The Pulpit Preparation and Practice of John Kennedy of Dingwall

A previous article in the journal¹ described the preaching ministry of John Kennedy (1819–1884), minister of Dingwall Free Church of Scotland from 1844 until his death, and the leading preacher of the Highland section of the Free Church of Scotland during the second half of the nineteenth century. That account of Kennedy’s preaching ministry underlined the importance of the work of pulpit ministry, fulfilled in faithful Scriptural exposition, experimental application and earnest evangelistic appeal. The present article explores what one can learn of Kennedy’s preparation for the pulpit, and practice there, in fulfilling his significant and influential preaching ministry.

The testimonies recorded in the previous article show that the significance and value of Kennedy’s sermons were rooted in more than personal eloquence and charisma, and rather in the content of teaching communicated. Yet this is the more remarkable given Kennedy’s limited opportunity for serious theological reading. The Disruption cut short his divinity studies. He was then immediately into a busy and demanding situation of ministry, which must have left him little time for focussed preparation of sermons. As a result, he became known as a man who did his own thinking, as his colleague John Fraser stated:

No characteristic of his mind is more marked than his reliance on his own resources in all his mental efforts. He seems to place little reliance on books, or on the thoughts and labours of others. He is not a learned man in the broad sense of that term; at least, with his many pulpit duties, he had no time to become an extensively read man, and, we believe, he lays no claim to this distinction. He works out his numerous discourses with little beside his Bible and Concordance to aid him.²

This assessment requires counterbalance by Auld’s reminder that the Bible he used was in the original languages. Even when so fatigued as to have to study in bed, he still required ‘the standard authors on systematic theology’ to be brought within his reach.³ Auld was careful to ensure that no question could be laid against Kennedy’s scholarly acumen, noting that his sermon manuscripts quote from the Greek text, rendered with precision, extending to the smallest accent. Yet Fraser’s basic point stood: Kennedy may have used reference works, but his serious study and engagement was with the Scriptural text itself rather than with human authors. As Fraser concluded of his sermons: “They all bear the impress of his own mind and characteristics, and hence their freshness, depth of experience, and eminently Scriptural character”.⁴

Such a mode of pulpit preparation could only succeed based on a high view of the inspiration of Scripture, and this invariably marked his ministry. Barron observed:

The complete submission of his intellect to authority – even though it be the authority of Scripture – is an uncommon spectacle. No one could question Dr Kennedy’s intellectual strength or analytical power. Within the limits which he recognised as legitimate he could speculate with the most acute and soar with the most imaginative. But doctrines of profound import – doctrines which he believed to be revealed but which he could not comprehend – he was content to receive in the spirit of a little child. He always spoke with the accent of conviction.⁵

This was not intellectual obscurantism, but rather the outworking of a firm, settled conviction that the Scriptures were the only authoritative source for Christian doctrine, that they were the inspired Word of God, and therefore that their direct exegesis and application was the primary function of the Christian preacher.

In terms of actual pulpit preparation, Kennedy did not write out his sermons in full, but rather filled notebooks with sermon skeletons varying substantially in length and detail.⁶ These skeletons indicate well the themes, structure and development of the sermons, but give little sense of the intense passion which must have marked their delivery, or the quality and tone of language in which they were delivered. These were clearly worked out in the preacher’s mind prior to entering the pulpit. There, of course, he did not make use of his notes. He thus obviously followed the advice he received from a noted preacher of an earlier generation. As Barron recorded, “On the day on which he was licensed the late Mr Stewart, of Cromarty, said to him: ‘John, I think I know you now. Take one advice from me – don’t write your sermons. Spend your time in thinking, for be assured, if you do not express clearly it will be because you have not thought sufficiently.’”⁷

The disadvantage of his usually following this advice is the limited material extant to give a full sense of the style and character of his extemporaneous preaching. Nonetheless, the extant outlines have their own value in at least indicating Kennedy’s general intentions for each sermon prior to entering the pulpit. An otherwise obscure Highland minister, Murdoch Mackay (1852–1936), at the time supplying the Free Church congregation of Dores, Inverness-shire,⁸ ventured to publish a volume containing 28 of these outlines, and 240 of his own, in 1927.⁹ The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland dismissively reviewed the volume as ‘A Book of “Skeletons”’, adding with reference to Kennedy’s outlines:

[They] should never have been published. It is rendering no service to the memory of a great preacher that these scraps from his note-book, which were never intended for the public eye, should be given to the world… Mr Mackay is without doubt a man of courageous faith. It required some courage, for example, to associate his name with that of Dr Kennedy on the title-page: not many of us would venture to link our arm so familiarly in that of the famous Highland preacher in the fellowship of the Gospel.¹⁰

Although not received well the Kennedy outlines were at least thus preserved for present day research. It is not known if the manuscripts Mackay used survive, as the dates of the outlines, July to November 1882, are later than the known collections of sermon outlines.

These later outlines are exceedingly scanty, more so than Kennedy’s notes from earlier in his ministry, perhaps indicating that he had become less dependent on written notes in sermon preparation as the years advanced. Possibly the multiplication of other duties had required him to become so. In any case the structure is fairly regular, consisting of between two and five headings of exposition, followed by a section of application at the end, sometimes a series of duties, on other occasions just a collection of relevant texts, which the preacher no doubt would discuss more fully in their relevance to the congregation while in the pulpit. The notes themselves are written as short suggestive sentences, usually indicative (for example, ‘He undertook to be the Kinsman Surety of His people’), but occasionally imperative (for example, ‘Think of His perfect holiness in being in this world’). Typical of Kennedy’s sermons, the structures adopted are logical and coherent, reflecting the precise and lucid reasoning that marked Kennedy’s work. These are not merely the contours of a rambling harangue, but rather display a consistent and consecutive argument, building towards the desired application, and arising naturally from the text. Brief as they are, the outlines are enough to show that, for Kennedy at least, the freedom of the extempore sermon form would not be allowed to diminish the quality of the content.

Some structures are strictly expository: for example, on Is. 53:11,¹¹ the divisions are plain and follow the logic of the text: ‘The Righteous Servant’; ‘His Righteousness’; ‘Bearing their Iniquities’; ‘He shall Justify Many’; and ‘His Knowledge’.¹² On other occasions, however, Kennedy does broaden his focus and adopts topical divisions: one less than impressive example is his structure for Prov. 23:10–11. Here, the divisions are the landmarks between ‘godliness and the form of it’; between ‘true and false doctrine’; between ‘the scriptural and the unscriptural [forms of worship]’; and between ‘Church and State’.¹³

These particular divisions demonstrate a surprising freeness in entering into ecclesiastical controversy in the pulpit, even in direct contradiction of the Free Church’s official stance on worship and on disestablishment. This had not been a feature of sermon notes from earlier in his ministry, doubtless reflecting the pronounced shift in the public stance of the Free Church away from the priorities of Highland evangelicalism in the 1860s and 1870s. As a message apparently prepared for the Sabbath evening of an Inverness communion, it seems startlingly inappropriate, especially as that occasion is traditionally reserved for a simple and direct Gospel sermon. It is all the more open to criticism given the far more obvious and natural application of the text to the pressing contemporary issue of land reform in the Highlands. The actions of Highland landlords in ruthlessly evicting longstanding crofting tenants to merge their lands into sheep farms were far more blatant and direct breaches of the principle of the text than Kennedy’s rather stretched applications. His handling of this text would suggest, at least on this occasion, more concern for riding hobbyhorses, however orthodox the concerns, than for proper exposition of Scripture, and application to modern circumstances. While a sermon on the proverb with an application to the land reform issue would be an equally unfitting message for the specific occasion, it would at least have the virtue of applying the Biblical text with precision to the contemporary situation. This said, the lack of exposition evident in this outline would seem an isolated example; indeed, Kennedy took the same text again in Inverness the following day, with a much more Christ-centred focus, and a much more expository structure: ‘the fatherless’, ‘the field’, ‘the fence’ and ‘the Redeemer’.¹⁴ These observations aside, however, the outlines published by Mackay are generally too scanty to offer much insight into the quality or content of Kennedy’s preaching.

The earlier extant outlines, for the years 1859 to 1874, have been published in full by the James Begg Society.¹⁵ These sermon notes were more detailed and are thus more useful than the later ones printed by Mackay. They varied considerably in length. For example, one outline from 5 June 1864 consisted of short keywords, not always even forming sentences, and broke off abruptly in the application as though the writer was interrupted before quite finished. On the other hand, the next sermon, dated a month later, was more complete in form, and included far more detail under each heading. The sentences were fuller, and some could be read out as the final form of the oral sermon, while others were still evidently intended for extemporary expansion.¹⁶ The key themes of the messages were the sovereignty of God, especially in the work of salvation; the Gospel call to trust in Christ alone for salvation; and the need for serious self-examination for the marks that one has received God’s grace in salvation. These three themes are repeatedly stressed and emphasised from a great variety of texts throughout the many sermons recorded from the fifteen years of ministry covered by these notebooks.¹⁷

For example, sovereignty was central to a sermon on Hab. 3:2 from 11 December 1859. In this first of three on that text, Kennedy discusses the work of salvation by grace as a work of the Lord, His will and plan; by the Lord, His achievement in commencing and progressing; and to the Lord, accomplished for His glory, satisfaction and love.¹⁸ The same theme was repeatedly addressed: God as the only source of existence, of rational life and of the Moral Law; God as the One Who has willed and planned eternal salvation; God as He Who has sovereignly determined this salvation in the Covenant of Redemption from all Eternity.¹⁹ In these, and indeed in all the sermon outlines, Kennedy emphatically proclaimed Divine sovereignty.

Equally, the Gospel offer in Christ appeared consistently in the Application section of nearly every outline, whether by implication, or in explicit statement. On occasion, it is the principal focus of the whole address, as on the text Luke 14:23, where the structure successively stressed the authority of the evangelistic call; the power in which that call must be given; the compelling urgency with which it must be pressed; and the on-going continuance of that call until the end of time.²⁰ The confidence in which Kennedy’s own evangelistic call was given is indicated in the short sentences of application concluding a sermon on Isaiah 55:1, doubtless to be expanded in the preaching:

But all are invited to come.
We are assured of a welcome
All who come shall find this [message] to be waters indeed.²¹

However, a better sense of the potency of Kennedy’s Gospel call as preached from the pulpit is indicated in a passage from an 1865 sermon outline on Matt. 20:30:

But Jesus is passing by. A brief and precious opportunity you get here. Oh, think of how you need salvation, and what the awful eternal consequences of being unsaved must be. Think of how good the opportunity is. Jesus passes by. He is near. He is near to you. His skirts are just to your hand. He is knocking at the door.²²

One can practically hear the preacher’s voice in these words, and the vividness and intensity of his evangelistic message. There was sometimes a gentleness in this evangelistic application that suggests a compelling call, as in these notes from 1866: ‘Are there any here who will come to this God for pardon? He is in Christ. He invites you to come and reason with Him. He is exalted in having mercy. He delights in mercy’.²³

The subject of self-examination cropped up repeatedly. The reason for this was his concern at the danger of false assurance of faith, and this concern was repeatedly addressed in the outlines. Kennedy warned, for example, that ‘misrepresentations of faith are in fashion’ and are that the problem is ‘a spiritual generation plague’, and pointed out that a mere intellectual faith means no personal Saviour, no change of soul, and no change of moral relationship to God.²⁴ One should understand such a concern for accurate self-examination in the context of Kennedy’s orthodox Calvinistic theology. This viewed all mankind as inherently deserving of death and Hell forever, and of the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ, received by faith in Him, as the only alternative to this eternal sentence. Viewed in this context, Kennedy’s concern that his hearers have a well-grounded assurance of salvation in Christ was comprehensible and meaningful. Therefore his vital concern was to distinguish true religion from false, by the careful identification of genuine ‘marks’, distinctive characteristics, of true saving grace. Examples would be the marks of fear of the Lord, thought on His name, and communing together, given on 1 January 1865; or the one ‘great mark of all who are in Christ’, identified in March of that year as ‘evidence of living as new creatures’, applied in six different respects.²⁵ The following year, he taught as marks that true Christians are ‘ashamed of their past life’, ‘desire to cease from sin’, and ‘desire to avail themselves of the security God has provided for a holy life in time to come’.²⁶ The accurate identification of true Christian experience was thus a central plank of Kennedy’s ministry, and fully evident in these sermon outlines.

Another important collection of manuscripts was published in 1910, under the title Expository Lectures, and is a further valuable source for research into Kennedy’s preaching ministry. This title signalled that these were not conventional sermons. Perhaps this is why Kennedy chose to adopt a different mode of preparation, writing out full notes in complete sentences, comparable only to the very fullest outlines included in the Sermon Notes. The ‘lecture’ was a form of pulpit address handed down from a prior generation, a consecutive exposition of Scripture, carried on from week to week, usually at a simple level. The lecture contrasted with the sermon proper, typically delivered at the other service of the Sabbath day, which would be deeper in content and more elaborate in composition, and usually on a different portion of Scripture each week. The practice was already dying out during Kennedy’s lifetime, such that by 1911, the editor of the collection felt the need to explain the format of the lecture.²⁷ Given that none of the many assessments of Kennedy as a preacher from late in his ministry mention him following a practice of giving a lecture, and that the notebooks, all dating after 1859, often give two detailed skeletons of sermons proper for each Sabbath, it seems likely that these full manuscript lectures were productions of his early ministry. Later, he seems to have abandoned both the format of the consecutive lecture, and the preparation of full manuscript addresses.

Nonetheless, this volume illuminates Kennedy’s expository ministry, as he led his congregation through key chapters of the gospels, especially Matt. 5 and 9, John 5, Mark 1, Luke 4 and John 4, with other passages from the life of Christ. These addresses are logical and natural in structure. They possess a warm, devotional tone, and include natural and familiar illustrations, from the ministry of the well-known Highland preacher Lachlan Mackenzie (1754–1819), for example, to convey his point.²⁸ Yet within the refreshing simplicity of these lectures, Kennedy’s same three emphases identified above are clearly evident. His Gospel offer was plain and direct: ‘There are those here who are afraid they are not blessed. Come with all your causes of fear to the fountain opened’.²⁹ His discussion of the examination of Christian experience was warm and pastorally encouraging. For example, he pointed out that some believers may be well advanced in holiness, yet be far behind lesser believers in their outward professions, illustrating the point in a homely manner: ‘The man who tosseth a ball high into the air does not prove himself stronger than another who can scarcely move that stone to which he has set his shoulder’.³⁰ As always, he constantly stressed the sovereignty of God, emphasising that saving faith is ‘something which one must owe to God’, and that salvation is ‘dependent on the sovereign will of God’; albeit also warning against ‘the extreme of ignoring man’s will altogether and the important part it acts in the scheme of grace’.³¹ He emphasised Divine sovereignty in discussing Christ’s command to the paralyzed man, ‘Rise, take up thy bed, and walk’, comparing the man’s paralysis to ‘the spiritual impotence of the sinner’.³² Kennedy pointed out that as the words of a man, the gospel call is ‘the foolishness of preaching’: as his own ‘it is weakness; but as spoken in the name, and in the faith, of Jesus it is warrantably, and wisely, and hopefully spoken’.³³ He later acknowledged the controversial nature of this teaching, that ‘men are intolerant of the doctrine of God’s sovereignty’, adding that this is ‘because it is a self-abasing doctrine, and because it seems to them, while they are under the power of unbelief, to shut them out from hope’. He concluded, however: ‘But to this submission all who would know the Gospel must come’.³⁴

Another vital source is the large volume of full-length sermons prepared for weekly publication during the last year of Kennedy’s life. However, these productions are patently written compositions rather than transcripts of oral addresses, and have features that could not have marked his spoken addresses. Auld remarks:

Mr Kennedy’s published sermons, excellent as they are, do not convey an adequate idea of his preaching. They were written in the cool retirement of his study when he was in delicate health, and were often penned on a sick-bed. They therefore, although exhibiting in the main his way of treating his subject, fall behind what was his wont in the pulpit, especially when fronting a large congregation, and all the powers of his mind raised to the fullest activity. His conceptions of truth were on such occasions clear and comprehensive, his grasp of mind sustained and mighty, and his powerful affections, all aglow, poured themselves forth in strains of unstudied eloquence, impossible to be attained in quieter hours.³⁵

This rather apologetic defence suggested that the weekly sermons did not receive unstinting praise on their publication. However, that was by no means the only verdict. The noted church historian John Macleod included Kennedy last in his chronological study of Scottish theology:

There is a book of his sermons to tell of the quality of his preaching. It is a massive volume and has been issued more than once, but it is exceedingly scarce. In it there are over 50 of his discourses. Almost all of these were written in the last year of his life when he was labouring under the malady that cut him off… But the written discourses, set down with the deliberate judgment of his fine mind, give us the doctrine, practice and experience that the preacher meant to lay stress upon. The English style has a decided distinction of its own. The inversion of sentences and the epigrams that often occur are marked features of it. The preacher was a special master in the field of delicate spiritual analysis.³⁶

Certainly, Kennedy’s Sermons is not a volume for light reading; the tone throughout was exacting and theological. In format and presentation, Kennedy followed the example set by his friend, the London Baptist preacher C.H. Spurgeon, whose weekly sermons were popular reading throughout Victorian Britain. The level of theological understanding presupposed by Kennedy’s discourses was substantially higher.

This said, the same three emphases identified in the Sermon Notes and Expository Lectures come through with great clarity. The sovereignty of Divine grace was the subject of the very first message, and Kennedy urged preaching this subject to all who would hear, to ‘arouse them out of their lethargy’; to ‘humble them before God’; and, for believers, ‘to make them more thankful for His grace’.³⁷ Later, he used the analogy of Old Testament Israel, stating: ‘The whole course of His dispensation then was one continued display of His sovereignty, and of the difference, resulting from “His purpose, according to election,” being carried into effect in behalf of “a peculiar people.”’³⁸

This teaching led naturally to application for the present-day church, that her hope must lie in God’s sovereign rule on her behalf, and on that alone.³⁹ He phrased the teaching of Divine sovereignty in terms of a relationship of covenant, that God has freely chosen to elect some individuals to everlasting life, and entered into a covenant of grace that certainly secures their salvation, on the basis of Christ’s work as mediator.⁴⁰ This covenant was not, however, presented as a dry legal arrangement, but as the fruit of Divine love, expressed in Jesus Christ’s self-sacrifice for His Church.⁴¹ Taking such a position, Kennedy was understandably critical of preachers who would ‘separate the covenant from the gospel of grace, and who would ignore the sovereignty of the grace of God’.⁴²

The Gospel call to come to Christ was clearly given in the application of each sermon, which, as in the Sermon Notes, formed a distinct section of each published address. For example, Kennedy urged his readers to ‘cry to Jesus’, adding: ‘O be not dumb before Him, who hath all that power, while thou art needy, while He is Jesus, and while His power is the might of saving grace’.⁴³ Kennedy never allows the freeness of his Gospel-offer to be limited in any way by His stress on sovereignty. Indeed, such applications stress Divine sovereignty rather as a positive ground for evangelistic urgency than for fatalistic inertia. He urged preachers to stress ‘that the love of God to sinners is infinite, and that it is sovereign’, and that this gives a solid basis on which the sinner may come.⁴⁴ In one sermon, he wrote with particular warmth:

He can work in you both “to will and to do,” and you have a warrant to ask him to do so to you. If you will let Him do this for you, and leave yourself, with all your darkness and coldness, hanging on His grace, the Beloved is yours and you are His. If your objections to be His debtor are removed, then all is taken out of the way that could keep you from being His spouse.⁴⁵

Kennedy passionately assured his readers that ‘no fear is more groundless than that of not being received, with infinite gladness, when he comes’.⁴⁶ Throughout these Sermons, for all their theological depth, the Gospel call was plain and unmistakeable.

Yet the Sermons also address the theme of Christian experience. As in his earlier notes, Kennedy warned repeatedly of the danger of false profession. For example, in one sermon he described the case of a false believer in searing terms:

You know that you are not pained by a sense of your own unholiness, not anxious as to being sanctified. You cannot surely be on the way to heaven if you care not about being made ready to enter it. And you know that you are not careful to examine the grounds of your hope that you may not be deceived. You hate the searching light of truth.⁴⁷

This application identified a particular spiritual case, and directly challenged such a person to serious self-examination. But by the time of the publication of the Sermons, Kennedy was plainly conscious of swimming strongly against the theological tide of his day. For example, on the subject of self-examination in general, he wrote:

There is a kind of religion from which this duty is discarded, and which is assuming a pronounced position in these days. There are not a few who attain to an exercise of faith, because of the consciousness of which an assurance of being saved is enjoyed. This assurance they are anxious not to disturb. To maintain it the remembrance of their past faith and the bustle of what they call “Christian work,” are sufficient. To look within is decried as legality. To search for evidences of faith being genuine is denounced as mysticism. […] But the text prescribes the duty, and none but those who deny the power of godliness will evade it.⁴⁸

The whole area of Christian experience is addressed in great detail throughout the Sermons. Following nearly every message Kennedy addressed applications ‘to the anxious’,⁴⁹ intended to assist in settling whether the reader has the marks of a true believer in Christ.

From the various surviving evidences, therefore, it must be concluded that Kennedy’s preaching ministry was characterised by three particular themes: Divine sovereignty in achieving salvation, the freeness of the Gospel offer on that basis, and the need therefore for urgent and thorough self-examination to ensure that one possesses the reality of a work of sovereign saving grace. As Kennedy’s contemporary, W.R. Nicoll stated: ‘The staple of his ministration was always the same – the greatness of God and the preciousness of His grace’.⁵⁰ Another colleague, John Fraser, concurred, but discerned all three of the emphases identified above:

He impressively sets forth the sovereignty of Divine grace, with the freeness and all-sufficing nature of Gospel salvation, and… Christ’s divine authority, infinite readiness, and ability, to save sinners… His preaching, also, partakes largely of the experimental. […] This gives additional interest and power to his ministry. It imparts a chastened and subdued feeling that is sometimes indescribably touching. It leads him to explore the recesses of the heart, to watch its varied workings, and study its manifold deceitful forms, and search into the foundation and evidence of Christian hope.⁵¹

From this tribute, it is plain that the experimental focus of Kennedy’s preaching was its most distinctive quality within the context of the nineteenth-century Free Church of Scotland. That body was committed to confessional Calvinism, and Kennedy’s emphasis on sovereignty, while pronounced, was wholly orthodox. Similarly, his strong evangelistic emphasis was exactly what would be expected in a thoroughly evangelical church, albeit that Kennedy probably expressed his preaching in a more powerful and winsome manner than was typical. It was his focus on identifying and describing Christian experience that tended to mark Kennedy out, even in his own day, as distinctive, as the Free Church generally moved in a different direction.

Many other contemporary accounts of his preaching stress this quality, one writer commenting, for example, ‘Dr Kennedy was profound, deeply spiritual, experimental, and could deal with the various cases of exercised hearers in a way that very few others could approach’.⁵² Donald Munro commented in his lament for Kennedy, apostrophising the late preacher:

You were not proclaiming matters
That you had never experienced
But truths that you knew.

For you were brought through waters
That were indeed very deep
[…] For you were able because of your own experience
To deal with the wounds.⁵³

Munro thus indicated that the experimental aspect of Kennedy’s ministry flowed directly from his personal spiritual experience, and that this was consequently highly valued. In similar terms, another writer praised the ‘faculty of spiritual analysis’ evident in his preaching⁵⁴ while J.K. Cameron recalled his ‘analytical and tenderly sympathetic treatment of Divine truth’.⁵⁵ Kennedy’s pulpit preparation thus flowed from the careful exposition of Scripture, and from the analysis of his own spiritual experience, and that of others, in the light of Biblical truth. Furthermore, his practice in the pulpit was to proclaim the sort of rigorous, Reformed and thoroughly confessional evangelicalism that was out of fashion in nineteenth-century Scottish Presbyterianism. John Macleod summed it up fairly: “He was an experimental divine in the best sense of the word. The great Puritans had no more eminent successor in the Scottish ministry in the 19th century”.⁵⁶ Such an example demands emulation from preachers in the present day. “Whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Heb. 13:7-8).

Footnotes

1
Alasdair J. Macleod, “The Preaching Ministry of John Kennedy of Dingwall”, The Master’s Trumpet, 7 (2019). ↩︎
2
John Fraser, ‘Rev John Kennedy, D.D.’, in Disruption Worthies of the Highlands (1886), http://highlandchristianity.blogspot.co.uk/p/john-kennedy.html (accessed 17 November 2014). ↩︎
3
Alexander Auld, Life of John Kennedy, (London, 1887), 73. ↩︎
4
Fraser, ‘Rev John Kennedy, D.D.’ ↩︎
5
James Barron, Memoir of Rev John Kennedy, D.D., Dingwall, originally published in installments in the Inverness Courier, 1893, http://nesherchristianresources.org/JBS/kennedy/Memoir_of_Dr_Kennedy.html (accessed 17 November 2014) ↩︎
6
Two of these notebooks, one for the years 1859–65, and another for 1866–74, held in private collections in the UK, have been published in full, c.f. John Kennedy, Sermon Notes, 1858–1865, 1866–1874, 2 vols., (Lochmaddy, 2007–2008). Another is held by Dingwall Free Church, and has been consulted with permission, while a fourth, which has not been seen, is understood to exist in a private collection in the USA. ↩︎
7
Barron, ‘Memoir of John Kennedy’. ↩︎
8
Originally from Olrig, Caithness, Mackay served brief pastorates in two small Highland congregations of the Free Church: Kincardine & Croick (1910–13), and Kilmuir-Easter (1913–20). Thereafter, he was briefly in Canada, and latterly he supplied vacant charges including Burghead, Fort Augustus and Dores. For this information, I am indebted to Mr. Maurice Grant, Edinburgh. ↩︎
9
9 John Kennedy (with M. MacKay), Divine Religion distinct from all human systems, 28 sermons by the late Rev John Kennedy and 240 by the Rev M. MacKay (Dingwall, n.d. [1927]). ↩︎
10
‘Review’, Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, (March 1928), 41. ↩︎
11
‘He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant jus- tify many; for he shall bear their iniquities’. The sermon evidently addressed the second half of this verse only. ↩︎
12
Kennedy, Divine Religion, 8-9. ↩︎
13
Kennedy, Divine Religion, 3-5. ↩︎
14
Kennedy, Divine Religion, 5. ↩︎
15
Kennedy, Sermon Notes; cf. James Begg Society, (accessed on 15 October 2015). ↩︎
16
Kennedy, Sermon Notes, 1859-65, 125-31 ↩︎
17
It should be stressed that the notes were not, of course, all, or anywhere near all, the vast number of sermons prepared and preached by Kennedy during this period. In total, there are 109 outlines in the first notebook, and 96 in the second. The great majority of these date from the years 1864–7. There are no obvious criteria why particular sermons should be included in these as opposed to in other notebooks; many are from communion occasions in different places, especially across the Highlands, but there are also many from the regular weekly ministry in Dingwall. All the notes are in English, though it is not known whether Kennedy’s written preparation for preaching in Gaelic would have been in that language; in any case, no such outlines are known to exist. ↩︎
18
Kennedy, Sermon Notes, 1859-65, 1-8 ↩︎
19
Kennedy, Sermon Notes, 1866-74, 145-9, 234-6, 81-8. ↩︎
20
Kennedy, Sermon Notes, 1859-65, 73-5. ↩︎
21
Ibid., 125. ↩︎
22
Ibid., 286. ↩︎
23
Kennedy, Sermon Notes, 1666-74, 72. ↩︎
24
Kennedy, Sermon Notes, 1859-65, 323-5. ↩︎
25
Ibid., 243. 268-9. ↩︎
26
Kennedy, Sermon Notes, 1866-74, 3-4. ↩︎
27
Kennedy, Sermon Notes, 1866-74, 3-4. ↩︎
28
Kennedy, Expository Lectures, 1-3, 20. ↩︎
29
Ibid., 30. ↩︎
30
Ibid., 77-8. ↩︎
31
Ibid., 76-7. ↩︎
32
Ibid., 94. ↩︎
33
Ibid., 95. ↩︎
34
Ibid., 174. ↩︎
35
Auld, Life of John Kennedy, 95. ↩︎
36
John Macleod, Scottish Theology in Relation to Church History since the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1943), 327. ↩︎
37
John Kennedy, Sermons [First pub. 1885], (Inverness, 1888), 8. ↩︎
38
Kennedy, Sermons, 419. ↩︎
39
Ibid., 425-8. ↩︎
40
Ibid., 108-10. ↩︎
41
Ibid., 143-54, a particularly fine sermon on Ephesians 5:25-27. ↩︎
42
Ibid., 457. ↩︎
43
Ibid., 48. ↩︎
44
Ibid., 547. ↩︎
45
Ibid., 467. ↩︎
46
Ibid., 547. ↩︎
47
Ibid., 80-81. ↩︎
48
Ibid., 122. ↩︎
49
E.g. Kennedy, Sermons, 261. ↩︎
50
William Robertson Nicoll, “The Religion of the Scottish Highlands,” British Weekly, lxxxvi 4, (1 June 1888). ↩︎
51
Fraser, ‘Rev John Kennedy, D.D.’. ↩︎
52
George Macdonald, Men of Sutherland [first pub. 1937], (Dornoch, 2014), 34. ↩︎
53
Donald Munro, ‘Lament on the death of Dr John Kennedy who was in Dingwall’ (8–17), [translated by C. Johnston], in Marbhrainn air Dr Begg, bha’n Dun-eidin; ‘s air Dr. Ceanadaidh bha’n Inbhirfeo- rathain; agus air daoinibh diadhaidh bh’anns an airde-tuath (n.p., 1886), 10–1. ↩︎
54
Duncan Macgregor, Campbell of Kiltearn [Second Edition], (Edinburgh, 1875), 50. ↩︎
55
Kennedy, Expository Lectures, viii. ↩︎
56
Macleod, Scottish Theology, 327. ↩︎

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The Pulpit Preparation and Practice of John Kennedy of Dingwall

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