ing 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--t