In Wallace Green Dr. Cairns was surrounded by a devoted band of office-bearers and others, who carried on very successful Home Mission work in the town, and kept the various organisations of the church in a vigorous and flourishing state.  He had himself no faculty for business details, and he left these mostly to others; but his influence was felt at every point, and operated in a remarkable degree towards the keeping up of the spiritual tone of the church’s work.  With his elders, who were not merely in regard to ecclesiastical rank, but also in regard to character and ability, the leaders of the congregation, he was always on the most cordial and intimate terms.  In numerical strength they usually approximated to the apostolic figure of twelve, and Dr. Cairns used to remark that their Christian names included a surprisingly large number of apostolic pairs.  Thus there were amongst them not merely James and John, Matthew and Thomas, but even Philip and Bartholomew.

The Philip here referred to was Dr. Philip Whiteside Maclagan, a brother of the present Archbishop of York and of the late Professor Sir Douglas Maclagan.  Dr. Maclagan had been originally an army surgeon, but had been long settled in general practice in Berwick in succession to his father-in-law, the eminent naturalist, Dr. George Johnstone.  It was truly said of him that he combined in himself the labours and the graces of Luke the beloved physician and Philip the evangelist.  When occasion offered, he would not only diagnose and prescribe but pray at the bedsides of his patients, and his influence was exerted in behalf of everything that was pure and lovely and of good report in the town of Berwick.  His delicately chiselled features and fine expression were the true index of a devout and beautiful soul within.  Dr. Cairns and he were warmly attached to one another, and he was his minister’s right-hand man in everything that concerned the good of the congregation.

It will readily be believed that Dr. Cairns had not been suffered to remain in Berwick during all these years without strong efforts being made to induce him to remove to larger spheres of labour.  As a matter of fact, he received in all some half-dozen calls during the course of his ministry from congregations in Edinburgh and Glasgow; while at one period of his life scarcely a year passed without private overtures being made to him which, if he had given any encouragement to them, would have issued in calls.  These overtures he in every case declined at once; but when congregations, in spite of him or without having previously consulted him, took the responsibility of proceeding to a formal call, he never intervened to arrest their action.  He had a curious respect for the somewhat cumbrous and slow-moving Presbyterian procedure, and when it had been set in motion he felt that it was his duty to let it take its course.