He was habitually reticent about his inner life and his habits of devotion.  No one knew his times of prayer or how long they lasted.  Once, indeed, his simplicity of character betrayed him in regard to this matter.  The door of his retiring-room at the College was without a key, and he would not give so much trouble as to ask for one.  So, in order that he might be quite undisturbed, he piled up some forms and chairs against the door on the inside, forgetting entirely that the upper part of it was obscure glass and that his barricade was perfectly visible from without.  It need not be said that no one interrupted him or interfered with his belief that he had been unobserved by any human eye.  But it did not require an accidental disclosure like this to reveal the fact that he spent much time in prayer.  No one who knew him ever so little could doubt this, and no one could hear him praying in public without feeling sure that he had learned how to do it by long experience in the school of private devotion.

Purified thus by trial and nourished by prayer, his character went on developing and deepening.  His humility, utterly unaffected, like everything else about him, became if possible more marked.  He was not merely willing to take the lowest room, but far happiest when he was allowed to take it.  In one of his classes there was a blind student, and, when a written examination came on, the question arose, How was he to take part in it?  Principal Cairns offered to write down the answers to the examination questions to his student’s dictation, and it was only after lengthened argument and extreme reluctance on his part that he was led to see that the authorities would not consent to this arrangement.

It was the same with his charity.  He was always putting favourable constructions on people’s motives and believing good things of them, even when other people could find very little ground for doing so.  In all sincerity he would carry this sometimes to amusing lengths.  Reference has been made to this already, but the following further illustration of it may be added here.  One day, when in company with a friend, the conversation turned on a meeting at which Dr. Cairns had recently been present.  At this meeting there was a large array of speakers, and a time limit had to be imposed to allow all of them to be heard.  One of the speakers, however, when arrested by the chairman’s bell, appealed to the audience, with whom he was getting on extremely well, for more time.  Encouraged by their applause, he went on and finished his speech, with the result that some of his fellow-speakers who had come long distances to address the meeting were crushed into a corner, if not crowded out.  Dr. Cairns somehow suspected that his friend was going to say something strong about this speaker’s conduct, and, before a word could be spoken, rushed to his defence.  “He couldn’t help himself.  He was at the mercy of that shouting audience—­a most unmannerly mob!” And then, feeling that he had rather overshot the mark, he added in a parenthetic murmur, “Excellent Christian people they were, no doubt!”