their output sustained his reputation, and even added to it.  There falls to be mentioned first a Memoir of his friend John Clark, who, after a brief and troubled ministerial career, had died of cholera in 1849.  Cairns’s Life of him, prefixed to a selection from his Essays and Sermons, fills only seventy-seven small pages, and it is in form to a large extent a defence of metaphysical studies against those who regard them as dangerous to the Christian student.  But it contains many passages of great beauty and tenderness, and delineates in exquisite colours the poetry and romance of College friendships.  “I am greatly charmed,” wrote the author of Rab and his Friends to Cairns, “with your pages on the romance of your youthful fellowship—­that sweet hour of prime.  I can remember it, can feel it, can scent the morn."[10]

[Footnote 10:  See above, pp. 44-45.]

In 1850 the North British Review, which had been started some years previously in the interests of the Free Church, came under the editorship of Cairns’s friend Campbell Fraser.  Although he was a Free Church professor, he resolved to widen the basis of the Review, and he asked Cairns to join his staff, offering him as his province German philosophy and theology.  Cairns assented, and promised to furnish two articles yearly.  The first and most important of these was one which appeared in 1850 on Julius Mueller’s Christian Doctrine of Sin.  This article, which is well and brightly written, embraces not merely a criticism of the great work whose name stands at the head of it, but also an elaborate yet most lucid and masterly survey of the various schools of theological thought which were then grouping themselves in Germany.  Other contributions to the North British during the next four years included articles on “British and Continental Ethics and Christianity,” on “The Reawakening of Christian Life in Germany,” and on “The Life and Letters of Niebuhr”; while yet other articles saw the light in the British Quarterly Review, the United Presbyterian Magazine, and other periodicals.  In 1858 appeared the important article on “Kant,” in the eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was written at the urgent request of his friend Adam Black, and which cost him ten months reading and preparation.

As has been already said, his reputation appears to have been fully maintained by these articles.  They brought him into touch with many interesting people, such as Bunsen and F.D.  Maurice; and, in Scotland, deepened the impression that he was a man with a future.  In 1852 John Wilson resigned the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and the Town Council, who were the patrons of the chair, took occasion to let Cairns know that he might have the appointment if he desired it.  He declined their offer, and with characteristic reticence said nothing about it either to his relatives or to his congregation.  He threw himself, however, with great ardour into the support of the candidature of his friend Professor P.C.  M’Dougall, who ultimately was elected to the post.