Principal Cairns

ulative thought. It was not only the brilliance of his University career that led to this expectation, for, remarkable as that career had been, there have been many men since hi

rling thinker, and the strength of whose logic, when you grappled with him in argument, seemed equalled only by the strength of his hand-grip when you met him or bade him good-bye, or by the manly integrity and nobleness of his character."8 And again, writing of him as he was at a later date, the same critic gives this estimate of his old fellow-student's mental calibre: "I can name one former student of Sir William Hamilton's, now a minister in what woul

r fields. But in 1850 he felt that he had mastered the situation, and accordingly he began 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 from his Essays and Sermons, fills

which appeared in 1850 on Julius Müller's Christian Doctrine of Sin. This article, which is well and brightly written, embraces not merely a criticism of the great work whose name stands at the head of it, but also an elaborate yet most lucid and masterly survey of the various schools of theological thought which were then grouping themselves in Germany. Other contributions to the North British during the next four years included articles on "British and Continental

n 1852 John Wilson resigned the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and the Town Council, who were the patrons of the chair, took occasion to let Cairns know that he might have the appointment if he desired it. He declined their offer,

at sea with regard to the philosophical controversy, and, through Dr. John Brown, they requested Cairns to explain its merits to them. Cairns responded by publishing a pamphlet entitled An Examination of Professor Ferrier's Theory of Knowing and Being. This pamphlet had for its object to show that Ferrier's election would mean a renunciation of the doctrines which, as expounded by Hamilton, had added so greatly to the prestige 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

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one, he challenged Ferrier to mention one single instance in which he had made a personal attack on him. When at length the vote came to be taken, and Fraser was el

incipalship of the University became vacant by the death of Dr. John Lee, and the appointment to the coveted post, like that to the two professorships, was in the hands of the Town Council. It was informally offered to Cairns through one of the councillors, but again he se

s of his friends and his own aspirations must be realised in his work, not in the field of philosophy but in that of theology. Accordingly, he decided to follow up his work in the periodicals by writing a book. He took for his subject "The Difficulties of Christianity," and made some progress with it, getting on so far as to write several chapters. Then he was interrupted and the work was laid aside. The great book was never written, nor did he ever write a book worthy of his powers. A moderate-sized volume of lectures on "Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century," a volume of sermons, most of which were written in the first fifteen years of his ministry, a Memoir of Dr. Brown

sion is, it can scarcely be said to be an exaggeration. But Hamilton's influence, while it called out and stimulated his pupil's powers to a remarkable degree, was not one which made for literary productiveness. He was a great upholder of the doctrine that truth is to be sought for its own sake and without reference to any ulterior end, and he had strong ideas about the discredit-the shamefulness, as it seemed to

ly with the conversion of sinners and the edifying of saints. This work is so awful in its importance, and so beneficent in its results, that it must take the chief place in a minister's thoughts and in the disposition of his time; and if it requires the sole place, that too must be accorded to it. "To me," wrote Cairns to George Gilfillan in 1849, "love seems infinitely higher than knowledge and the noblest distinction of humanity-the humble minister who wears himself out in labours of Christian lov

time, as we have seen, he had been drawn aside by the attractions of "sacred literature." He never thought of becoming a minister and was putting his main strength into philosophy and t

and, with his standard of pastoral efficiency, this left him little leisure. Indeed it is wonderful that, under these conditions, he accomplished so much as he did-that he wrote his North British articles, maintained a reputation which won for him so many offers of academic posts, and at the same time laid the foundation of a vast and spacious learning in Patristic and Refo

tted it himself. He had, it is true, worked in it strenuously and with conspicuous success, and had revealed a natural aptitude for Christian apologetics of a very high order. But it does not appear that either his heart or his conscience were ever fully engaged in the work. He ne

with which, in this point of view, though in other respects higher, it is co-ordinate. No one who is living in communion with Jesus Christ, and exercising that series of affections towards Him which Christianity at once prescribes and creates, can doubt the reality of that supernatural system to which he has been thus introduced; and nothing more is necessary than to appeal to his own experience and belief, which is here as valid and irresistible as in regard to the existence of God, of moral distinctions, or of the material world. He has no reason to trust the one class of beliefs which he has not, to trust the other.... To minds thus favou

stianity. Other people who had not this inward testimony, or who, having it, could not regard it as unshaken by the assaults of infidelity, he could argue with and seek to meet them on their own intellectual ground; but for himself, any vic

may be held as proving that there was no want of rigour in the process, no withholding of any part of the structure from the strain. But that that structure ever gave way, that it ever came tumbling down in ruins about him so that it had to be built again on new foundations, there is no evidence to show. The "aliquid inconcussum" appears to have remaine

ight down through the storm-zone of the nineteenth century," writes one who knew him well, "he comes untroubled by the force of the 'aliquid inconcussum.' Edinburgh, Germany, Berwick; Hamilton, Kant, Hegel, Strauss, Renan, it is all the sa

ual strength as because of his character,-because he was "a great Christian." But in this respect he had the defects of his qualities; and it is open to question whether he ever truly

e, and have read it with interest, attention, and a good deal of admiration of its ability and, on the whole, of its spirit. But I can see from it that he is not the man to grapple with the scepticism of the age. He has not sufficient sympathy with

d not feel that the battle with modern doubt was of absolutely overwhelming importance, and this, along with the other things to which reference has been made, kept