THE CENTRAL PROBLEM
It was confidently expected, not merely by Cairns's personal friends
but by others in a much wider circle, that he would make a name for
himself in the world of letters and speculative 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 his time who, so far as mere prize taking is concerned,
have equalled or surpassed him--men who never aroused and would not
have justified any high-pitched hopes about their future. But Cairns,
in addition to gaining academic distinctions, seems to have impressed
his contemporaries in a quite exceptional degree with a sense of his
power and promise. Professor Masson, writing of him as he was in
his student days, thus describes him: "There was among us one whom
we all respected in a singular degree. Tall, strong-boned, and
granite-headed, he was the student whom Sir William Hamilton himself
had signalised and honoured as already a sterling 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 would be accounted in England one of the straitest
sects of Scottish Puritanism, and who has consecrated to the duties of
that calling a mind among the noblest I have known and the most
learned in pure philosophy. Any man who on any subject of metaphysical
speculation should contend with Dr. Cairns of Berwick-on-Tweed, would
have reason to know, ere he had done with him, what strength for
offence and defence there may yet be in a Puritan minister's
hand-grip."[9]
[Footnote 8: _Macmillan's Magazine_, December 1864, p. 139.]
[Footnote 9: _Recent British Philosophy_, pp. 265-66.]
That this is no mere isolated estimate of a partial friend it would
not be difficult to prove. This was what his friends thought of him,
and what they had taught others outside to think of him too. The time,
however, had now come when it had to be put to the proof. During the
first five years of his ministry at Berwick, as we have seen, Cairns
devoted himself entirely to his work in Golden Square. He must learn
to know accurately how much of his time that work would take up,
before he could venture to spend any of it in other 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 only seventy-seven small pages, and it
is in form to a large extent a defence of metaphysical studies against
those who regard them as dangerous to the Christian student. But it
contains many passages of great beauty and tenderness, and delineates
in exquisite colours the poetry and romance of College friendships.
"I am greatly charmed," wrote the author of _Rab and his Friends_
to Cairns, "with your pages on the romance of your youthful
fellowship--that sweet hour of prime. I can remember it, can feel it,
can scent the morn."[10]
[Footnote 10: See above, pp. 44-45.]
In 1850 the _North British Review_, which had been started some years
previously in the interests of the Free Church, came under the
editorship of Cairns's friend Campbell Fraser. Although he was a Free
Church professor, he resolved to widen the basis of the _Review_, and
he asked Cairns to join his staff, offering him as his province German
philosophy and theology. Cairns assented, and promised to furnish two
articles yearly. The first and most important of these was one 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 Ethics and
Christianity," on "The Reawakening of Christian Life in Germany," and
on "The Life and Letters of Niebuhr"; while yet other articles saw
the light in the _British Quarterly Review_, the _United Presbyterian
Magazine_, and other periodicals. In 1858 appeared the important
article on "Kant," in the eighth edition of the _Encyclopedia
Britannica_, which was written at the urgent request of his friend
Adam Black, and which cost him ten months reading and preparation.
As has been already said, his reputation appears to have been fully
maintained by these articles. They brought him into touch with many
interesting people, such as Bunsen and F.D. Maurice; and, in Scotland,
deepened the impression that he was a man with a future. In 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, and with
characteristic reticence said nothing about it either to his relatives
or to his congregation. He threw himself, however, with great ardour
into the support of the candidature of his friend Professor P.C.
M'Dougall, who ultimately was elected to the post.
Four years later Sir William Hamilton died, and a fierce fight ensued
as to who was to be his successor. The two most prominent candidates
were Cairns's friend Campbell Fraser, then Professor of Logic in the
New College, Edinburgh, and Professor James Frederick Ferrier of St.
Andrews. Fraser was then a Hamiltonian and Ferrier was a Hegelian, and
a great hubbub arose between the adherents of the two schools. This
was increased and embittered by the importation of ecclesiastical and
political feeling into the contest; Fraser being a Free Churchman,
and Ferrier receiving the support of the Established Church and Tory
party. The Town Council were very much 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 were published and letters sent to the
newspapers abusing Cairns, and insinuating that he had been led by
a private grudge against Ferrier to take the step he had taken. It
was also affirmed that he was acting at the instigation of the Free
Church, who wanted to abolish their chair of Logic in the New College,
but could not well do so so long as they had its present incumbent
on their hands. A doggerel parody on _John Gilpin_, entitled "The
Diverting History of John Cairns," in which a highly coloured account
is given of the supposed genesis of the pamphlet, was written and
found wide circulation. The first two stanzas of this effusion were
the following:--
"John Cairns was a clergyman
Of credit and renown,
A first-rate U.P. Church had he
In far-famed Berwick town.
John likewise had a loving friend,
A mighty man of knowledge,
The Rev. A.C. Fraser, he
Of the sanctified New College."
Cairns found it needful to issue a second pamphlet, _Scottish
Philosophy: a Vindication and Reply_, in which, while tenaciously
holding to what he had said in the last 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
elected by a majority of three, there were few who doubted that the
intervention of the Berwick minister had been of critical importance
in bringing about this result.
Two years later George Wilson, who was now a professor in the
University, had the satisfaction of intimating to his friend that
his _alma mater_ had conferred on him the degree of D.D., and in the
following year (1859) a much higher honour was placed within his
reach. The Principalship 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 sent a declinature, and again he kept the matter carefully
concealed. It was not, in fact, until after his death, when the
correspondence regarding it came to light, that even his own brothers
knew that at the age of forty this great and dignified office might
have been his.
These declinatures on Cairns's part of philosophical posts, or posts
the occupation of which would give him time and opportunity for doing
original work in philosophy, are not on the whole difficult to
understand when we bear in mind his point of view. He had, after
careful deliberation, given himself to the Christian ministry, and
he meant to devote the whole of his life to its work. He was not to
be turned aside from it by the attractions of any employment however
congenial, or of any leisure however splendid. His speculative powers
had been consecrated to this object, as well as his active powers, and
would find their natural outlet in harmony with it. And so the hopes
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,--these, with the
exception of a quantity of pamphlets, prefaces, and magazine articles,
were all that he gave to the world after the time with which we are
now dealing. How are we to account for this? The time in which he
lived was a time of great intellectual activity and unsettlement--time
that, in the opinion of most, needed, and would have welcomed, the
guidance he could have given; and yet he stayed his hand. Why did he
do so? This is the central problem which a study of his life presents,
and it is one of no ordinary complexity; but there are some
considerations relating to it which go far to solve it, and these
it may be worth while for us at this point to examine.
At the outset, something must be allowed for the special character
of the influence exerted on Cairns by Sir William Hamilton. That
influence was profound and far-reaching. In the letter to Hamilton
which was quoted at the end of the preceding chapter, Cairns tells his
master that he must "bear, by the will of the Almighty, the impress of
his hand through any further stage of existence," and, strong as the
expression 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 him--of speaking or writing on any subject until it
had been mastered down to its last detail. This attitude prevented
Hamilton himself from doing full justice to his powers and learning,
and its influence could be seen in Cairns also--in his delight in
studies the relevancy of which was not always apparent, and in a
certain fastidiousness which often delayed, and sometimes even
prevented, his putting pen to paper.
But another and a much more important factor in the problem is to be
found in the old Seceder ideal of the ministry in which he was trained
and which he never lost. It has been truly said of him that "he never
all his life got away from David Inglis and Stockbridge any more than
Carlyle got away from John Johnston and Ecclefechan." According to the
Seceder view, there is no more sublime calling on earth than that of
the Christian ministry, and that calling is one which concerns itself
first and chiefly 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 love in an obscure retreat as a
more exalted person than the mere literary champion of Christianity,
or the recondite professor who is great at Fathers and Schoolmen. I
really cannot share those longings for intellectual giants to confront
the Goliath of scepticism--not that I do not think such persons useful
in their way, but because I think Christianity far more impressive
as a life than as a speculation, and the West Port evangelism of
Dr. Chalmers far more effective than his Astronomical Discourses."[11]
[Footnote 11: _Life and Letters_, p. 307.]
It was to the ministry, as thus understood, that Cairns had devoted
himself at the close of his University course and again just before he
took license as a probationer, when for a short 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 theology. Not that he now forswore all interest in
either, but from the moment of his final decision, he had determined
that the mid-current of his life should run in a different direction.
Yet another important factor in the case is to be found in the
circumstances of his Berwick ministry. Had his lot been cast in a
quiet country place, with only a handful of people to look after, the
great book might yet have been written. But he had to attend to a
congregation whose membership was at first nearly six hundred, and
afterwards rose to seven hundred and eighty 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 Reformation theology. Akin to his strictly ministerial
work, and flowing out of it, was the work he did for his Church as
a whole--the share he took in the Union negotiations with the Free
Church during the ten years that these negotiations lasted, and the
endless round of church openings and platform work to which his
growing fame as a preacher and public speaker laid him open.
But there is one other consideration which, although it is to some
extent involved in what has already been said, deserves separate and
very special attention. Although his friends and the public regretted
his withdrawal from the speculative field, it is not so clear that he
regretted 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 never seemed as if he were fighting for his life, because he
always seemed to have another and an independent ground of certainty
on which he based his real defence. There is a passage in his Life of
Clark which bears upon this point so closely that it will be well to
quote it here:--
"The Christian student is as conscious of direct intercourse with
Jesus Christ as with the external world, or with other minds. This is
the very postulate of living Christianity. It is a datum or revelation
made to a spiritual faculty in the soul, as real as the external
senses or any of the mental or moral faculties, and far more exalted.
This living contact with a living person by faith and prayer is, like
all other life, ultimate and mysterious, and must be accepted by him
in whom it exists as its own sufficient explanation and reason, just
as the principles of natural intelligence and conscience, to which it
is something superadded, and 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 favoured, this
forms a _point d'appui_ which can never be overturned--an _aliquid
inconcussum_ corresponding to the '_cogito ergo sum_' of Descartes.
Their faith bears its own signature, and they have only to look within
to discover its authenticity. Philosophy must be guided by experience,
and must rank the characters inscribed on the soul by grace at least
as sacred as those inscribed by nature. Such persons need not that any
man should teach them, for they have an unction from the Holy One; and
to them applies the highest of all congratulations: 'Blessed art thou;
for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father
which is in heaven.'"[12]
[Footnote 12: _Fragments of College and Pastoral Life_, pp. 38-40.]
These words contain the true explanation of Cairns's life. There was
in it the "_aliquid inconcussum_"--the "unshaken somewhat"--which made
him independent of other arguments, and which kept him untouched by
all the intellectual attacks on Christianity. 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
victories gained here were superfluous, any defects left him unmoved.
Was it always so with him? Or was there ever a time when he was
carried off his feet and had to struggle for dear life for his
Christian faith amid the dark waters of doubt?
There are indications that on at least one occasion he subjected his
beliefs to a careful scrutiny, and, referring to this later, he spoke
of himself as one who, in the words of the Roman poet, had been "much
tossed about on land and on the deep ere he could build a city."
This, coming from one who was habitually reticent about his religious
experiences, 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 remained with him all through the
experience. This seems clear from a passage in a letter written in
1848 to his brother David, then a student in Sir William Hamilton's
class, in which he says; "I never found my religious susceptibilities
injured by metaphysical speculations. Whether this was a singular
felicity I do not know, but I have heard others complain."[13]
[Footnote 13: _Life and Letters_, p. 295.]
This, taken in conjunction with the passage quoted above from
Clark's Life, in which it is hard to believe that he is not speaking
of himself, seems decisive enough, and in a mind of such speculative
grasp and activity it is remarkable. "Right 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 same. The cause seems to me luminously plain. Saints are
never doubters. His religious intuitions were so deep and clear that
he was able always to find his way by their aid. They gave him his
independent certainty, his '_aliquid inconcussum_.'"
His influence on the religious life of his time was largely due to
the spiritual faculty in him that is here referred to. He was the
power he was, not so much because of his intellectual 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 appreciated the formidable character
of modern doubt, just because he himself had never had full experience
of its power, because the iron of it had never really entered into
his soul.
George Gilfillan, who, with all his defects, had often gleams of real
insight, wrote thus in his diary 14th January 1863: "I got yesterday
sent me, per post, a lecture by John Cairns on 'Rationalism,
Ritualism, and Pure Religion,' or some such title, 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 it, he has not lived in its atmosphere, he
has not visited its profoundest or tossed in its stormiest depths.
Intellectually and logically he understands it as he understands most
other matters, but sympathetically and experimentally he does not."
There is a considerable amount of truth in this, although it is
lacking somewhat in the sympathy which the critic desiderates in the
man he is criticising. Cairns did 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 him from
giving to the world that new statement of the Christian position which
his friends hoped to get from him, and which he at one time hoped to
be able to give.