length, made its slow way along, the crowds which lined the pavements, filled the windows, and covered the tops of the arrested tramway cars, reverently saluted the coffin.  When the gates of the University were passed, not a few thought of the time, more than fifty-seven years before, when he who was now being borne to his grave amid such great demonstrations of public homage, came up a shy, awkward country lad to begin within these walls the life of strenuous toil that had now closed.  How much had passed since then!  How great was the contrast between the two scenes!  A little later, when the procession passed down the Dalkeith Road, everyone turned instinctively to the house in Spence Street, where he had lived his simple and godly life, unconscious that the eyes of men were upon him.  As the afternoon shadows were lengthening he was laid in his grave; and many of those who stood near felt that a great blank had come into their lives, and that Scotland and the Church were the poorer for the loss of him who had followed his Master in simplicity of heart and had counted cheap those honours which the world so greatly desires.[22]

[Footnote 22:  Six years later the sister who had so long lived with him was laid in the same grave.  William Cairns sleeps with his kindred in Cockburnspath churchyard.]

It is difficult to count up the gains and losses of a life.  He had great gifts,—­gifts of abstract thinking and writing, powers of scholarly research and continuous labour,—­but his life had followed another path determined by his early choice.  Was this choice a wise one?  It is difficult to say.  But two things seem clear.  One is that he never appears to have regretted it.  At the public service in the Synod Hall, Principal Rainy gave thanks for “those seventy-four years of happy life.”  These words are entirely true.  His life was an exceptionally happy one.  This surely means a great deal.  If he had missed his true vocation, he could not have had this happiness.

The second noticeable point is, that his choice made the influence of his personality strong throughout Scotland.  He seems to have recognised that his true home lay in the region of Christian faith and works, in the great common life of the Church; and so he made his appeal, not to the limited number of those who could read a learned theological treatise which the changing fortunes of the battle with Unbelief might soon have put out of date, but to the common heart of the whole Church.  That great assemblage from all parts of the country on his funeral day was the response to this appeal, and the best answer to the question as to whether he had erred in the choice of a calling and wasted his powers.  Waste there undoubtedly was.  In every life this cannot but be so, for a man must limit himself; but, if it be for a high end, the renunciation will be blessed with some fruit of good.  And so, although the memory and the name of John Cairns may become fainter as the years and generations pass, his influence will live on in the Christian Church, to whose ideal of goodness he brought the contribution of his character.