GOLDEN SQUARE
Berwick is an English town on the Scottish side of the Tweed. As all
that remained to England of the Scottish conquests of Edward I., it
was until the Union of the Crowns the Calais of Scotland. It thus came
to be treated as in a measure separate from England although belonging
to it, and was for a long time separately mentioned in English Acts of
Parliament, as it still is in English Royal Proclamations. This status
of semi-independence which it so long enjoyed has helped to give it an
individuality more strongly marked than that of most English towns.
In religious matters Berwick has more affinity to Scotland than to
England. John Knox preached in the town for two years by appointment
of the Privy Council of Edward VI., and in harmony with his influence
its religious traditions were in succeeding generations strongly
Puritan, and one of its vicars, Luke Ogle, was ejected for
Nonconformity in 1662.
After the Revolution of 1688 this tendency found expression in the
rise and growth of a vigorous Presbyterian Dissent; and in the
early years of the eighteenth century there were two flourishing
congregations in the town in communion with the Church of Scotland.
But as these soon became infected with the Moderatism which prevailed
over the Border, new congregations were formed in connection with
the Scottish Secession and Relief bodies, and it was of one of
these--Golden Square Secession Church--that John Cairns became
the fourth minister in 1845.
Berwick is one of the very few English towns which still retain their
ancient fortifications. The circuit of the walls, which were built in
the reign of Elizabeth, with their bastions, "mounts," and gates, is
still practically complete, and is preserved with care and pride. A
few ruins of the earlier walls, which Edward I. erected, and which
enclosed a much wider area than is covered by the modern town, still
remain; also such vestiges of the once impregnable Castle as have not
been removed to make way for the present railway-station. Beyond this,
there is little about Berwick to tell of its hoary antiquity and its
eventful history. But its red-roofed houses, rising steeply from the
left bank of the Tweed, and looking across the tidal river to the
villages of Tweedmouth and Spittal, have a picturesqueness of their
own, whether they are seen when the lights and shadows of a summer day
are playing upon them, or when they are swathed in the white folds of
a North Sea _haar_.
The Berwick people are shrewd, capable, and kindly, and combine many
of the good qualities of their Scotch and Northumbrian neighbours.
Their dialect is in some respects akin to the Lowland Scotch, with
which it has many words in common; and it has also as a prominent
feature that rising intonation, passing sometimes almost into a
wail, which one hears all along the eastern Border. But the great
outstanding characteristic of Berwick speech is the _burr_ a rough
guttural pronunciation of the letter "i." With nothing but the scanty
resources of our alphabet to fall back upon, it is quite impossible to
represent this peculiarity phonetically, but it was once remarked by a
student of Semitic tongues that the sound of the Hebrew letter 'Ayin
is as nearly as possible that of the burr, and that, if you want
to ascertain the correct Hebrew pronunciation of the name _Ba'al_,
all you have got to do is to ask any Alderman of Berwick to say
"_Barrel"_[6]
[Footnote 6: Some words are very hard to pronounce with a burr in
one's throat. Dr. Cairns used to tell that on one occasion, long after
he had got well used to the sound of the Berwick speech, he was under
the belief that a man with whom he was conversing was talking about
a _boy_ until he discovered from the context that his theme was
a _brewery_.]
In 1845 the population of Berwick was between 8000 and 9000. "It
included," says Dr. MacEwen, "some curious elements." Not the least
curious and dubious of these was that of the lower class of the old
Freemen of the Borough. These men had an inherited right to the use of
lands belonging to the Corporation, which they let; and to a vote at a
Parliamentary election, which they sold. When an election drew near,
it was a maxim with both political parties that the Freemen must be
conciliated at all costs; and the Freemen, knowing this, were quite
prepared to presume on their knowledge. Once, at an election time, it
happened that in the house of a prominent political leader in Berwick
a fine roast of beef was turning before the kitchen fire, and was
nearly ready for the dinner table, when a Freeman walked in, lifted
it from the spit, and carried it off. No one dared to say him nay,
for had he not a vote? and might not that vote turn the election?
At the other end of the social scale were the half-pay officers,
the members of neighbouring county families, and the attorneys and
doctors, who in some degree constituted the aristocracy of Berwick,
and most of whom attended the Episcopalian Parish Church. The bulk
of the shopkeepers and tradesmen, with some of the professional men
and a large proportion of the working people, were Dissenters, and
were connected with one or other of the half-dozen Presbyterian
congregations in the town. Of these that of which Cairns was the
minister was the most influential and the largest, having a membership
of about six hundred.
The church was in Golden Square, of which it may be said that it is
neither a square nor yet golden, but a dingy close or court opening by
an archway from the High Street, the main thoroughfare of Berwick. The
building was till recently a tannery, but the main features of it are
still quite distinguishable. It stood on the left as one entered from
High Street, and it had the usual high pulpit at its farther end, with
a precentor's desk beneath it, and the usual deep gallery supported on
metal pillars running round three of its four sides. The manse, its
door adorned with a decent brass knocker, stood next to the church, on
the side farthest from the street. It gave one a pleasant surprise on
entering it to find that only its back windows looked out on the dim
little "square." In front it commanded a fine view of the river, here
crossed by a quaint old bridge of fifteen arches, which, owing to the
exigencies of the current, is much higher at the Berwick end than at
the other, and, as an Irishman once remarked, "has its middle all on
one side." For some little time, however, after Cairns's settlement,
he did not occupy the manse, but lived in rooms over a shop in Bridge
Street; and when at length he did remove into it, he took his landlady
with him and still remained her lodger.
For the first five years of his ministry Cairns devoted himself
entirely to the work which it entailed upon him, and steadily refused
to be drawn aside to the literary and philosophical tasks which many
of his friends urged him to undertake. He had decided that his work in
Berwick demanded his first attention, and, until he could ascertain
how much of his time it would absorb, he felt that he could not go
beyond it. On the early days of the week he read widely and hard on
the lines of his Sunday work, and the last three days he devoted to
writing out and committing to memory his two sermons, each of which
occupied about fifty minutes in delivery. The "committing" of his
sermons gave him little or no trouble, and he soon found that it could
be relegated without anxiety to Saturday evening. And he got into the
habit of preparing for it by a Saturday afternoon walk to the little
yellow red-capped lighthouse at the end of Berwick Pier. At the upper
end of the pier was a five-barred gate, and on the way back, when
he thought that nobody was looking, he would vault over it with a
running leap.
His preaching from the first made a deep impression. Following the
old Seceder tradition, and the example of his boyhood's minister Mr.
Inglis, and of his professor Dr. Brown, his discourse in the forenoon
was always a "lecture" expository of some extended passage of
Scripture, and forming one of a consecutive series; while that in the
afternoon followed the familiar lines of an ordinary sermon. But there
was nothing quite ordinary in his preaching at any time. Even when
there was no unusual flight of eloquence, there was always to be
noted the steady march of a strong mind from point to point till the
conclusion had been reached; always a certain width and elevation of
view, and always the ring of irresistible conviction. And although the
discourse had been committed to memory and was reproduced in the very
words that had been written down in the study, no barrier was thereby
interposed between the preacher and his hearers. Somehow--at least
after the first few paragraphs--when he had properly warmed to his
work, the man himself seemed to break through all restraints and
come into direct and living contact with his hearers.
His action sermon, _i.e._ the sermon preached before the Communion,
was always specially memorable and impressive. He had the subject
chosen weeks, and sometimes even months, beforehand, and, as he had no
other sermon to write for the Communion Sunday, he devoted the whole
of the preceding week to its preparation. His action sermons, which
were those he usually preached on special occasions when he was away
from home, dealt always with some theme connected with the Person or
Work of Christ. They were frequently apologetic in their conception
and structure, full of massive argument, which he had a remarkable
power of marshalling and presenting so as to be understood by all; but
the argument, reinforced by bursts of real eloquence, always converged
on the, exaltation of the Redeemer. "I never thought so much of him as
I do to-day," said one of his hearers to another after one of these
sermons, "I never thought so much of Christ as I do to-day," replied
the other; and that reply showed that in at least one case the purpose
of the preacher in preparing and delivering his sermon had been
fulfilled.
On the Sunday evening Cairns had a Bible-class of over one hundred
young men and women, to which he devoted great care and attention.
"It was the best hour of the day to us," wrote one who was a member of
this class. "He was nearer us, and we were nearer him, than in church.
The grandeur and momentum of his pulpit eloquence were not there, but
we had instead a calm, rich, conversational instruction, a quiet
disclosure of vast stores of information, as well as a definite
dealing with young hearts and consciences, which left an unfading
impression."
But Cairns was no mere preacher and teacher. He put out his full
strength as truly in his pastoral work as in his work for and in
the pulpit. He visited his large congregation statedly once a year,
offering prayer in each house, and hearing the children repeat a psalm
or portion of Scripture which he had prescribed the year before. He
timed these visits so accurately that he could on one occasion banter
one of his elders on the fact that he had received more than his
due in one year, because the last visitation had been on the 1st of
January and this one was on the 31st of December. A good part of his
visiting had to be done in the country, because a considerable section
of his congregation consisted of farmers or hinds from Northumberland,
from the "Liberties of Berwick," and even from Scotland, which first
begins three miles out from the town. These country visitations
usually concluded with a service in a barn or farm-kitchen, to which
worshippers came from far and near.
But besides this stated and formal visitation, which was intimated
from the pulpit, constant attention was bestowed on the sick, the
bereaved, the poor, the tempted, and all others who appealed specially
to the minister's heart or his conscience. And yet there was no sense
of task-work or of a burden to be borne about his relations to his
congregation. His exuberant frankness of manner, contrasting as this
did with the reserved and somewhat stiff bearing of his predecessor
Dr. Balmer, won the hearts of all. And his keen sense of the ludicrous
side of things often acted as an antiseptic, and kept him right both
with himself and with his people.
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 windows
were open. From the pulpit he could look right out into the square,
and as he looked he became aware of a hen surrounded by her young
family pecking vigorously on the pavement in search of food, and
clucking as she pecked. All at once an overwhelming sense of the
difference between the two worlds in which he and that hen were living
took possession of him, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he
restrained himself from bursting into a shout of laughter. As it was,
he recovered himself with a mighty gulp and finished the service
decorously enough.
Cairns was also assisted in his work by his phenomenal powers of
memory. After reading a long sermon once, or at most twice over, he
could repeat it verbatim. Once when he was challenged by a friend to
do so, he repeated, without stopping, the names of all the children
in his congregation, apologising only for his imperfect acquaintance
with two families who had recently come. Another instance of this is
perhaps not so remarkable in itself, but it is worth mentioning on
other grounds. Five-and-thirty years after the time with which we
are now dealing, when he was a professor in Edinburgh, some of his
students were carrying on mission work in a growing district of the
city. An iron church was erected for them, but the contractor, an
Englishman, before his work was finished was seized with illness and
died. He was buried in one of the Edinburgh cemeteries, and Dr. Cairns
attended the funeral. Having ascertained from the widow of the dead
man that he had belonged 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 members of his own congregation 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, with which his name was afterwards to
be so closely associated. The United Church comprised five hundred
and eighteen congregations, of which about fifty were, like those in
Berwick, in England; the nucleus of that English Synod which, thirty
years later, combined with the English Presbyterian Church to form
the present Presbyterian Church of England. References in his
correspondence show that this union of 1847, which afterwards had such
happy results, excited at the time little enthusiasm, and was entered
into largely 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 snowballs or cakes of mud that need in some way very tough
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, from abstruse
problems of philosophy and theology to the opening of the North
British Railway; while his mother and his brothers, William and David,
the latter of whom about this time left his work in the Dunglass 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 human
life and thought and activity, which he so eagerly traverses, it is
quite evident that what attracts him most is the relation of it all
to a higher and an eternal order. With him the main interest is a
religious one. Without an atom of affectation, and without anything
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 William's reply, will fittingly conclude the present
chapter. This letter bears date November 16, 1848, and is as
follows:--
"I herewith enclose the statement respecting the Calabar Mission of
our Church, which I take blame to myself for having so long delayed to
send. My avocations are very numerous, and a habit of procrastination,
where anything is to be written, has sadly grown on me with time. I
cannot even send you this brief note without testifying, what I could
not so well utter in your presence, my unabated admiration of your
philosophical genius and learning, and my profoundly grateful sense of
the important benefits received by me both from your instructions and
private friendship, 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 Almighty, the impress of your hand through
any future stage of existence. It is a relief to my own feelings to
speak in this manner, and you will forgive 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 enjoyment of the comforts, of living
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 Almighty Former and Guide of the spirits of men,
mingled with the hope that, if not already, at least some time, this
accordance of faith will be attained, this living union realised with
the great Teacher, Sacrifice, and Restorer of our fallen race. You
will pardon this manifestation of the gratitude and affection of your
pupil and friend, who, if he knew a higher, would gladly give it as
a payment of a debt too great to be expressed. I have long ago 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 most; and I have found, and know that I have found, the true
good in another quarter. This is mysticism--the mysticism of the
Bible--the mysticism of conscious reconciliation and intimacy with the
living Persons of the Godhead--a mysticism which is not like that of
philosophy, an irregular 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 admits of is its sympathetic kindling 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 whom he
has believed, more impressed with the duty of bearing everywhere a
testimony to the convictions which have given him a positive hold
at once of truth and happiness.
"But I check myself in this unwonted strain, which only your
long-continued and singular kindness could have emboldened me to
attempt; and with the utterance of the most fervent wishes for your
health, academical success, and inward light and peace, I remain your
obliged 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 with whom I am acquainted whose
sentiments on such matters I esteem more highly, for there is no one
who, I am sure, is more earnest for the truth, and no one who pursues
it with more independence and, at the same time, with greater
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.]