which secured liberty of opinion oninto 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 fro 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 custo on the platforht and left of the chair But he never seemed coether, and in a stooping posture, as if he wanted tobody as small and inconspicuous as possible; and, as often as he could, he would go down and take his place a 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 st his oldest friends was Williaer a United Presbyterian, simply could not keep away from the haunts of his youth when the month of May cauest 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 hieniality and unaffected hunity about him which few ventured to invade But he took all his friend's banter with a smile of quiet enjoyeous sally would send hi 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 firency Besides, as his biographer has truly said, ”he was habitually thankful to have someone near him whom he could fairly ask to take the foreone, 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 hie His friend Dr Graha land, supported the appoint when he described hiht 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 knohat a rare and noble man he was”

[Footnote 18: _Life and Letters_, p 661]

In the following year (1880) Principal Cairns delivered the Cunninghaiven on a Free Church foundation, instituted in ian whose name it bears; and now for the first time the lecturer was chosen frohly appreciated the coury of the Union which he was sure was cohteenth century as contrasted with its earlier and later history”; and, although it was one in which he was already at horound 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 ihout by lucidity of arrangement They were very well received when they were delivered, and were favourably reviehen they were published a year later[19]

[Footnote 19: In the following year (1882) he received the degree of LLD froh University]

Between the delivery and the publication of the Cunningham Lectures Dr Cairns spent five months in the United States and Canada The ie 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 coed 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 tithened 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 soation Wherever he went he preached,--in fact every Sunday of these fivethose he spent on the Atlantic, was thus occupied,--and everywhere his preaching and his personality arded himself, he used to say that this Aave him nes of the vitality of Christianity and new hopes for its future developham Lectures there was a widely cherished hope that Dr Cairns would produce so still more worthy of his powers and his reputation He was now free froeot 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 systehly 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 Gerical 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 reat work on Justification (almost the only German book he read in a translation), and the three voluht be attributed to the decline of mental freshness and of hospitality to new ideas which often co 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 scholarshi+p and linguistics beca 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 cuneifor 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 hie 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 theht to make them share in his enthusiasm:--

”One day e 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 hich he discoursed upon the strange figures and signs showed that, though white of hair and bent in fra For two days he lectured on this inscription with theevery word, and there was deep regret in his face and in his voice when he said, 'And now, gentley'”[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 hi too, with such treht, to see hi away at those truculent old Red Indians in their barbarian original tongue Yet I would not forutterly from all worries and troubles and perfectly happy before a blackboard covered with aht in a neorld 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 e 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 knoord of their language The other was that he was now able to pray in Arabic for the conversion of the Mohaan 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 ree, viz the secession of a large evangelical party from the rationalistic State Church of Holland, under Abraham Kuyper, the present Prianisation into a Free Presbyterian Church

Other languages at which he worked during this period were Spanish, of which he acquired the rudiian, which he picked up during a month's residence at Christiania in 1877, and furbished for a en in 1884 All this ti his Patristic and other historical studies with unflagging vigour, alriting new lectures, always er 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 classrooy In the latter he taught like a man who felt wearied and old; but in the for freshness and enthusiashtful to see hie 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 hich they deal This was the aspect of Christian truth which had all along attracted him It hat 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 hie 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 ood 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 sued over the whole United Presbyterian Church fros wherever he went In arranging these expeditions, he always gave the preference to those applications which ca, and sparsely peopled districts, where discouragele 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 eation at Berwick, which he regularly visited in thetwice in the church on Sunday, and finishi+ng the day's work by preaching again fro On these occasions the broad High Street, at the foot of which the Town Hall stands, was always crowded fro way up its course, while all the ithin 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 iy, and even Apologetics, receded into the background Secure in his ”_aliquid inconcussuard the life of the individual Christian and the collective life of the Church as theof all witnesses to the Unseen and the Supernatural