who either inherit it or have their own intellectual powers stimulated
in the bracing atmosphere it has created. The instances of Robert
Burns and Thomas Carlyle, who both came out of homes in which
religion--and religion of the old Scottish type--was the deepest
interest, will occur to everyone. Not the least striking illustration
of this principle is shown in the case of John Cairns. In the life of
his soul he owed much to the godly upbringing and Christian example
shown to him by his parents; but the home at Dunglass, where religion
was always the chief concern, was the nursery of a strong mind as well
as of a strong soul, and both were fed from the same spring. In this
case, as in so many others, spiritual strength became intellectual
strength in the second generation.

The Cairns family attended church at Stockbridge, a mile beyond
Cockburnspath and two miles from Dunglass, and the father was an elder
there from 1831 till his death. The United Secession--formerly the
Burgher--Church at Stockbridge occupied a site conveniently central
for the wide district which it served, but very solitary. It stood
amid cornfields, on the banks of a little stream, and looked across to
the fern-clad slopes of Ewieside, an outlying spur of the Lammermoors.
Except the manse, and the beadle's cottage which adjoined it, there
was no house within sight, nor any out of sight less than half a
mile away.

The minister at this time was the Rev. David M'Quater Inglis, a man of
rugged appearance and of original and vigorous mental powers. He was a
good scholar and a stimulating preacher, excelling more particularly
in his expository discourses, or "lectures" as they used to be called.
When he tackled some intricate passage in an Epistle, it was at times
a little hard to follow him, especially as his utterance tended to be