robably because of his special
familiarity with the Deistical and kindred controversies, and also
because the modern assaults on supernatural Christianity from the
Evolutionary and Agnostic standpoint had not yet become pressing--he
postulated. And, discarding the traditional division of the Evidences
into Internal and External, he classified them according to their
relation to the different Attributes of God, as manifesting His
Power, Knowledge, Wisdom, Holiness, and Benignity. With this course
he incorporated large parts of his unfinished treatise on "The
Difficulties of Christianity," which, after he had thus broken it
up, passed finally out of sight.

The impression which he produced on his students by these lectures,
and still more by his personality, was very great. "I suppose," writes
one of them, "no men are so hypercritical as students after they have
been four or five years at the University. To those who are aware of
this, it will give the most accurate impression of our feeling towards
Dr. Cairns when I say that, with regard to him, criticism could not be
said to exist. We all had for him an appreciation which was far deeper
than ordinary admiration; it was admiration blended with loyalty and
veneration."[16] Specially impressive were the humility which went
along with his gifts and learning, and the wide charity which made
him see good in everything. One student's appreciation of this latter
quality found whimsical expression in a cartoon which was delightedly
passed from hand to hand in the class, and which represented Dr.
Cairns cordially shaking hands with the Devil. A "balloon" issuing
from his mouth enclosed some such legend as this: "I hope you are very
well, sir. I am delighted to make your acquaintance, and to find that
you are not nearly so black as you are painted."

[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 s