[Footnote 16:  Life and Letters, p. 560.]

During the ten years’ negotiations for Union a considerable number of pressing reforms in the United Presbyterian Church were kept back from fear of hampering the negotiations, and because it was felt that such matters might well be postponed to be dealt with in a United Church.  But, when the negotiations were broken off, the United Presbyterians, having recovered their liberty of action, at once began to set their house in order.  One of the first matters thus taken up was the question of Theological Education.  As has been already mentioned, the theological curriculum extended over five sessions of two months.  It was now proposed to substitute for this a curriculum extending over three sessions of five months, as being more in accordance with the requirements of the times and as bringing the Hall into line with the Universities and the Free Church Colleges.  A scheme, of which this was the leading feature, was finally adopted by the Synod in May 1875.  It necessarily involved the separation of the professors from their charges, and accordingly the Synod addressed a call to Dr. Cairns to leave Berwick and become Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics in the newly constituted Hall, or, as it was henceforth to be designated—­“College.”  In this chair it was proposed that he should have as his colleague the venerable Dr. Harper, who was the senior professor in the old Hall, and who was now appointed the first Principal of the new College.

Dr. Cairns had thus to make his choice between his congregation and his professorship, and, with many natural regrets, he decided in favour of the latter.  This decision, which he announced to his people towards the close of the summer, had the incidental effect of keeping him in the United Presbyterian Church, for in the following year the English congregations of that Church were severed from the parent body to form part of the new Presbyterian Church of England; and Wallace Green congregation, somewhat against its will, and largely in response to Dr. Cairns’s wishes, went with the rest.  He had still a year to spend in Berwick, broken only by the last session of the old Hall in August and September, and that year he spent in quiet, steady, and happy work.  In June 1876 he preached his farewell sermon to an immense and deeply moved congregation from the words (Rom. i. 16), “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ:  for it is the power of God unto salvation unto every one that believeth.”  “For more than thirty years,” he concluded, “I have preached this gospel among you, and I bless His name this day that to not a few it has by His grace proved the power of God unto salvation.  To Him I ascribe all the praise; and I would rather on such an occasion remember defects and shortcomings than dwell even upon what He has wrought for us.  The sadness of parting from people to whom I have been bound by such close and tender ties, from whom I have