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 Cyclopaedia, as an evidence of the kindness which publishers sometimes show to authors, that the Messrs Blackwood, of Edinburgh, made Dr. Caird a present of L400, in addition to the L100 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.