with perhaps premature enthusiasm, as the man who shared
with Schleiermacher the honour of restoring Germany to a believing
theology.

Here is the description he gives of him in a letter from Berlin to
George Wilson: "Suppose yourself in a large square room filled with
Studiosi, each with his inkstand and immense _Heft_ before him and
ready to begin, when precisely at 11.15 a.m. in shuffles a little
black Jew, without hat in hand or a scrap of paper, and strides up to
a high desk, where he stands the whole time, resting his elbows upon
it and never once opening his eyes or looking his class in the face;
the worst type of Jewish physiognomy in point of intellect, though
without its cunning or sensuality; the face meaningless, pale, and
sallow, with low forehead, and nothing striking but a pair of enormous
black eyebrows. The figure is dressed in a dirty brown surtout, blue
plush trousers, and dirty top-boots. It begins to speak. The voice is
loud and clear, and marches on with academic stateliness and gravity,
and even something of musical softness mixes with its notes. Suddenly
the speaker turns to a side. It is to spit, which act is repeated
every second sentence. You now see in his hands a twisted pen, which
is gradually stripped of every hair and then torn to pieces in the
course of his mental working. His feet, too, begin to turn. The left
pirouettes round and round, and at the close of an emphatic period
strikes violently against the wall. When he has finished his lecture,
you see only a mass of saliva and the rags of his pen. Neander is
out of all sight the most wonderful being in the University. For
knowledge, spirituality, good sense, and indomitable spirit of the
finest discretion on moral subjects, the old man is a real marvel
every way. In private he is the kindest but also the most awkward of
mortals. His lectures on _Dogmatik_ and _Sittenlehre_ I value beyond
all others, and I would gladly have come to Berlin to hear him alone."

Besides hearing these University lectures, Cairns read German
philosophy and theology for nine or ten hours daily, took lessons in
Hebrew from a young Christian Jew named Biesenthal,[5] and in these
short winter months acquired such a mastery of German as a spoken
language that in the spring he was urged by Professor Tholuck of
Halle to remain and qualify as a Privatdocent at a German University.
He also gained a knowledge of men and things German, and a living
interest in them,