When John Cairns entered the University of Edinburgh in November 1834 he passed into a world that was entirely strange to him. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between the low-roofed village school and the spacious quadrangle surrounded by heavily balustraded stone terraces and stately pillared façades, into which, at the booming of the hourly bell, there poured from the various classrooms a multitudinous throng of eager young humanity. And he himself in some mysterious way seemed to be changed almost beyond his own recognition. Instead of being the Jock Cairns who had herded sheep on the braes of Dunglass, and had carried butter to the Cockburnspath shop, he was now, as his matriculation card informed him, "Joannes Cairns, Civis Academiae Edinburgeniae;" he was addressed by the professor in class as "Mr. Cairns," and was included in his appeal to "any gentleman in the bench" to elucidate a difficult passage in the lesson of the day.
He attended two classes this winter—that of "Humanity" or Latin taught by Professor Pillans, and that of Greek under the care of Professor George Dunbar. Pillans had been a master at Eton, and at a later period Rector of the Edinburgh High School. He was a little man with rosy cheeks, and was a sound scholar and an admirable teacher, whose special "fad" was Classical Geography. Dunbar had begun life as a working gardener at Ayton Castle. He had compiled a Greek Lexicon which had some repute in its day, but he was not an inspiring teacher, and his gruff manners made him far from popular.
Trained by a country schoolmaster, and having no experience of competition except what a country school affords, John Cairns had until now no idea of his own proficiency relatively to that of others; and it was something of a revelation to him when he discovered how far the grounding he had received from Mr. M'Gregor enabled him to go. His classical attainments soon attracted notice, and at the end of the session, although he failed to win the Class Medals, he stood high in the Honours Lists, and was first in private Latin studies and in Greek prose. Nor were these the only interests that occupied him. A fellow-student, the late Dr. James Hardy, writes of him that from the first he was great in controversy, and that in the classroom during the ten minutes before the appearance of the professor, he was always the centre of a knot of disputants on the Voluntary Church question or some question of politics. Also it is recorded that, on the day after a Parliamentary election for the city, he had no voice left, having shouted it all away the day before in honour of the two successful Whig candidates.
During this session, as had been previously arranged, he lodged in Charles Street with his mother's brother, whose eldest son, John Murray, shared his room. For this cousin, who was about his own age, he had always the greatest regard, and he was specially grateful to him for the kindness with which he helped him over many of the difficulties which, as a raw lad from the country, he experienced when he first came to live in the city. The friendship between the cousins remained unbroken—though their paths in life were widely different—till they died, within a fortnight of each other, nearly sixty years later.
All through the winter a box travelled with the Cockburnspath carrier every three or four weeks between Edinburgh and Dunglass, taking with it on the outward journey clothes to be washed and mended, and on the return journey always including a store of country provisions—scones, oatmeal, butter, cheese, bacon, and potatoes. The letters that passed between the student and his family were also sent in the box, for as yet there was no penny post, and the postage of a letter between Dunglass and Edinburgh cost as much as sixpence halfpenny or sevenpence. Often, too, John would send home some cheap second-hand books, for he had a general commission to keep his eye on the bookstalls. Amongst these purchases was sometimes included a Bible, so that before the end of the winter each member of the family had a separate Bible to take to church or Sunday school.
At the close of the winter session he accepted the invitation of another brother of his mother, who was a farmer at Longyester, near Gifford in East Lothian, on the northern fringe of the Lammermoors, to come and be tutor to his three boys during the summer. At Longyester he spent four very happy months in congenial work among kind people. He learned to ride, and more than once he rode along the hill-foots to Dunglass, twenty miles to the eastward, to spend the Sunday with his father and mother.
During these months he also came into personal contact with a family whose influence on him during these early years was strong and memorable—the Darlings of Millknowe. Millknowe is a large sheep-farm in the heart of the Lammermoors, just where the young Whitadder winds round the base of Spartleton Law. The family at Millknowe, consisting at this time of three brothers and two sisters, all of whom had reached middle life, were relatives of his father, the connection dating from the time when his forebears were farmers in the same region. They were a notable family, full of all kinds of interesting lore, literary, scientific, and pastoral, and they exercised a boundless hospitality to all, whether gentle or simple, who came within their reach. One of them, a maiden sister, Miss Jean Darling, took a special charge of her young cousin, and in a special degree won his confidence. From the first she understood him. She saw the power that was awakening within him, and was, particularly in his student days, his friend and adviser.
As the summer of 1835 advanced, it came to be a grave question with him whether he could return to college in the ensuing winter. His father had had a serious illness; and, though he was now recovering, there was a doctor's bill to settle, and he still required more care and better nourishment than ordinary. Cairns was afraid that, with these extra expenses to be met, his own return to College might involve too serious a drain on the family resources. While matters were in this state, and while he was still at Longyester, he received a request from Mr. Trotter, the schoolmaster of his native parish of Ayton, to come and assist him in the school and with the tuition of boarders in his house. This offer was quite in the line of the only ideas as to his future life he had as yet entertained; for, so far as he had thought seriously on the subject, he had thought of being a teacher. On the other hand, while his great ambition was to return to the University, the fact that most of his class-fellows in the past session had been older than himself suggested to him that he could quite well afford to delay a year before he returned.
So he went to Ayton, lodging while there with his father's youngest sister, Nancy, who had come thither from Ayton Hill along with her mother, when her brother John was married in 1814, and had remained there ever since. Cairns had not been two months in Ayton before his responsibilities were considerably increased. Mr. Trotter resigned his office, and the heritors asked the assistant to take charge of the school until a new teacher should be appointed. There were between one hundred and fifty and two hundred children in the school; he was the sole teacher, and he was only seventeen. Moreover, some delay occurred before the teacher who had been appointed to succeed Mr. Trotter could come to take up his work. But Cairns proved equal to the situation. The tradition is that his rule was an exceedingly stern one, that he kept the children hard at work, and that he flogged extensively and remorselessly.
When the new master arrived upon the scene, he subsided into his original post of assistant. It had been his original intention to go back to the University in November 1836; but as that date approached it became evident that the financial difficulty was not yet removed, so he accepted an engagement to continue his work in Ayton for another year.
His stay in Ayton was a very happy one. He liked his work, and had several warm friends in the village and district. Among these were Mr. Ure, the kindly old minister who had married his parents and baptized himself. Then there was Mr. Stark, minister of another Secession church in the village—a much younger man than Mr. Ure, but a good scholar and a well-read theologian. There was also a fellow-student, Henry Weir, whose parents lived in Berwick, and who used often to walk out to Ayton to see him, Cairns returning the visits, and seeing for the first time, under Weir's auspices, the old Border town in which so much of his own life was to be spent.
All this while he was working hard at his private studies. To these studies he gave all the time that was not taken up by his teaching. He read at his meals, and so far into the night that his aunt became alarmed for his health. He worked his way through a goodly number of the Greek and Latin classics, in copies borrowed from the libraries of the two ministers; and he not only read, but analysed and elaborately annotated what he read. But in the notes of the books read during the year 1837 a change becomes evident. It can be seen that he took more and more to the study of theology and Christian evidences, and his note-books are full of references to Baxter and Jeremy Taylor, to Robert Hall, Chalmers, and Keith.
At length in the summer a crisis was reached. A letter to his father, which has not been preserved, announced that his views and feelings with regard to spiritual things had undergone a great and far-reaching change, and that religion had become to him a matter of personal and paramount concern. Another letter to Henry Weir on the same subject is of great interest. It is written in the unformed and somewhat stilted style which he had not yet got rid of, and, with characteristic reticence, it deals only indirectly with the details of the experience through which he has passed, being in form a disquisition on the importance of personal religion, and a refutation of objections which might occur to his correspondent against making it the main interest of his life.
"My dear Henry," the letter concludes, "I most earnestly wish that you would devote the energies of your mind to the attentive consideration of religion, and I have no doubt that, through the tuition of the Divine Spirit, you would speedily arrive at the same conviction of the importance of the subject with myself, and then our friendship would, by the influence of those feelings which religion implants, be more hallowed and intimate than before. I long ardently to see you."
The experience which has thus been described caused no great rift with the past, nor did it produce any great change in his outward life. He did not dedicate himself to the ministry; he did not, so far as can be gathered, even become a member of the Church; and although for a short time he talked of concentrating his energies on the Greek Testament, to the disparagement of the Greek and Latin classical writers, within two months we find him back at his old studies and strenuously preparing for the coming session at College. But a new power had entered into his life, and that power gradually asserted itself as the chief and dominating influence there.
Cairns returned to the University in the late autumn of 1837, enrolling himself in the classes of Latin, Greek, and Logic. Although he maintained his intimacy with his uncle's family, he now went into lodgings in West Richmond Street, sharing a room with young William Inglis, son of the minister at Stockbridge, then a boy at the High School. Here is the description he gives to his parents of his surroundings and of the daily routine of his life: "The lodging which we occupy is a very good room, measuring 18 feet by 16 feet, in every way neat and comfortable. The walls are hung with pictures, and the windows adorned with flowers. The rent is 3s. 6d., with a promise of abatement when the price of coals is lowered. This is no doubt a great sum of money, but I trust it will be amply compensated by the honesty, cleanliness, economy, and good temper of the landlady.... I shall give you the details of my daily life:—Rise at 8; 8.30-10, Latin class; 10-1, private study; 1-2, Logic; 2-3, Greek class; 4-12.30, private study. As to meals—breakfast on porridge and treacle at 8.15; dine on broth and mutton, or varieties of potatoes with beef or fish, at 3.15; coffee at 7; if hungry, a little bread before bed. I can live quite easily and comfortably on 3s. or 3s. 6d. per week, and when you see me you will find that I have grown fat on students' fare."
At the close of the session he thus records the result of his work in one of the classes:—
"There is a circumstance which but for its connection with the subject of clothes I should not now mention. You are aware that a gold medal is given yearly by the Society of Writers to the Signet to the best scholar in the Latin class. Five are selected to compete for it by the votes of their fellow-students. Having been placed in the number a fortnight ago, I have, after a pretty close trial, been declared the successful competitor. The grand sequence is this, that at the end of the session I must come forward in the presence of many of the Edinburgh grandees and deliver a Latin oration as a prelude to receiving the medal. Although I have little fear that an oration will be forthcoming of the ordinary length and quality, I doubt that the trepidation of so unusual a position will cause me to break down in the delivery of it; but we shall see. The reference of this subject to the clothes you will at once discern. The trousers are too tight, and an addition must be made to their length. The coat is too wide in the body, too short and tight in the sleeves, and too spare in the skirt. As to my feelings I shall say nothing, because I do not look upon the honour as one of a kind that ought to excite the least elation ... I would not wish you to blazon it, nor would I, but for the cause mentioned, have taken any notice of it."
Besides this medal, he obtained the first place in the Greek class. In Logic he stood third, and he carried off a number of other prizes. He had been in every way the better for the interruption in his course; his powers had matured, he knew what he could do, and he was able to do it at will, and from this point onward he was recognised as easily the first man of his time in the University. But he had now to look about him for employment in the vacation; and for a while, in spite of the successes of the past session, he was unable to find it, and was glad to take some poorly paid elementary teaching. But at length, by the good offices of one of the masters in the Edinburgh Academy, backed by the strong recommendation of Professor Pillans, he became tutor in the family of Mr. John Donaldson, W.S., of whose house, 124 Princes Street, he became an inmate. "What I want," said Mr. Donaldson to the professor, "is a gentleman." "Well," replied Pillans, "I am sending you first-rate raw material; we shall see what you will make of it." He retained this situation till the close of his University course, to the entire satisfaction of his employer and his family, and with great comfort to himself—the salary being more than sufficient for his simple needs.
He had, as we have seen, attended the class of Logic during his second session; but as he was then devoting his main strength to classics, and as the subject was as yet quite unfamiliar to him, he did not fully give himself up to it nor yield to the influence of the professor, Sir William Hamilton. But during the summer, while he was at Mr. Donaldson's, in going again over the ground that he had traversed during the past session, he was led to read the works of Descartes, Bacon, and Leibnitz, with the result that mental philosophy at once became the supreme interest of his academic life, and, when the winter came round again, he yielded entirely to its spell and to that of the great man who was then its most distinguished British exponent.
The class of Hamilton's that he attended in the session of 1838-39 was that of Advanced Metaphysics. It so happened that at that time a hot controversy was going on about this very class. The Edinburgh Town Council, who were the patrons of Hamilton's chair, claimed also the right to decide as to what subjects the professor should lecture on, and pronounced Metaphysics to be "an abstruse subject, not generally considered as of any great or permanent utility." But, while this controversy was raging without, within all was calm. "We were quietly engaged"—wrote Cairns twenty years later—"in our discussions as to the existence of the external world while the storm was raging without, and only felt it to be another form of thenon-ego; while the contrast between the singular gentleness and simplicity of our teacher in his dealings with his pupils, and his more impassioned qualities in controversy, became more remarkable."1Hamilton's philosophy may not now command the acceptance that once belonged to it, and that part of it which has been most influential may be put to-day to a use of which he did not dream, and of which he would not have approved, but Hamilton himself—"the black eagle of the desert," as the "Chaldee Manuscript" calls him—was a mighty force. The influence of that vehement and commanding personality on a generation of susceptible young men was deep and far-reaching. He seized and held the minds of his students until they were able to grasp what he had to give them,—until, in spite of the toil and pain it cost them, they weremadeto grasp it. And he further trained them in habits of mental discipline and intellectual integrity, which were of quite priceless value to them. "I am more indebted to you," wrote Cairns to him in 1848, "for the foundation of my intellectual habits and tastes than to any other person, and shall bear, by the will of the Almighty, the impress of your hand through any future stage of existence."
Cairns was first in Hamilton's class at the close of the session, and also first in Professor John Wilson's Moral Philosophy Class. "Of the many hundreds of students," Wilson wrote four years later, "whose career I have watched during the last twenty years, not one has given higher promise of excellence than John Cairns; his talents are of the highest order; his attainments in literature, philosophy, and science rare indeed; and his character such as to command universal respect."
This winter he joined with eight or nine of Hamilton's most distinguished students in forming the "Metaphysical Society," which met weekly for the purpose of discussing philosophical questions. In a Memoir which he afterwards wrote of John Clark, one of the founders of this Society, he thus describes the association that led to its being formed, and that was further cemented by its formation: "Willingly do I recall and linger upon these days and months, extending even to years, in which common studies of this abstract nature bound us together. It was the romance—the poetry—of speculation and friendship. All the vexed questions of the schools were attempted by our united strength, after our higher guide had set the example. The thorny wilds of logic were pleasant as an enchanted ground; its driest technicalities treasured up as unspeakably rare and precious. We stumbled on, making discoveries at every step, and had all things common. Each lesson in mental philosophy opened up some mystery of our immortal nature, and seemed to bring us nearer the horizon of absolute truth, which again receded as we advanced, and left us, like children pursuing the rainbow, to resume the chase. In truth, we had much of the character of childhood in these pursuits—light-heartedness, wonder, boundless hope, engrossment with the present, carelessness of the future. Our old world daily became new; and the real world of the multitude to us was but a shadow. It was but the outer world, thenon-ego, standing at the mercy of speculation, waiting to be confirmed or abolished in the next debate; while the inner world, in which truth, beauty, and goodness had their eternal seat, should still survive and be all in all. The play of the intellect with these subtle and unworldly questions was to our minds as inevitable as the stages of our bodily growth. Happy was it for us that the play of affection was also active—nay, by sympathy excited to still greater liveliness; and that a higher wisdom suffered us not in all these flowery mazes to go astray."2
From indications contained in the brief Memoir from which this extract is taken, as well as from references in his correspondence, it would appear that about this time he subjected his religious beliefs to a careful scrutiny in the light cast upon them by his philosophical studies. From this process of testing and strain he emerged with his faith established on a yet firmer basis than before. One result of this experience may perhaps be found in a letter to his father, in which he tells him that he has been weighing the claims of the Christian ministry as his future calling in life. He feels the force of its incomparable attractions, but doubts whether he is fitted in elevation and maturity of character to undertake so vast a responsibility. Besides, he is painfully conscious of personal awkwardness in the common affairs of life, and unfitness for the practical management of business. And so he thinks he will take another year to think of it, during which he will complete his College course.
He spent the summer of 1839 with the Donaldson family at their country seat at Auchairn, near Ballantrae, in south Ayrshire, occupying most of his leisure hours in mathematical and physical studies in preparation for the work of the coming winter. In the session of 1839-40, his last at the University, he attended the classes of Natural Philosophy and Rhetoric, taking the first place in the latter and only just missing it in the former. He attended, besides, Sir William Hamilton's private classes, and was much at his house and in his company. In April 1841 he took his M.A. degree, coming out first in Classics and Philosophy, and being bracketed first in Mathematics. Among his fellow-students his reputation was maintained not merely by the honours he gained in the class lists, but by his prowess in the debating arena. Besides continuing his membership in the Metaphysical Society, he had also been, since the spring of 1839, a member of the Diagnostic, one of the most flourishing of the older students' debating societies. Of the Diagnostic he speedily became the life and soul, and discussed with ardour such questions as the Repeal of the Corn Laws, Vote by Ballot, and the Exclusion of Bishops from the House of Lords. One memorable debate took place on the Spiritual Independence of the Church, then the most burning of all Scottish public questions. The position of the Non-Intrusion party in the Established Church was maintained by Cairns's friend Clark, while he himself led on the Voluntary side. The debate lasted two nights, and, to quote the words of one who was present, "Cairns in reply swept all before him, winning a vote from those who had come in curiosity, and securing a large Liberal majority. Amidst a scene of wild enthusiasm we hoisted his big form upon our shoulders, and careered round the old quadrangle in triumph. Indeed he was the hero of our College life, leaving all others far behind, and impressing us with the idea that he had a boundless future before him."3
Over Cairns's life during his last session at the University there hung the shadow of a coming sorrow. His father's health, which had never been robust, and had been failing for some time, at length quite broke down; and it soon became apparent that, although he might linger for some time, there was no hope of his recovery. In the earlier days of his illness the father was able to write, and many letters passed between him and his student son. The following extracts from his letters reveal the character of the man, and surely furnish an illustration of what was said in a former chapter about the educative effect of religion on the Scottish working-man:—
"DUNGLASS,Dec, 23,1839.
"I would not have you think that I am overlooking the Divine agency in what has befallen me. I desire to ascribe all to His glory and praise, who can bring order out of confusion and light out of darkness; and I desire to look away from human means to Him who is able to kill and to make alive, knowing that He doth not grieve willingly nor afflict the children of men."
"DUNGLASS,Jan. 5, 1840.
"As I have no great pain except what arises from coughing, I have reason to bless the Lord, who is dealing so bountifully with me.... It would be unpardonable in me were I not endeavouring to make myself familiar with death in the forms and aspects in which he presents himself to the mind. Doubts and fears sometimes arise lest I should be indulging in a false and presumptuous hope, and, as there is great danger lest we should be deceived in this momentous concern, we cannot be too anxious in ascertaining whether our hope be that of the Gospel, as set forth in His Word of truth. Still, through the grace and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom, I trust upon scriptural grounds, I can call my Saviour, I am enabled to view death as a friend and as deprived of its sting, and this is a source of great comfort to me and cheers my drooping mind. I can say that my Beloved is mine and I am His, and that He will make all things to work together for His own glory and my eternal good. Dear son, I have thus opened my mind to you, and I trust that your prayers will not be wanting that my faith may be strengthened, and that all the graces of the Holy Spirit may abound in me, to the glory of God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
During this and part of the next year Cairns remained in Mr. Donaldson's family, and his relations with that family as a whole, as well as his special work in the tuition of the young son and daughter of the house, were of the most agreeable kind. He had by this time, however, formed some intimate friendships in Edinburgh, and there were several pleasant and interesting houses that were always open to him. One of these deserves special mention. Among his most intimate College friends was James McGibbon Russell, a distinguished student of Sir William Hamilton, and one of the founders of the Metaphysical Society. Russell was the son of a Perthshire parish minister, but his parents were dead, and he lived with an uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Wilson, whose own family consisted of two sons and three daughters. Cairns was introduced by Russell to the Wilson family, and soon became intimate with them. His special friend—at last the dearest friend he had in this world—was the younger son, George, afterwards the well-known chemist and Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh. No two men could be less alike—George Wilson with a bright, alert, nimble mind; Cairns with an intellect massive like his bodily frame, and characterised chiefly by strength and momentum; and yet the two fitted into each other, and when they really got to know each other it might truly be said of them that the love between them was wonderful, passing the love of women.
By the midsummer of 1840 Cairns had come to a final decision about his future calling. "I have," he wrote to his father on 13th June, "after much serious deliberation and prayer to God for direction, made up my mind to commence this year the study of divinity, with a view to the office of the ministry of the Gospel. I pray you, do implore the grace of God on my behalf, after this very grave and solemn determination."
The Secession Church, to which he belonged, and to whose ministry he desired to seek admission, had no theological tutors who were set apart for the work of teaching alone. Its professors, of whom there were four, were ministers in charges, who lectured to the students during the two holiday months of August and September. The curriculum of the "Divinity Hall," as it was called, consisted of five of these short sessions. During the remaining ten months of each year the student, except that he had to prepare a certain number of exercises for the Presbytery which had him under its charge, was left very much to do as he pleased.
Cairns entered the Hall, at that time meeting in Glasgow, in the August of 1840. Of the four professors who were on the staff of the institution, and all of whom were capable men, only two need here be mentioned. These were Dr. Robert Balmer of Berwick and Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh. Dr. Balmer was a clear-headed, fair-minded theologian—in fact, so very fair, and even generous, was he wont to be in dealing with opponents that he sometimes, quite unjustly, incurred the suspicion of being in sympathy, if not in league, with these opponents. He is specially interesting to us in this place, because Cairns succeeded him first in his pulpit, and then, after a long interval, in his chair. Dr. Brown, the grandson and namesake of the old commentator of Haddington, was a man of noble presence and noble character, whose personality "embedded in the translucent amber of his son's famous sketch" is familiarly known to all lovers of English literature. He was the pioneer of the scientific exposition of the Scriptures in the Scottish pulpit, and was one of the first exegetical theologians of his time. His point of view may be seen in a frequent criticism of his on a student's discourse: "That is truth and very important truth, but it is notthetruth that is taught in this passage." Being so, it was simply "matter in the wrong place,"dirtto be cleared away as speedily as possible.
Cairns had been first attracted to Dr. Brown by his speeches on the Annuity Tax, an Edinburgh ecclesiastical impost for which he had suffered the spoiling of his goods, and he had been for more than a year a member of his church in Broughton Place; but it was only now that he came to know him really well. Henceforth his admiration for Dr. Brown, and the friendship to which Dr. Brown admitted him, were to be amongst the most powerful influences of his life. Among his fellow-students at the Hall were several young men of brilliant promise, such as John Ker, who had been first prizeman in the Logic class in Hamilton's first session, W.B. Robertson, Alexander MacEwen, Joseph Leckie, and William Graham. Of these, Graham, bright, witty, versatile, the most notorious of punsters and the most illegible of writers, was his chief intimate, and their friendship continued unbroken and close for half a century.
But meanwhile the shadow was deepening over the home at Dunglass. All through the autumn and early winter his father was slowly sinking. He was only fifty-one, but he was already worn out; and his disease, if disease it might be called, had many of the symptoms of extreme old age. His son saw him for the last time near the close of the year. "I cannot say," he wrote to Miss Darling, "that depression of spirits was the only, or even the chief, emotion with which I bade farewell to my father. There was something so touching in his patience and resignation, so calm and inwrought in his meek submission to the Divine will, that it affected me more strongly than raptures of religious joy could have done. He displays the same evenness of temper in the sight of death as has marked his equable and consistent life."
He died in the early morning of 3rd January 1841. His son William thus describes the scene: "It was the first time any of us except our mother had looked on the face of the dying in the act of departing, and that leaves an impression that can never be effaced. When the end came, and each had truly realised what had happened, our mother in a broken voice asked that 'the Books' might be laid on the table; then she gave out that verse in the 107th Psalm—
'The storm is changed into a calmAt his command and will;So that the waves that raged before,Now quiet are and still.'
It was her voice, too, that raised the tune. Then she asked Thomas to read a chapter of the Bible and afterwards to pray. We all knelt down, and Thomas made a strong effort to steady his voice, but he failed utterly; then the dear mother herself lifted the voice of thanksgiving for the victory that had been won, and after that the neighbours were called in."4
Cairns was soon to have further experience of anxiety in respect to the health of those who were near to him. Towards the close of the year in which his father died, his brother William, who had almost completed his apprenticeship to a mason at Chirnside, in Berwickshire, was seized with inflammation, and for some weeks hung between life and death. At length he recovered sufficiently to be removed under his elder brother's careful and loving supervision to the Edinburgh Infirmary, where he remained for four months. During all that time Cairns visited his brother twice every day, he taught himself to apply to the patient the galvanic treatment which had been prescribed, and brought him an endless supply of books, periodicals, and good things to eat and smoke.
In the end of 1842 George Wilson was told by an eminent surgeon that he must choose between certain death and the amputation of a foot involving possible death. He agreed at once to the operation being performed, but begged for a week in which to prepare for it. He had always been a charming personality, and had lived a life that was outwardly blameless; but he had never given very serious thought to religion. Now, however, when he was face to face with death, the great eternal verities became more real to him, and during the week of respite the study of the New Testament and the counsel and sympathy and prayers of his friend Cairns prepared him to face his trial with calmness, and with "a trembling hope in Christ" in his heart. The two friends, who had thus been brought so closely together, were henceforth to be more to each other than they had ever been before.
The next year, 1843, was a memorable one in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland. Cairns, though not sympathising with the demand of the Non-Intrusion party in the Church of Scotland for absolute spiritual independence within an Established Church, had an intense admiration for Chalmers, and was filled with the greatest enthusiasm when he and the party whom he led on the great 18th of May clung fast to the Independence and left the Establishment behind them. Indeed his enthusiasm ran positively wild, for it is recorded that, when the great procession came out of St. Andrew's Church, Cairns went hurrahing and tossing up his hat in front of it and all the way down the hill to Tanfield Hall. To Miss Darling, who had no sympathy with the Free Church movement, he wrote: "I know our difference of opinion here. But you will pardon me for saying that I have never felt more profound emotions of gratitude to God, of reverence for Christianity, of admiration of moral principle, and of pride in the honesty and courage of Scotsmen, than I did on that memorable day."
In the autumn of this year he was able to carry out a project which he had had before him, and for which he had been saving up his money for a long time. This was the spending of a year on the Continent. It was by no means so common in those days as it has since become for a Scottish theological student to attend a German University. Indeed, until the early Forties of last century, such a thing was scarcely known. Then, however, the influence of Sir William Hamilton, and the interest in German thought which his teaching stimulated, created the desire to learn more about it at its source.
It is natural that this movement should have affected the students of the Secession Church before it reached those of the Establishment; for not only were they less occupied with the great controversy of the day and its consequences, but their short autumn session left them free to take either a winter or a summersemester, or both, at a German University without interrupting their course at home. The late Dr. W.B. Robertson of Irvine used to lay claim to having been the pioneer of these "landlouping students of divinity." John Ker and others followed him; and when Cairns set out in 1843, quite a large company of old friends were expected to meet at Berlin. Cairns's departure was delayed by the illness of James Russell, who was to have accompanied him, but he set out towards the end of October. He had accepted an appointment aslocum tenensfor four weeks in an English Independent chapel at Hamburg, which delayed his arrival at Berlin until after the wintersemesterhad commenced. But this interlude was greatly enjoyed both by himself and by the little company of English merchants who formed his first pastoral charge, and who, on a vacancy occurring, made a strong but fruitless attempt to induce him to remain as their permanent minister.
Arrived in Berlin, he joined his friends—Nelson, Graham, Wallace, and Logan Aikman. With Nelson he shared a room in the Luisenstrasse, where they set up that household god of all German students—a "coffee-machine," with the aid of which, and some flamingspiritus, they brewed their morning and evening beverage. They dined in the middle of the day at a neighbouring restaurant, on soup, meat, vegetables, and black bread, at a cost of threepence.
At the University, Cairns heard four or five lectures daily, taking among others the courses of Neander on Christian Dogmatics, Trendelenburg on History of Philosophy, and Schelling, the last of the great philosophers of the preceding generation, on Introduction to Philosophy. Of these, Schelling impressed him least, and Neander most. Through life he had a deep reverence for Neander, whom he regarded, with perhaps premature enthusiasm, as the man who shared with Schleiermacher the honour of restoring Germany to a believing theology.
Here is the description he gives of him in a letter from Berlin to George Wilson: "Suppose yourself in a large square room filled with Studiosi, each with his inkstand and immenseHeftbefore him and ready to begin, when precisely at 11.15 a.m. in shuffles a little black Jew, without hat in hand or a scrap of paper, and strides up to a high desk, where he stands the whole time, resting his elbows upon it and never once opening his eyes or looking his class in the face; the worst type of Jewish physiognomy in point of intellect, though without its cunning or sensuality; the face meaningless, pale, and sallow, with low forehead, and nothing striking but a pair of enormous black eyebrows. The figure is dressed in a dirty brown surtout, blue plush trousers, and dirty top-boots. It begins to speak. The voice is loud and clear, and marches on with academic stateliness and gravity, and even something of musical softness mixes with its notes. Suddenly the speaker turns to a side. It is to spit, which act is repeated every second sentence. You now see in his hands a twisted pen, which is gradually stripped of every hair and then torn to pieces in the course of his mental working. His feet, too, begin to turn. The left pirouettes round and round, and at the close of an emphatic period strikes violently against the wall. When he has finished his lecture, you see only a mass of saliva and the rags of his pen. Neander is out of all sight the most wonderful being in the University. For knowledge, spirituality, good sense, and indomitable spirit of the finest discretion on moral subjects, the old man is a real marvel every way. In private he is the kindest but also the most awkward of mortals. His lectures onDogmatikandSittenlehreI value beyond all others, and I would gladly have come to Berlin to hear him alone."
Besides hearing these University lectures, Cairns read German philosophy and theology for nine or ten hours daily, took lessons in Hebrew from a young Christian Jew named Biesenthal,5and in these short winter months acquired such a mastery of German as a spoken language that in the spring he was urged by Professor Tholuck of Halle to remain and qualify as a Privatdocent at a German University. He also gained a knowledge of men and things German, and a living interest in them, which he retained through life.
At the close of the wintersemester, the last weeks of which had been saddened by the news of James Russell's death; he set out on a tour extending over three months, and planned to include the principal cities and sights of Central and Southern Europe. He had only about £20 in his pocket, but he made this cover all the expenditure that was necessary for his modest wants. He travelled alone and, whenever it was possible, on foot, in the blouse and peaked cap of a German workman, and with a light knapsack strapped on his shoulders. He avoided hotels and lived cheaply, even meanly; but, with his splendid health, simple tastes, and overflowing interest in all that he saw, this did not greatly matter.
His classical studies, and an already wide knowledge of European history, suggested endless interesting associations with the places through which he passed; and the picture galleries furnished him with materials for art criticisms which, considering that he had had few opportunities of seeing paintings, surprise one by their insight and grasp. At Wittenberg we find him standing by the grave of Luther in the Castle Church, and reflecting on the connection between his presence there and the life and work of the man whose body lay below. "But for him there had neither been a Scotland to send out pilgrim students of theology, nor a Germany to receive them."
At Halle he has interesting interviews with Tholuck and Julius Müller; from Dresden he diverges to Herrnhut, where he witnesses the ordination of a Moravian missionary and takes part in a love-feast. At Prague, that wonderful city where the barbaric East begins, he finds his deepest interest stirred by the Jewish burying-ground and the hoary old synagogue. And so he passes on from city to city, and from land to land, by Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich, to Innsbruck, thence over the Brenner to Trent and Venice, and by Bologna to Florence and Rome. Returning by Genoa, Milan, and the Italian Lakes, he passes into Switzerland, and travels homeward by the Rhine. During this tour, when, in spite of the heat, he frequently walked forty-five or fifty miles a day, he had little time for letter-writing; but a small paper-covered book, in which he each night jotted down in pencil his impressions of what he had seen during the past day, has fortunately been preserved. From this three brief extracts may be made, and may serve as specimens of the whole, which is virtually reproduced entire in Dr. MacEwen's Biography. The first contains a description of the Jewish cemetery at Prague: "Through winding, filthy, pent-up, and over-peopled lanes, in the part of the old town next the river, heaped up with old clothes, trinket-ware, villainous-looking bread, and horrid sausages, one attains to an open space irregularly and rudely walled in and full of graves. The monuments date from the tenth century. No language can give an idea of its first impression. At one end one sees innumerable masses of grey weather-beaten stones in every grotesque angle of incidence and coincidence, but all rude and mean, covered with mystic Hebrew letters and half-buried amid long grass, nettles, and weeds. The place looks exactly as if originally a collection of dunghills or, perhaps, of excavated earth, left to its natural course after the corpses had been thrown in and the rude billets set over them. The economy of the race is visible in their measure for the dead, and contrasts wonderfully with the roominess and delicate adornment of German churchyards in general. The hoar antiquity of the place is increased by a wilderness of alders which grow up around the walls and amidst the stones, twisted, tangled, stunted, desolately old and yet renewing their youth, a true type of the scattered, bruised, and peeled, yet ineradicable Israel itself."
An incident at Novi, between Genoa and Milan, is thus described: "I had strolled into a vineyard behind the town, quite lonely and crowned with one cottage. On one of the secluded paths I found a little girl lying on the grass, with her face turned up to the sun and fast asleep. The breeze played beautifully with her hair, and her dress fluttered and rustled, but there she lay, and nothing but the heaving of her frame, which could hardly be distinguished from the agitation of the wind, proved that she was only asleep. I stood gazing for a long while, thinking of the Providence that watched alike over the child in its slumberings and the pilgrim in his wanderings; and as I saw her companions playing at no great distance, I left the spot without awakening the absent little one. As I was passing the cottage door, however, I was overtaken by the mother in evident agitation. She pointed along the path I had come by, as if she feared her child had wandered to the highway or been lost amid the wild brushwood that grew on that side of the vineyard. I soon made her understand that thepiccolinawas just behind her, and waited till she bounded away and returned with the crying thing in her arms, loading it with gentle reproaches and me with warm expressions of gratitude."
At Milan it must be admitted that he goes into raptures over the Cathedral, but one is glad to note that he reserves an ample tribute of enthusiasm for the old church of St. Ambrose: "In the cloister of St. Ambrose I saw the famous cypress doors which the saint closed against Theodosius, time-worn but solid; the brazen serpent, the fine pulpit with the bas-relief of the Agape, and the veritable Episcopal chair of marble, with solid back and sides, and lions embossed at the corners, in which he sat in the councils of his presbyters. It is almost the only relic I have done any honour to. I knelt down and kissed it, and forgot for the time that I was both Protestant and Presbyterian."
After a stormy and perilous voyage from Antwerp, he reached Newcastle in the first week of August, and started at once for Edinburgh to be present at the opening of the Divinity Hall. At the Dunglass lodge-gate his brother David, who was waiting for a letter which he had promised to throw down from the "Magnet" coach as he passed, caught a hurried glimpse of him, lean and brown as a berry after his exertions and his exposure to the Italian sun. On the following Saturday he put his pedestrian powers to the proof by walking from Edinburgh to Dunglass, when he covered the thirty-five and a half miles in seven hours and fifty minutes, having stopped only twice on the way—once in Haddington to buy a biscuit, and once at a wayside watering-trough to take a drink.
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, some hesitation in taking 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 ministry, or whether he might not render better service by devoting himself, as opportunity offered, more exclusively to theological and literary work in behalf of the Christian faith. His friend Clark, whom he consulted in the matter, strongly urged 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 November 1844 be applied to the Edinburgh 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 few weeks 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 home circle at Dunglass. His brother William, whose illness has been already referred to, had now passed beyond all hope of recovering the use of his limbs. Having set himself resolutely to a course of study and mental improvement under his brother John's guidance, he was able to accept a kindly proposal made to him by Sir John Hall of Dunglass, that he should become the teacher of the little roadside school at Oldcambus, which John had attended as a child. On the marriage of his eldest brother in the summer of 1845 the widowed mother came to keep house for him, and henceforth the Oldcambus schoolhouse became the family headquarters. But that summer brought sorrow as well as change. Another brother, James, a young man of vigorous mental powers, and originally of stalwart physique, who had been working at his trade as a tailor in Glasgow, fell into bad health, which soon showed the symptoms of rapid consumption. He came home hoping to benefit by the change, but it became increasingly clear that he had only come home to die. He lingered till the autumn, and passed away at Oldcambus at the end of September. It was with this background of change and shadow that the ordination of John Cairns took place at Berwick on August 6, 1845.