cate 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 Syno