T/HE Belfast College was modelled on the Scotch colleges, and was meant to give a liberal education to a large body of students.Dr.Cairns was the professor of logic and belles-lettres.He was born in Calton, in the suburbs of Glasgow, about 1780-85.His father was so anxious he should be a scholar that he carried him in his arms to his first school.He received his higher education in the grammar-school and the college of Glasgow, took license as a preacher in connection with the secession church about 1804, and was ordained a minister in Johnshaven in 1806.From his known intellectual ability, he was appointed professor of Belfast in 1815, and continued to give instruction there till his death in 1848.His knowledge of English and classics was extensive, his taste pure and highly refined, and his reading and elocution of a high order.He was greatly respected by all for his talents and accomplishments; he endeared himself to his friends, and was {370} greatly beloved in his family circle.He took great pains in instructing his pupils in the art of English composition, and helped to produce a fine taste among the ministers of religion and the educated men of Ulster.His nature was too sensitive, and the younger pupils took advantage of this infirmity to irritate him and disturb the class.In his later days the institution with which he was connected was greatly disquieted by disputes between the Trinitarians, who composed the great body of the people, and the Unitarians, who had the chief control of the school and college; and Dr.Cairns was often in great perplexity, as he was a man of liberal spirit on the one hand, and a firm supporter of evangelical religion on the other.The breach was not heated till the institution of Queen's College, in 1849.
He published an elaborate treatise on " Moral Freedom,"1844.It is not easy to give an analysis of it: in fact it is not easy to understand it.He starts with the very defective view, for which the teaching of Mylne of Glasgow had prepared him, that all the mental phenomena consist of sensations and ideas, a doctrine which James Mill of London was contemporaneously turning to a very different purpose.
He finds a difficulty in rearing his loftier view of man's spiritual nature on such a basis.He dwells fondly on a principle of particular reference and comparative survey as the highest intellectual exercises, carrying us upward to volition, motive, and moral freedom.He is resolute in claiming for man an essential freedom; and opposes Edwards and those divines who, as Chalmers, were connecting the philosophical doctrine of necessity with the Scripture doctrine of predestination.He regards it as a contracted view to indentify moral freedom and freedom of will.He finds moral freedom not in mere volition, but in the great influential principle of comparative survey.He unfolds, not very clearly, a whole theory of human nature.The truth in his system seems to be, that more is involved in moral freedom than mere volition , that the whole soul, including the intellect, is involved in it; and that a preferential feeling, as he calls it, is an essential part of it, --pointing to the fact that there may be preference or choice not amounting to full volition, but implying responsibility.
He shows that the freedom he advocates may be compatible with divine foreknowledge.