e more things with his eyes shut than
most men could see with theirs wide open." The fact is, that all his
leniency with his students, and all his apparent ascription to them of
a high degree of diligence, scholarship, and mental grasp, had their
roots not in credulity but in charity--the charity which "believeth
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." His very defects
came from an excess of charity, and one loved him all the better
because of them. Hence it came about that his students got far more
from contact with his personality than they got from his teaching.
It is not so much his lectures as his influence that they look back
to and that they feel is affecting them still.

When Dr. Cairns came to Edinburgh from Berwick, it was only to a
limited extent that he allowed himself to take part in public work
outside that which came to him as a minister and Professor of
Theology. There were, however, two public questions which interested
him deeply, and the solution of which he did what he could by speech
and influence to further. One of these was the question of Temperance.
During the first twenty years of his ministry he had not felt called
upon to take up any strong position on this question, although
personally he had always been one of the most abstemious of men. But
about the year 1864 he had, without taking any pledge or enrolling
himself on the books of any society, given up the use of alcohol. He
had done so largely as an experiment--to see whether his influence
would thereby be strengthened with those in his own congregation and
beyond it whom he wished to reclaim from intemperance.

When he became a professor he was invited to succeed Dr. Lindsay
as President of the Students' Total Abstinence Society, and, as no
absolute pledge was exacted from the members, he willingly agreed
to do so. From this time his influence was more and more definitely
enlisted on behalf of Total Abstinence, and in 1874 he took a further
step. In trying to save from intemperance a friend in Berwick who was
not a member of his own congregation, he urged him to join the Good
Templars, at that time the only available society of total abstainers
in the town. In order to strengthen his friend's hands, he agreed to
join along with him. This step happily proved to be successful as
regarded its original purpose, and Dr. Cairns remained a Good Templar
during the rest of his life.

While there were some things about the Order tha