The next year, 1843, was a memorable one in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland.  Cairns, though not sympathising with the demand of the Non-Intrusion party in the Church of Scotland for absolute spiritual independence within an Established Church, had an intense admiration for Chalmers, and was filled with the greatest enthusiasm when he and the party whom he led on the great 18th of May clung fast to the Independence and left the Establishment behind them.  Indeed his enthusiasm ran positively wild, for it is recorded that, when the great procession came out of St. Andrew’s Church, Cairns went hurrahing and tossing up his hat in front of it and all the way down the hill to Tanfield Hall.  To Miss Darling, who had no sympathy with the Free Church movement, he wrote:  “I know our difference of opinion here.  But you will pardon me for saying that I have never felt more profound emotions of gratitude to God, of reverence for Christianity, of admiration of moral principle, and of pride in the honesty and courage of Scotsmen, than I did on that memorable day.”

In the autumn of this year he was able to carry out a project which he had had before him, and for which he had been saving up his money for a long time.  This was the spending of a year on the Continent.  It was by no means so common in those days as it has since become for a Scottish theological student to attend a German University.  Indeed, until the early Forties of last century, such a thing was scarcely known.  Then, however, the influence of Sir William Hamilton, and the interest in German thought which his teaching stimulated, created the desire to learn more about it at its source.

It is natural that this movement should have affected the students of the Secession Church before it reached those of the Establishment; for not only were they less occupied with the great controversy of the day and its consequences, but their short autumn session left them free to take either a winter or a summer semester, or both, at a German University without interrupting their course at home.  The late Dr. W.B.  Robertson of Irvine used to lay claim to having been the pioneer of these “landlouping students of divinity.”  John Ker and others followed him; and when Cairns set out in 1843, quite a large company of old friends were expected to meet at Berlin.  Cairns’s departure was delayed by the illness of James Russell, who was to have accompanied him, but he set out towards the end of October.  He had accepted an appointment as locum tenens for four weeks in an English Independent chapel at Hamburg, which delayed his arrival at Berlin until after the winter semester had commenced.  But this interlude was greatly enjoyed both by himself and by the little company of English merchants who formed his first pastoral charge, and who, on a vacancy occurring, made a strong but fruitless attempt to induce him to remain as their permanent minister.