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