THE APOSTLE OF UNION
The close of the period dealt with in the last chapter was made sadly
memorable to Cairns by the death of some of his closest friends. In
October 1858 died the venerable Dr. Brown, with whom, since he was a
student, he had stood in the closest relations, and whom he revered
and habitually addressed as a father. In November 1859 the bright
spirit of George Wilson, the dearest of all his friends, passed away;
and in the same year he had to mourn the loss of Miss Darling, the
correspondent and adviser of his student days. His brave old mother
died in the autumn of 1860, and in the following year he lost another
old and dear friend in Mrs. Balmer, the widow of his predecessor in
Golden Square, who perhaps knew him better than his own mother, and
had been deeper in his confidence than anyone since he came to
Berwick. From this period he became more reserved. With all his
frankness there was always a characteristic reticence about him, and
this was less frequently broken now that those to whom he had so
freely poured out his soul had been taken from him. But he drew closer
to those who were still left--especially to his own kindred, to his
sisters, to his brother William at Oldcambus, and to his brother
David, who had now been settled for some years as minister at
Stitchel, near Kelso.[14]
[Footnote 14: His eldest brother, Thomas, had died from the effects of
an accident in 1856.]
Dr. Brown had nominated him as one of his literary executors, and
his family were urgent in their request that he should write their
father's Life. With great reluctance he consented, and for eighteen
months this task absorbed the whole of his leisure, to the complete
exclusion of the work on "The Difficulties of Christianity," with
which he had already made some progress. The undertaking was a labour
of love, but it cannot be said to have been congenial. Memoir writing
was not to his taste, and in this case he had made a stipulation that
still further hampered him and made success very difficult. This was
that he should omit, as far as possible, all personal details, and
leave these to be dealt with in a separate chapter which Dr. Brown's
son John undertook to furnish. This chapter was not forthcoming when
the volume had to go to press, and was separately issued some months
later. When the inspiration did at length come to "Dr. John," it came
in such a way as to add a new masterpiece to English literature, and
one which, while it gave a wonderfully living picture of the writer's
father, disclosed to the world as nothing else has ever done the true
_ethos_ and inner life of the Scottish Secession Church. The Memoir
itself, of which this "Letter to John Cairns, D.D." is the
supplementary chapter, is a sound and solid bit of work, giving an
accurate and interesting account of the public life of Dr. Brown and
of the movements in which he took part. It is, as William Graham said
of it, "a thoughtful, calm, conclusive book, perhaps too reticent and
colourless, but none the less like Dr. Brown because of that."
No sooner was this book off his hands than Cairns was urged to
undertake another biographical work--the Life of George Wilson. But
this, in view of his recent experience, he steadfastly refused to
do, and contented himself with writing a sketch of his friend for the
pages of _Macmillan's Magazine_. When, however, Wilson's biography
was taken in hand by his sister, Cairns promised to help her in every
possible way with his advice and guidance, and this he did from week
to week till the book was published. This help on his part was
continued by his seeing through the press Wilson's posthumous book,
_Counsels of an Invalid_, which appeared in 1862. With the completion
of this task he seemed to be free to return to his theological work,
and he did return to it; but his release turned out to be only a brief
respite. In 1863 the ten years' negotiations for Union between the
Free and United Presbyterian Churches, in which he felt impelled to
take a prominent and laborious part, were begun, and they absorbed
nearly all of his leisure during what might have been a productive
period of his life. When he emerged from them he was fifty-four years
of age, he had passed beyond the time of life when his creative powers
were at their freshest, and the general habits of his life and lines
of his activity had become settled and stereotyped.
This is not the place in which to enter into a detailed account of the
Union negotiations. That has been done with admirable lucidity and
skill by such writers as Dr. Norman Walker in his Life of Dr. Robert
Buchanan, and by Dr. MacEwen in his Life of the subject of the present
sketch, and it does not need to be done over again. But something
must be said at this point to indicate the general lines which the
negotiations followed and to make Cairns's relation to them clear.
That he should have taken a keen and sympathetic interest in any great
movement for ecclesiastical union was quite what might have been
expected. What interested him in Christian truth, and what he had,
ever since he had been a student, set himself specially to expound and
defend, were the great catholic doctrines which are the heritage of
the one Church of Christ. Constitutionally, he was disposed to make
more of the things that unite Christians than of those which divide
them; and, while he was loyally attached to his own Church, many of
his favourite heroes, as well as many of his warmest personal friends,
belonged to other Churches. Hence anything that made for Union was
entirely in line with his feelings and his convictions. Thus he had
thrown himself heartily into the work of the Evangelical Alliance, and
at its memorable Berlin Meeting of 1857 had created a deep impression
by an address which he delivered in German on the probable results of
a closer co-operation between German and British Protestantism. In the
same year he took part in a Conference in Edinburgh which had been
summoned by Sir George Sinclair of Ulbster to discuss the possibility
of Church Union at home. And when in 1859 the Union took place in the
Australian Colonies of the Presbyterian Churches which bore the names
of the Scottish Churches from which they had sprung, it was to a large
extent through his influence that the Australian United Presbyterians
took part in the Union.
His ideal at first was of one great Presbyterian Communion co-extensive
with the English language, and separately organised in the different
countries and dependencies in which its adherents were to be found,
but having one creed and one form of worship and complete freedom from
all State patronage and control. But, as the times did not seem ripe
for such a vast consummation, he made no attempt to give his ideal a
practical form, and concentrated his energies on the lesser movement
which was beginning to take shape for a union of the Presbyterian
Churches in England and the non-Established Presbyterian Churches in
Scotland. He was one of those who brought this project before the
Synod of the United Presbyterian Church in May 1863, when he appeared
in support of an overture from the Berwick Presbytery in favour of
Union. The overture was adopted with enthusiasm, and the Synod agreed
by a majority of more than ten to one to appoint a committee to confer
with a view to Union with any committee which might be appointed by
the Free Church General Assembly. The Free Church Assembly, which met
a fortnight later, passed a similar resolution unanimously, although
not without a keen discussion revealing elements of opposition which
were afterwards to gather strength.
It is quite possible that, as competent observers have suggested,
if the enthusiasm for the project which then existed had been taken
advantage of at once, Union might have been carried with a rush.
But the able men who were guiding the proceedings thought it safer
to advance more slowly; and, when the Joint Union Committee met,
they went on to consider in detail the various points on which the
two Churches differed. These had reference almost entirely to the
relations between Church and State. The United Presbyterians were,
almost to a man, "Voluntaries," _i.e._ they held that the Church ought
in all cases to support itself without assistance from the State, and
free from the interference which, in their view, was the inevitable
and justifiable accompaniment of all State establishments. The Free
Churchmen, on the other hand, while maintaining as their cardinal
principle that the Church must be free from all State interference,
and while therefore protesting against the existing Establishment,
held that the Church, if its freedom were adequately guaranteed,
might lawfully accept establishment and endowment from the State. An
elaborate statement was drawn up exhibiting first the points on which
the two Churches were agreed with regard to this question, and then
the points on which they differed. From this it appeared that they
were at one as to the duty of the State--or, in the language of the
Westminster Confession, the "Civil Magistrate"--to make Christian laws
and to administer them in a Christian spirit. The Civil Magistrate
ought, it was agreed, to be a Christian, not merely as a man but as a
magistrate. The only vital point of difference was with regard to the
question of Church establishments--as to whether it was part of the
Christian Civil Magistrate's duty to establish and endow the Church.
But, as it seemed to be a vain hope that the Free Church would ever
get an Establishment to its mind, it was urged that this was a mere
matter of theory, and might be safely left as an "open question" in a
United Church. The statement referred to, which is better known as the
"Articles of Agreement," was not ready to be submitted in a final form
to the Synod and Assembly of 1864, and the Committee, which was now
reinforced by representatives from the Reformed Presbyterian Church
and from the Presbyterian Church in England, was reappointed to carry
on its labours.
But meanwhile clouds were beginning to appear on the horizon. In
the United Presbyterian Synod there was a small minority of sturdy
Voluntaries who, while not opposed to Union, were apprehensive that
the price to be paid for it would be the partial surrender of their
testimony in behalf of their distinctive principle. They did not wish
to impose their beliefs on others, but they were anxious to reserve
to themselves full liberty to hold and propagate their views in the
United Church, and they were not sure that, by accepting the Articles
of Agreement, they were in fact doing this. The efforts of Dr. Cairns
and others were directed, not without success, to meeting their
difficulties. But in the Free Church a more formidable opposition
began to show itself. There had always been a conservative element
in that Church, represented by men who held tenaciously to the more
literal interpretation of its ecclesiastical documents and traditions;
and, as the discussions went on, it became clear that the hopelessness
of a reconciliation with the Establishment was not so universally felt
as had been at first supposed. The supporters of the Union movement
included almost all the trusted leaders of the Church--men like Drs.
Candlish, Buchanan, Duff, Fairbairn, Rainy, and Guthrie, Sir Henry
Moncreiff, Lord Dalhousie, and Mr. Murray Dunlop, most of whom had
got their ecclesiastical training in the great controversy which had
issued in the Disruption; but all their eloquence and all their skill
did not avail to allay the misgivings or silence the objections of the
other party. At length in 1867 a crisis was reached. The Articles of
Agreement, after having been finally formulated by the Committee,
had been sent down to Presbyteries for their consideration; and the
reports of the Presbyteries were laid on the table of the Assembly
of that year. The question now arose, Was it wise, in view of the
opposition, to take further steps towards Union? The Assembly by
346 votes to 120 decided to goon; whereupon the Anti-Union leaders
resigned the seats which up to this time they had retained on the
Union Committee.
It is true that, after the Committee had been relieved of this
hostile element, considerable and rapid progress was made. Hopes were
cherished for a time that the Union might yet be consummated, and
the determination was expressed to carry it through at all hazards.
But the Free Church minority, ably led and knowing its own mind,
stubbornly maintained its ground. Its adherents, who included perhaps
one-third of the ministers and people of the Church, were specially
numerous in the Highlands, where United Presbyterianism was
practically unrepresented.
Here most distorted views were held of the Voluntaryism which most of
its ministers and members professed. It was represented as equivalent
to National Atheism, and from this the transition was an easy one,
especially in districts where few of the people had even seen a United
Presbyterian, to the position that an upholder of National Atheism
must himself be an Atheist. It became increasingly clear, as the years
passed, that if the Union were to be forced through, there must be
a new Disruption, and a Disruption which would cost the Free Church
those Highland congregations which for thirty years it had been its
glory to maintain. Moreover, it was currently reported that the
Anti-Union party had taken the opinion of eminent counsel, and that
these had declared that, in the event of a Disruption taking place
on this question of Union, the protesting minority would be legally
entitled to take with them the entire property of the Church. The
conviction was forced on the Free Church leaders (and in this they
were supported by their United Presbyterian brethren) that the time
was not yet ripe for that which they so greatly desired to see, and
that even for Union the price they would have to pay was too great.
And so with heavy hearts they decided in 1873 to abandon the
negotiations which had been proceeding for ten years. All that they
felt themselves prepared to carry was a proposal that Free Church
or United Presbyterian ministers should be "mutually eligible" for
calls in the two Churches--a proposal that did not come to much.
Three years later, the Reformed Presbyterian Church united with the
Free Church, and in the same year (1876) the United Presbyterian
Church gave up one hundred and ten of its congregations, which united
with the English Presbyterian Church and thus formed the present
Presbyterian Church of England. The original idea, at least on the
United Presbyterian side, had been that all the negotiating bodies
should be welded into one comprehensive British Church; but this,
especially in view of the breakdown of the larger Union, proved to be
unworkable, and the final result for the United Presbyterians was that
they came out of the negotiations a considerably smaller and weaker
Church than they had been when they went into them.
In all the labours and anxieties of these ten years Dr. Cairns had
borne a foremost part. At the meetings of the Union Committee he took
an eager interest and a leading share in the discussions; and, while
never compromising the position of his Church, he did much to set it
in a clear and attractive light. In the United Presbyterian Synod,
where it fell to his lot year by year to deliver the leading speech in
support of the Committee's report, his eloquence, his sincerity, and
his enthusiasm did not a little to reassure those who feared that
there was a tendency on the part of their representatives to concede
too much, and did a very great deal to keep his Church as a whole
steadily in favour of Union in spite of many temptations to have done
with it. Dr. Hutton, one of those advanced Voluntaries who had never
been enthusiastic about the Union proposals, wrote to him at the close
of the negotiations: "We have reached this stage through your vast
personal influence more than through any other cause."
Outside of the Church Courts he delivered innumerable speeches at
public meetings which had been organised in all parts of the country
in aid of the Union cause. These more than anything else led him to be
identified in the public mind with that cause, and gained for him the
name of the "Apostle of Union." The meetings at which these speeches
were delivered were mostly got up on the Free Church side, where there
seemed to be more need of missionary work of this kind than on his
own, and his appearances on these occasions increased the favour with
which he was already regarded in Free Church circles. "The chief
attraction of Union for me," an eminent Free Church layman is reported
to have said, "is that it will bring me into the same Church with John
Cairns."
That he was deeply disappointed by the failure of the enterprise on
which his hopes had been so much set, he did not conceal; but he never
believed that the ten years' work had been lost, and he never doubted
that Union would come. He did not live to see it, but when, on October
31, 1900, the two Churches at length became one, there were many in
the great gathering in the Waverley Market who thought of him, and
of his strenuous and noble labours into which they were on that day
entering. Dr. Maclaren of Manchester gave expression to these thoughts
in his speech in the evening of the day of Union, when, after paying
a worthy tribute to the great leader to whose skill and patience the
goodly consummation was so largely due, he went on to say: "But all
during the proceedings of this day there has been one figure and one
name in my memory, and I have been saying to myself, What would John
Cairns, with his big heart and his sweet and simple nature, have said
if God had given him to see this day! 'These all died in faith, not
having received the promises... God having provided some better thing
for us.'"