Of the many ornaments which the Established Church of Scotland has produced, Dr. John Caird is one of the most brilliant as a preacher, as a thinker, and as a rhetorician. During the comparatively short period of his ministry, he secured a world-wide fame for the eloquence and beautiful diction of his sermons, and although his pulpit appearances are now few and far between, they are sufficiently important to draw together larger congregations than any Church in Glasgow could possibly accommodate; to find a prominent place in the newspapers of the day; and to realise for the author a handsome honorarium for the copyright of his sermons.

The Rev. Dr. John Caird was born at Greenock, where his father was an engineer, in 1820. After following out a course of study at the University of Glasgow, he was licensed as a preacher in 1844. In the following year he was ordained minister of Newton-upon-Ayre, from which in 1846 he was translated to Lady Yester's Church, Edinburgh. The patronage of this appointment lay with the Town Council of the Metropolis, and Dr. Caird was nominated almost unanimously. Here Dr. Caird was building up a great reputation—his popularity being quite extraordinary, and his church habitually crowded—when he found it necessary to retire to the country to get rid of the demands made upon his physical energies by a metropolitan congregation. He soon found what appeared to be a more congenial sphere at Errol in Perthshire, to which he was translated in 1850, and where he ministered with much acceptance, drawing to his church strangers from far and near, for a period of about eight years. It was while at Errol that Dr. Caird fell out with the more orthodox Calvinists of his church, his breadth of sympathies failing to meet with approbation from the older members who were still leavened with the leaven of "persecuting and intolerant principles in religion." It is related of one old lady that on leaving the church, after hearing Dr. Caird deliver one of his most powerful and characteristic sermons, she exclaimed, "What's the use o' gaun to hear that body preach; ye never get a word o' gospel frae his lips." During the period of his pastorate at Errol, Dr. Caird preached, in 1865, a sermon, entitled "The religion of common life," before the Queen at Crathie. This sermon was subsequently published by her Majesty's command, and secured a very large sale. Indeed, it is recorded, in an article on the book trade in Chambers's CyclopÆdia, as an evidence of the kindness which publishers sometimes show to authors, that the Messrs Blackwood, of Edinburgh, made Dr. Caird a present of £400, in addition to the £100 which they had agreed to pay him for his Crathie sermon—so extensive was the sale which, in the form of a shilling pamphlet, it was able to command. The same sermon was translated on the Continent, under the auspices of the Chevalier Bunsen, Ambassador from the German Court to London, who has since died. Bunsen was well known as one of the most accomplished scholars of his day, and the preface which he wrote for this sermon suddenly carried the fame of the preacher into all parts of the Christian world.

In 1857 Dr. Caird accepted a call to Park Church, Glasgow. During the following year he published a volume of sermons marked by great chasteness and beauty of language, strength and delicacy of thought, and, above all, by spirituality of tone, and breadth of earnest sympathy with men. By this time his fame as a preacher had reached its zenith. The demands made upon his powers of endurance were such as no one could possibly last for any length of time. His sermons were not the mere inspirations of the hour. They were rather like the chef d'oeuvre of a great painter or sculptor—well thought out, carefully and conscientiously reasoned, and polished until their lustre was perfectly dazzling. We have before us an extract from Fraser's Magazine, published about this time, which justly estimates Dr. Caird's oratorical gifts and graces. The writer states that Dr. Caird "begins quietly, but in a manner which is full of earnestness and feeling; every word is touched with just the right kind and degree of emphasis; many single words, and many little sentences which, when you read them do not seem very remarkable, are given in tones which make them absolutely thrill through you; you feel that the preacher has in him the elements of a tragic actor who would rival Kean. The attention of the congregation is riveted; the silence is breathless; and as the speaker goes on gathering warmth till he becomes impassioned and impetuous, the tension of the nerves of the hearer becomes almost painful. There is abundant ornament in style—if you were cooler you might probably think some of it carried to the verge of good taste; there is a great amount and variety of the most expressive, apt, and seemingly unstudied gesticulation; it is rather as though you were listening to the impulsive Italian speaking from head to foot, than to the cool and unexcitable Scot. After two or three such climaxes, with pauses between, after the manner of Dr. Chalmers, the preacher gathers himself up for his peroration which, with the tact of the orator, he has made more striking, more touching, more impressive than any preceding portion of his discourse. He is wound up often to an excitement which is painful to see. The full deep voice, so beautifully expressive, already taxed to its utmost extent, breaks into something which is almost a shriek; the gesticulation becomes wild; the preacher, who has hitherto held himself to some degree in check, seems to abandon himself to the full tide of his emotion; you feel that not even his eloquent lips can do justice to the rush of thought and feeling within. Two or three minutes in this impassioned strain and the sermon is done."

In 1862, Dr. Caird was appointed Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow. Since that time his pulpit ministrations have been comparatively few. In fact, although his eloquence is in some respects as powerful and unique as ever, his voice has lost much of the charm of former days, and this is perhaps one of the most weighty reasons that actuated the reverend gentleman in seeking the otium cum dignitate of a Professor's chair. As a teacher no less than as a preacher Dr. Caird has made his mark. In reference to both functions we find personified in him the attributes of

If there is one thing more than another that has brought Dr. Caird a special name and reputation as a thinker, it is the broad and somewhat latitudinarian notions which he holds on religions matters. So far does he carry his toleration and charity that he has, we believe, given serious offence to not a few of his most attached admirers in questions other than religious. Briefly stated, Dr. Caird's belief is that all the theological distinctions that ever distracted Christendom are not worth a single breach of charity. In a sermon which he preached before the Senate, at the opening of the new University Chapel, on the 8th of January last, he set himself to show that the mere holding of the Catholic faith, in the sense and form of the creed, cannot be the essence of religion—first, because the great mass of mankind are incapable of doing justice to the definitions and evidences of the creeds; yet need religion, and are, in point of fact, pious in spite of their want of theological accomplishments; secondly, there is an organ or faculty of the soul deeper than the intellect, by which (apart from accurate doctrinal notions) the force of religious realities may be apprehended and appropriated; and, thirdly, men of the most divergent and even opposite dogmatic convictions may be, and are, religiously one. Accordingly, he maintains that the essence of religion must lie in 'something profounder than ecclesiastical and dogmatic considerations. And could we get at that something—call it spiritual life, godliness, holiness, self-abnegation, surrender of the soul to God; or, better still, love and loyalty to Christ as the one Redeemer and Lord of the spirit—could we pierce deeper than the notions of the understanding to that strange, sweet, all-subduing temper and habit of spirit, that climate and atmosphere of heaven in a human breast, should we not find that there lies the essence of religion?' Religion, in short, is a matter of feeling rather than of knowledge, a hallowed condition of the spiritual sentiments and instincts, rather than an orthodox complexion and arrangement of the spiritual ideas; a thing of the heart rather than of the head. On this view, it has been argued, though Dr. Caird does not expressly draw the inference, orthodoxy is not essential to "salvation," and heathenism is not a barrier to the blessings of heaven.

One distinguishing characteristic of all Dr. Caird's sermons—and, indeed, of everything to which he applies himself—is that they are carefully and conscientiously manipulated. He does not commit himself to a mere superficial treatment of the subject in hand, but, like John Bright—to whom in more than one respect he presents a striking parallel—he takes the utmost pains to provide thoroughly acceptable and nourishing pabulum for his hearers, believing that whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well. No man alive has furnished a more fitting illustration of the lines—

Every sentence which Dr. Caird utters in his discourses is turned and polished with the consummate art of which he is such a master until it is a sparkling gem. Hence his diction bears the most crucial test; like his oratory, his composition is unique.

When the British Association held its meetings in Edinburgh in August, 1871, Dr. John Caird was selected to preach the sermon which it is customary to deliver before the savants at any town at which they may happen to meet. On this sermon a pungent critic in a well-known metropolitan magazine, who rejoices in the nom de plume of Patricius Walker, Esq., has the following remarks:—"Mr. Caird (who spoke somewhat huskily, but with much emphasis) was on the broad Liberal tack. He quoted passages from Herbert, Spencer, Comte, and other modern philosophers; not showing them up as monsters or deluded—O dear no!—or taking refuge behind his Bible or any 'cardinal doctrine' of faith, but professing a profound respect for these writers, and bringing his facts and logic against their facts and logic. It was a clever exercise and a very curious discourse to hear in the High Kirk of Edinburgh, but it was hard to suppose it could do anybody much good.

Some of the old-fashioned worshippers must have felt uncomfortable, like the villager who, after a clever sermon on the Evidences of the Existence of the Deity, said he never thought of doubting it before."

Professor Caird is one of her Majesty's chaplains for Scotland.