’The storm is changed into a calm
    At his command and will;
  So that the waves that raged before,
    Now quiet are and still.’

It was her voice, too, that raised the tune.  Then she asked Thomas to read a chapter of the Bible and afterwards to pray.  We all knelt down, and Thomas made a strong effort to steady his voice, but he failed utterly; then the dear mother herself lifted the voice of thanksgiving for the victory that had been won, and after that the neighbours were called in."[4]

Cairns was soon to have further experience of anxiety in respect to the health of those who were near to him.  Towards the close of the year in which his father died, his brother William, who had almost completed his apprenticeship to a mason at Chirnside, in Berwickshire, was seized with inflammation, and for some weeks hung between life and death.  At length he recovered sufficiently to be removed under his elder brother’s careful and loving supervision to the Edinburgh Infirmary, where he remained for four months.  During all that time Cairns visited his brother twice every day, he taught himself to apply to the patient the galvanic treatment which had been prescribed, and brought him an endless supply of books, periodicals, and good things to eat and smoke.

[Footnote 4:  It would appear that it was not an uncommon custom in Scotland in former times to have family worship immediately after a death.  Perhaps, too, this verse from the 107th Psalm was the one usually sung on such occasions.  There may be a reminiscence of this, due to its author’s Seceder training, in a passage in Carlyle’s Oliver Cromwell, where, after describing the Protector’s death, and the grief of his daughter Lady Fauconberg, he goes on to say, “Husht poor weeping Mary!  Here is a Life-battle right nobly done.  Seest thou not

  ’The storm is changed into a calm
    At his command and will;
  So that the waves that raged before,
    Now quiet are and still.

  Then are they glad, because at rest
    And quiet now they be: 
  So to the haven he them brings,
    Which they desired to see.’”

In the end of 1842 George Wilson was told by an eminent surgeon that he must choose between certain death and the amputation of a foot involving possible death.  He agreed at once to the operation being performed, but begged for a week in which to prepare for it.  He had always been a charming personality, and had lived a life that was outwardly blameless; but he had never given very serious thought to religion.  Now, however, when he was face to face with death, the great eternal verities became more real to him, and during the week of respite the study of the New Testament and the counsel and sympathy and prayers of his friend Cairns prepared him to face his trial with calmness, and with “a trembling hope in Christ” in his heart.  The two friends, who had thus been brought so closely together, were henceforth to be more to each other than they had ever been before.