The Preaching Ministry of John Kennedy of Dingwall

Dingwall is a royal burgh in the heart of the Scottish Highlands; in the mid-nineteenth century, it was the administrative centre of the county of Ross and Cromarty, and a busy market town with a settled population of around 2000 people.¹ Like much of the Highlands, Dingwall was firmly Episcopalian during the seventeenth century. A mob thwarted an attempt to hold a Presbyterian service there in 1704, and an attempted settlement of a Presbyterian minister four years later was similarly prevented.² Gradually, over the course of the eighteenth century, a peaceful and stable Presbyterian ministry was established. The parish church had experience of evangelical ministry, notably from the famed Alexander Stewart (1764–1821). Stewart’s conversion from Moderatism in 1796, when minister of his previous charge of Moulin, was emblematic of the impact of evangelicalism across the Highlands, and led to a significant revival in that part of Perthshire. Stewart served as minister of Dingwall from 1805 to 1820, and his Memoirs offer valuable insight into the spiritual state of the town in that period.³ Stewart testified to having two distinct congregations in the town: the Gaelic, which was largely solemn and receptive to his evangelical teaching; and the English, whom he found to be, in a spiritual sense, ‘careless’. Overall, however, he considered his ministry there to have met with ‘little success’.⁴

The Dingwall population by 1843 was largely Presbyterian, with only 40–50 Episcopalians and around 12 Methodists.⁵ The parish minister, Hector Bethune (1782–1849), was evangelical in doctrine, but when the Disruption came, he remained within the Church of Scotland. A majority of the congregation ‘came out’, but not an overwhelming one. A later description of the English section of the Free Church congregation described them as numbering ‘probably not more than 120’ following the Disruption. This suggests that the congregational division Stewart discerned thirty years before was reflected to some extent in the parting of ways in 1843.⁶ The Established Church congregation in Dingwall was larger than any other in Ross-shire, and reportedly included ‘the greater part of the upper strata of society’.⁷ The first Free Church building erected on Castle Street in 1844, designed to seat 800, was adequate given the separate services held for the Gaelic and English sections of the congregation. The manse was built in 1848, the year of Kennedy’s marriage, with the debts on both buildings paid off by 1858.⁸

The Free Church communicant membership in the Dingwall congregation was initially around 140, although this did not indicate the actual size of the congregation.⁹ The conventional rule of thumb that one in eight in nineteenth-century Highland congregations were communicants,¹⁰ would suggest an initial congregation with over a thousand people at least loosely adhering to the Free Church. However, Kennedy’s call as recorded in the minutes of the Dingwall Presbytery in 1843 received just 249 signatures.¹¹ This must have included a clear majority of the communicant membership, as the call was sustained without question. Indeed, it was stated in one biographical sketch to have been unanimous,¹² though it could only have been actively subscribed by a small minority of adherents. It is probable that the large adherent base was somewhat disengaged from the activity of the congregation. By contrast, after thirteen years of ministry, Kennedy received an appeal signed by 1400 members and adherents of the Dingwall congregation, that he not accept calls to Greenock or Tain, then being presented.¹³ Given the town population, this must have included the overwhelming majority connected with the charge, suggesting a church that had both grown in size, and had also become more concerted and cohesive. By 1863, when Kennedy received a call to Renfield Church, Glasgow, the number of members and adherents who signed a similar address was 1830, a remarkable increase given the brief period that had elapsed since since 1857.¹⁴ The communicant membership increased, though not dramatically, and mostly varied between 150 and 190 through the years of Kennedy’s ministry, with a small dip to 133 on the roll at his death in 1884.¹⁵

The charge was demanding, with five regular services conducted each week. Each required a full-length sermon: two Sabbath morning services, Gaelic and English, a Sabbath evening service alternating between the two languages, and separate weekly prayer meetings in Gaelic and English.¹⁶ Preaching was central to the Highland evangelical ministry,¹⁷ and it was through his proficiency in the pulpit that Kennedy earned his place as a leading minister, and later the leading minister, in the Highland Free Church. ‘The pulpit was Dr Kennedy’s throne’, declared one contemporary tribute,¹⁸ and in his own congregation, his resultant popularity was immense. Even visiting fully twenty years after Kennedy’s death, Allan MacKillop found many in Dingwall keen to reminisce about his sermons.¹⁹ Norman Macfarlane noted how one aspect of his preaching was reserved solely for Dingwall:

[He had] a genius for preaching (or lecturing) engagingly to boys and girls. Whether in sermon or lecture – on a text from the Scripture or on the wonders of Science or his descriptions of his travels – he could captivate and charm as few could, young and old revelling in the delights of his wonderful brilliance on such occasions. […] He gave quarterly sermons to the young to which young and old flocked. The thickest-witted grown-ups were there, for he preached or lectured on their level.²⁰

The only criticism in Dingwall was the rigorous extent of his preaching. Some former hearers complained to MacKillop that Kennedy’s full-length midweek discourses had been too demanding on their attention, particularly an exhaustive series of consecutive sermons working through the book of Psalms, which he preached at these meetings over the course of almost forty years of ministry.²¹

The fruit of his painstaking ministry in the town was a growing and attentive congregation, such that by the 1860s, the original church building was plainly inadequate. A large new church was erected on a prominent site in the heart of Dingwall with seating for more than a thousand people, and opened for worship in 1870. This building was well-filled for both the Gaelic and English services,²² with the latter in particular developing over the course of his ministry, so that a newspaper reported at the time of his death: ‘The handsome new Gothic edifice in which he preached would contain an audience of a thousand persons, listening with eagerness to his chaste elegance in the English tongue’.²³ One unusual feature of the church was the pulpit, designed to Kennedy’s own requirements, as a platform just below gallery level, across the whole breadth of the church. Apparently, Kennedy liked to stride from end to end as he preached, holding an ever-present white handkerchief.²⁴ This platform pulpit, the focal point of the whole church, was and is an architectural statement of the centrality of Kennedy’s preaching to his ministry in Dingwall.

Beyond his own congregation, Kennedy rapidly built a reputation as a notable preacher. As early as 1849, he preached by invitation before the General Assembly of the Free Church on the Sabbath of their meeting, a signal honour for a minister not yet thirty.²⁵ That same year, the renowned ‘Apostle of the North’ John Macdonald of Ferintosh, whom Kennedy would later commemorate in an appreciative biography, died aged sixty-nine. The young pastor of Dingwall thereafter became known as the minister who had ‘seized the mantle’ of Macdonald, as the leading preacher of the Free Church in the Highlands.²⁶ The tradition of yearly or twice-yearly communion seasons throughout the Highland Free Church, with well-known preachers invited to attract visitors from other congregations, facilitated Kennedy’s growing popularity as a preacher beyond his own congregation. By the height of his ministry, Kennedy was reportedly spending half the year travelling around communion seasons.²⁷ He was, for example, ‘an unfailing helper at the August communion’ of Olrig Free Church in Caithness. In that capacity he was ‘a great attraction’,²⁸ and one of two principal assistants each year at the Creich communions.²⁹ The Glasgow Herald reported that ‘his popularity as a preacher was such that none of the great sacramental gatherings in Ross-shire would be regarded as quite complete unless he partook in them’.³⁰ One biographer records a railway car reserved for his use in this extensive programme of travel, such was the respect accorded to his ministry by the company directors.³¹ Through this wider ministry, Kennedy thus helped to mould the thought and the spirituality of the Church across the Highlands.

The numerous calls³² he received to other charges, all declined, reflected Kennedy’s popularity as a preacher. As early as 1853, he was called to the large town of Dunoon, to succeed Mackintosh Mackay (1793–1873), a former Moderator of the Free Church, who had accepted a call to Australia.³³ The following year, Kennedy was himself called to an overseas city charge in Sydney, Australia, and ten years later to a major city-centre congregation, Renfield Free Church in Glasgow.³⁴ At one meeting in 1857 his presbytery considered concurrent calls addressed to him from two separate congregations, Tain and Greenock Gaelic, to succeed two of the most celebrated Highland ministers of the Free Church,³⁵ indicating that he was already reckoned in a similar category himself. The latter congregation went on to call him again in 1872.³⁶ These calls were mainly to minister to Highlanders. Even the Sydney and Glasgow calls probably had some regard to the large populations of Highlanders there, who may be expected to flock to join a church under Kennedy’s ministry.

The readiness of Highlanders everywhere to gather for his preaching underlines the respect which they held for Kennedy. For example, he reported that on visits to London, he could always gather a congregation of more than 300 for a Gaelic service, even at just two or three days notice.³⁷ Indeed his final sermon was at a Gaelic service he conducted in his hotel in London in April 1884, while on his final journey back to Scotland. It was so appreciated that some of those in the attendance thereafter formed the London Gaelic Services Committee to ensure that Gaelic services would continue in the metropolis. The resulting quarterly Gaelic services, conducted by ministers from various denominations, have continued right to the present, now usually held at Crown Court Church of Scotland.³⁸ He was also well known in Edinburgh as a communion assistant, preaching annually in the Highland congregation, Free St Columba’s, from the early 1850s onwards, and equally in the Newington congregation after he forged a close friendship with the minister, James Begg, during the First Union Controversy (1867–73).³⁹ His sermon in Edinburgh after the death of Begg drew so immense a crowd that the press reported that Newington Free Church ‘was crowded to excess, every available inch of space being occupied, including the pulpit steps, lobbies and staircases’.⁴⁰ He also preached regularly in the Aberdeen Highland congregation, also called St Columba’s,⁴¹ in Dundee, Glasgow, Greenock, and more occasionally at communions in other Lowland congregations, such as Roxburgh Free Church, Edinburgh, in 1882.⁴²

Greatest of all, however, were the communion gatherings of the Highlands. One newspaper report described Kennedy assisting at the open-air summer communion in Creich, Sutherland, in 1873. The correspondent notes:

It has long been affirmed that the assemblage of worshipper on such occasions was the largest in Scotland, and, if our experience can be taken, we should fully endorse the statement. On a careful calculation, the members present were not less than seven thousand. There were people present from the outskirts of the Reay country, about 130 miles off, from Grantown and Strathspey, a like distance, from Inverness, from Dingwall, and, in short, from all the district round. [… Following the administration of the sacrament,] the assemblage was afterwards addressed outside, the minister standing on top of a sloping piece of ground, while his audience stood or reclined on the slope below. The scene was certainly an impressive one.⁴³

As stated, Creich may have been the largest regular sacramental gathering, but there were many other vast assemblies throughout the year. The materials gathered in Kennedy’s biography bear witness to his busy exertions in preaching at various gatherings across Northern Scotland. Letters tell of his preaching to the fishermen in Wick, in Burghead, Gairloch, Strathpeffer and Thurso. Further letters speak of a preaching tour in Lewis and Lochbroom, and of ‘having been weeks successively at Communions throughout the Highlands’, and in another place of ‘having been, since coming home from Aberdeen, at communions in Rosskeen, Inverness and Urray’.⁴⁴ These letters testify to much travel, and an extraordinary capacity for rapid pulpit preparation, as sermons could not be readily reused when hearers sometimes travelled from communion season to communion season. Yet for all the labour involved, these vast gatherings, which Kennedy addressed with such frequency all over the Highlands and Islands, gave to him an opportunity to exert and demonstrate leadership over the vast numbers of the Highland Church. This leadership, always rooted in the quality of his preaching, and his power in the pulpit enabled him to win and keep to the last the loyalty of the Highland evangelical people.

The respect for his homiletical gifts extended beyond the ordinary members of the Free Church, to Kennedy’s brother-ministers and elders in the North, as evidenced in his nomination by a number of the Highland church courts for vacant professorial chairs.⁴⁵ With a much lower profile in the Lowlands, however, he never received nominations from a sufficient number of courts to be a serious candidate for any vacancy, even had he desired to move to an academic position. Interestingly, despite his eminence as a leader of the Highland Church, Kennedy never attained the highest position of the Free Church, to serve as Moderator of the General Assembly. Kennedy was one of six ministers proposed to be Moderator of the 1876 General Assembly, but withdrew his name from consideration at an early juncture.⁴⁶ As a minister ordained after the Disruption of 1843, Kennedy lacked the stature of one who had abandoned stipend and benefits in the Established Church to serve the Free Church, and this seems to have factored in the selection of Moderators. Crucially, the Free Church would not appoint a Moderator from the generation of ministers ordained after the Disruption until 1887, well after Kennedy’s death, with the first such chosen being his frequent ecclesiastical opponent, Robert Rainy.⁴⁷ Had he lived until the Inverness General Assembly of 1888, Kennedy would, as the leading Highland minister, presumably have been chosen Moderator rather than his less prominent friend, Gustavus Aird.⁴⁸ Nevertheless, it is telling that throughout the whole of Kennedy’s long ministry, only twice did the Assembly’s choice as Moderator fall on the minister of a Highland congregation,⁴⁹ an indication of the peripheral standing of the Highland ministers within the national Free Church.

However, Kennedy’s brother-ministers across the Highlands showed their appreciation by frequent invitations to assist at communion seasons. Individual fellow-ministers, such as John Fraser, William Robertson Nicoll, and his principal biographer Alexander Auld, have left appreciative tributes to his ministry.⁵⁰ Nicoll’s testimony is especially significant as that of a minister entirely unsympathetic to Kennedy’s stance in the nineteenth-century Free Church controversies, praising him as ‘beyond comparison the ablest Highland preacher of his generation’.⁵¹ A minister of a later generation, John Macleod, the leading theologian of the twentieth-century Free Church, stated emphatically the view of many: ‘He was the great preacher of his generation in Scotland’.⁵²

As a preacher, Kennedy was fluent in his command of Gaelic and English. This was remarkable given that he never used notes in the pulpit, and even tended to close the Bible after reading his text at the commencement of his sermon, such was his ability to quote relevant passages from memory.⁵³ One assessment comments that he spoke ‘in English as if he did not know a word of Gaelic, and in Gaelic as if he did not know a word of English’, although many hearers considered that ‘it was in Gaelic he got nearest the hearts of his hearers’.⁵⁴ His proficiency in the latter language was clearly the product of practice and effort, but his English skills were, according to his College friend William Walker, at least partly rooted in his love of reading Shakespeare.⁵⁵ Robertson Nicoll, himself a noted Victorian literary critic, observed a special quality of freshness in his English preaching: ‘He at once fascinated us by the arresting solemnity of his manner and the spring-like newness of his English’.⁵⁶ Norman Macfarlane, who like Nicoll opposed Kennedy on the establishment question and was later a minister of the United Free Church, gave rather florid testimony to the effectiveness of Kennedy’s language:

His eloquence was unrivalled in the Highlands… Kennedy’s lips poured forth an even stream of liquid silver of the choicest thoughts and choicest words… One could sit listening to Dr Kennedy by the hour. The effortlessness of his beautiful speech amazed one as it ran out of a face, which in itself was a picture. ⁵⁷

His eloquence was highlighted in comparison with the greatest of Victorian preachers, being termed the ‘Spurgeon of the Highlands’.⁵⁸

However, it is plain that the popularity of Kennedy’s preaching rested on more than just the quality of his language. Contemporary accounts concur that there was an intellectual depth and profundity to his sermons that commanded the attention of discerning hearers. Following his death, the Northern Chronicle commented: ‘It says much for John Kennedy, a young man, […] that he should have at once taken a foremost rank among the foremost preachers of the Disruption Church’. The Nairnshire Telegraph added: ‘Dr Kennedy’s death deprives the Highlands of its greatest orator and preacher… He could keep vast crowds under the spell of his genius as no other preacher living could’. The Daily Review added a particularly striking account of the effect of Kennedy’s preaching:

The sermon was built up, block upon block, of granite reasoning. Each of those fundamental propositions was presented with intense and over-powering earnestness. The block were laid upon each other red hot… As the discourse went on and the reasoning became molten into fiery flood… the labouring breath struggled into voice and rang over the hillside like a clarion… and the whole responding multitude bent forward. ⁵⁹

This description is particularly useful, as it stresses that logical force rather than rhetorical flourish was the basis for the power of Kennedy’s sermons: the construction of an exegetical and theological argument with unanswerable force and direct and pointed application.

Journalist James Barron added a further salient testimony to Kennedy’s effect in the pulpit:

John Kennedy was an orator capable of moving any assembly in the world. He deserves to be named among the finest speakers of his day. It has been the privilege of the present writer to hear most of the great speakers of the time; and he has no hesitation in saying that for sheer power over an audience – power refined as well as impressive – he has heard none to surpass Dr Kennedy at his best. His sermons and addresses consisted of close, compact reasoning, fused with passion and lighted up with imagination. Circumstances placed Dr Kennedy in a corner of Scotland, but in natural gifts, especially as preacher and debater, he was the peer of any man in English speaking lands.⁶⁰

Again, he stressed the importance of Kennedy’s flow of reasoned argument to the force of his preaching, with the effect only heightened by his additional qualities of passion and imagination. Another former hearer, who placed Kennedy on a par with Spurgeon himself, observed that his ‘preaching went forth with the greatest authority to compel, as it were, submission, while the heavenly sweetness of the Gospel message, as delivered by him, was very winning’.⁶¹ He thus concurred that Kennedy’s solid content was complemented by effective presentation: the argument compelled his hearers, but the sweetness won them over.

Unfortunately, Kennedy’s depth of thought could make him challenging to appreciate. A Highland church historian recorded of one of the ‘Men’, George Grant of Brora: ‘He was a great admirer of Dr Kennedy, Dingwall, and his fine mind and rich Christian experience helped him to understand the flights of that eminent preacher’,⁶² which suggested that many may have struggled to follow the more intellectually demanding and experimentally mature passages of his sermons. This was further borne out by the record that, on an announcement that he was coming to assist at the Kilmallie communion, one commented: ‘What is the use of his coming, for they say his preaching is so profound, that we in Lochaber cannot understand him?’⁶³ Norman Macfarlane recorded the comment of at least one sermon that ‘no-one could understand’ it.⁶⁴ This would tend to suggest a self-indulgent use of the pulpit for a display of theological acumen, rather than an exercise in profitable communication. If this had been generally typical of Kennedy’s public preaching, then he would have been shooting far over the heads of most of his hearers, many of whom had little or no formal education. However, given the many testimonies of the usefulness of Kennedy’s preaching to individuals, even those without much theological understanding, it is likely that this was an occasional rather than habitual failing. Equally, for those who could follow his thought on the occasion of these more demanding flights, this depth must have added richness to his presentation of Christian doctrine.

Overall, Kennedy’s regular teaching ministry seems to have been generally very effective in communicating theological instruction. One hearer, for example, found his youthful mind absorbed with Dr Kennedy’s entrancing presentation of the Saviour King executing the plan of salvation. The youth was also captivated by the intellectual vitality of the presentation that gave freshness, vigour, and a new significance to the great doctrines of grace.⁶⁵

Another contemporary tribute praised his ‘vivacity’ in preaching,⁶⁶ while a recent writer remarked, on the basis of such testimony, that Kennedy’s sermons ‘came across to his contemporaries as stylish and thrilling’, and thus he ‘succeeded in being a modern preacher’.⁶⁷ The result was that Kennedy excelled as an evangelistic preacher. The journalist and Free Church elder Archibald MacNeilage commented in a published letter: ‘The greatest preacher, the fullest and freest exponent of the glorious Gospel of free grace some of us have ever known, was Dr Kennedy of Dingwall’.⁶⁸ One account suggests that this was not a feature of the early stages of his ministry, but was the result of an experience he had during the course of his ministry. John Macleod, a Free Church minister of the early twentieth century, described it as follows, in his sketch of the life of Archibald Crawford, a noted elder from Cowal:

Dr Kennedy was laid aside with a somewhat serious illness at the time. Crawford was shown in to his bedroom, and sympathised with him in his trouble. “Yes,” said the Doctor, “I am laid aside for the time, and I have learned the reason for it.” “If that be the case,” said Crawford, “there is no need for me to tell you.” From the time he recovered from this illness there was a change in Dr Kennedy’s preaching. It had always been full and richly doctrinal… The new note that was to be detected in his subsequent teaching was the emphasis that he laid on the hearer’s responsibility for receiving the Gospel.⁶⁹

Whatever the substance to the change suggested in this passage, Kennedy certainly never lacked clear emphasis on the urgency of a Gospel response, based on the evidences available with which his ministry may be assessed.

His evangelistic preaching often had a real individual impact upon his hearers, some of whom experienced evangelical conversion through his ministry. For example, one writer referred to being ‘aroused, I trust, by the Spirit of God, under the searching, winsome, and impressive preaching of Dr Kennedy, of Dingwall’.⁷⁰ Similarly, Rev Donald Macfarlane recorded visiting a dying lady in Fodderty in 1907, stating: ‘She mentioned that it was under the preaching of Dr Kennedy, from Revelation 3:20,⁷¹ she was first moved to concern about her soul’.⁷² Another sketch recounted how ‘One man, burdened by sin, walked many miles to hear Dr Kennedy and said later, “He showed me all my heart and into its bleeding wound he poured the oil of consolation”’.⁷³ These three accounts all emphasised two aspects of evangelistic preaching present in Kennedy’s sermons: the solemn exposure of sin, warning of the judgment of God; and the gracious offer of the Gospel, promising salvation in Christ to all who come to Him. They are also indicative that many individuals came to know the comfort of assurance of salvation through his evangelistic ministry, and must therefore have felt deep gratitude towards him as an instrument in their personal experience of conversion.

In other cases, Kennedy’s sermons led individuals through significant developments in their spiritual lives. A notable elder from Sutherland, Duncan Macrae, ‘told a friend that when hearing the late Dr Kennedy at Creich he came to the decision to confess Christ before men by obeying the Saviour’s dying command [i.e. to participate in communion]’.⁷⁴ Another kind of impact was recorded in the life of John Noble, then working in Dingwall as a draper’s assistant, ‘where, at the impressionable stage, he came under the influence of that prince of Highland preachers, Dr John Kennedy, with the result that eventually he decided to study for the ministry’; he subsequently became minister of Lairg Free Church.⁷⁵

Kennedy’s preaching also had an impact in the general encouragement of Christians throughout the Highlands, such that Auld remarks, perhaps with some hyperbole: ‘We venture to affirm that there were few living Christians in the northern counties of Scotland who were not in their day indebted to Mr Kennedy for the reviving and strengthening of their spiritual life’.⁷⁶ One interesting case was that of Archibald Crawford, later a prominent elder in the early days of the Free Presbyterian Church. He testified to experiencing at one stage in his life a deep spiritual thirst, despite hearing many of the eminent preachers of the day, which troubled him particularly as he led a Friday-night house meeting to which others came for spiritual guidance. His biographer records that at last he went to hear Kennedy at a communion:

He was highly satisfied with the teaching that Dr Kennedy gave, yet he got nothing that touched the sore spot in his heart until the last service of the communion season on the Monday evening.

As the preacher was drawing to a close, Crawford, as always, was sitting sedately, looking, not at the preacher, but, as it were, at a desk two or three seats in front of where he sat. Dr Kennedy said, ‘You are here’ – Crawford lifted up his head and their eyes met – ‘you are here, and you have left your children at home crying for hunger, and you have nothing to give them. No, should you scrape the meal-chest you could not gather enough to colour the water. But wait; I hear a knock at the door. What is this? Here is a man with a sack of meal on his shoulder. What is in the sack? “My grace is sufficient for thee, My strength is made perfect in weakness”. Put that in your meal-chest and go and feed your children. But wait; I hear another knock. Who is this? Here is another man with a sack of meal on his shoulder. And what is in that sack? “I will never leave thee, I will never, never forsake thee”. Go and put that in your meal-chest and feed your children’.

When the service was over, Dr Kennedy sat still in the pulpit, and Crawford remained in his seat until the way was open. Kennedy came down from the pulpit, and Crawford went up the aisle to meet him. They shook hands and kissed each other. That was their first introduction, and from that moment they were the closest of friends.⁷⁷

This passage testified to the vivid, rhetorical style of Kennedy’s preaching, to its striking appropriateness to the felt needs of his hearers, and its basis in the application of appropriate passages of Scripture to answer their difficulties. A comparable account was given by a Lairg elder, Angus Gray: ‘He spoke of the love of Christ, and so described my case that I was drunk with joy, and when I came out of the church I might as well have been in a foreign land for all I knew where I was… It was the greatest day I ever had in the world’.⁷⁸ Again, Kennedy had addressed specific concerns with such precision as to offer profound spiritual comfort.

Auld recorded a notable instance of such encouragement in a situation of spiritual difficulty, in the case of a young man who later entered the Free Church ministry.⁷⁹ The man was doubting the reality of his own salvation due to his perceived lack of spiritual mindedness, but went a distance to hear Kennedy preach, consequently arriving late:

Just as we entered the church, the preacher gave out the text (Isaiah 55:1): ‘Ho! Every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters’, etc. He began by opening up the free and wide invitation of the Gospel to all classes of sinners; and I felt that though he was a most attractive speaker, and I could not help listening to every word he said, yet it was not the proclamation of the Gospel I was in quest of, but how to get the Gospel to influence my heart and life. At length, after showing the adaptation of the ‘call’ in the text to the various thirsts of mankind – their thirsts for happiness, for peace, for rest – he said, ‘But there is one here today who says, ‘You have not mentioned my thirst yet; my thirst is for holiness, for such a knowledge of Christ as would subdue sin in me and weaken my heart-corruption’. This arrested me, and I listened as if I were the person spoken to when he added, ‘My dear, dear friend, if that is your case – if you do thirst for Christ in order to the crucifixion of all sin within you, and in order to your becoming conformed to His holy image – let me tell you, in His name, you shall yet be as free of sin as if you had never known it; yea, you shall yet be satisfied with the fellowship of Christ and with likeness to Him throughout the endless ages of eternity’!

The glowing fervour, yet deep solemnity, with which he uttered these words quite overcame me, and as he went on to prove the truth of what he had stated, my enjoyment was such, that it was as a begun heaven.⁸⁰

This account underlined the importance of Kennedy’s preaching to particular individual cases, and the spiritual comfort he was able to bring through teaching Christian doctrine on the basis of thorough Biblical exegesis.

Equally, there were testimonies of special comfort received through his preaching on particular doctrinal subjects, as one biographical sketch attests:

A Stornoway hearer testified, “The manifestations I had that day of the glorious majesty, worthiness and suitableness of the Lord Jesus Christ in all His mediatorial offices, I never experienced before, nor indeed to the same extent since. I can never forget it”. […] A Dundee man wrote to Dr Kennedy: “I desire to bless God for having heard you. Your sermon on the electing love of God was a seasonable message to my soul, clearing difficulties and confirming me in the truth.”⁸¹

These statements indicated that Kennedy’s didactic preaching was not stale or predictable, but fresh and vibrant, opening up new avenues of thought and addressing queries and problems in the minds of his hearers. The result, as in both of these cases, was a highly memorable spiritual encouragement, that promoted a direct and personal gratitude to the preacher as the instrument of this felt blessing. David Budge, a Caithness man, experienced this preaching as the restoration of past spiritual comfort, and expressed his gratitude, testifying: ‘Mr Kennedy above others is a means of warming my cold heart and reviving something of the love of days gone by’.⁸² Another to express this gratitude was Duncan Crawford from Oban, who was so disappointed with the succession of preachers in a period of vacancy in his congregation that he reportedly felt ‘a suspicion of the ministry in general’. But he then heard Kennedy at a Greenock communion, and afterwards declared: “I went to Greenock and heard Dr Kennedy, and as another said, ‘whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell’. From that day, the Gospel ministry was lifted for me out of the mud, and remained ever since what it ought to be in every Christian man’s estimation.”⁸³

In this case, Crawford’s gratitude extended to the whole ministry, as he recognised the value that preaching can have in the personal spiritual life; but it was obvious that the primary recipient of his appreciation was Kennedy himself. Donald Munro of Lairg left a more traditional tribute to Kennedy, in his Gaelic poem, Lament on the death of Dr John Kennedy who was in Dingwall, which undermines many of the stereotypes of the Highland ministry. He wrote of Dingwall mourning Kennedy’s ‘comely handsome face / Lit up with love / Never to be seen there again’.⁸⁴ He went on to echo the impact felt on individual lives through his ministry:

Many are the orphans that your death
Left behind; and indeed they feel
They have a reason to sorrow,
For they have lost one who was blessed
With gifts and grace, to speak
To ones in bondage.
Great indeed were the gifts
And wonderful that were given to you –
The strong natural parts,
And also the graces:
The abundant anointing,
And also the acute reasoning,
Made you special among your brethren –
Even all your brethren.⁸⁵

The appreciation of Kennedy’s preaching ministry gave him unparalleled influence over the Highland Christianity of his day. Even the church historian J.R. Fleming, writing from a standpoint wholly unsympathetic to Kennedy’s views on church questions, acknowledged that he was ‘a preacher of evangelical zeal and mystical temperament who deservedly wielded no little influence over the people of the North’.⁸⁶ Furthermore, the nineteenth century Highlanders were noted in any case for their respect for the ministry. Nicoll gave important testimony on this point: ‘The devotion of the Highland people to their great ministers was touched with awe. They looked on them as high priests entering the holiest place and receiving spiritual tokens’.⁸⁷ This gave an individual of Kennedy’s gifts a huge stature within his community. A later writer could discuss ‘the far-famed John Kennedy who, for forty years, had the Highlands at his feet’.⁸⁸ Crucially, however, Kennedy used his influence, both as a preacher and as an ecclesiastical leader, to promote in the Highlands the sort of rigorous, Reformed and thoroughly confessional evangelicalism that was generally out of fashion in nineteenth-century Scottish Presbyterianism. The influence of his preaching ministry must therefore be accounted a significant factor in the conservative stance of the Highland Church in the controversies of the next generation. Kennedy’s preaching ministry underlines the importance of the work of faithful Scriptural exposition, experimental application and earnest evangelistic appeal. Where such ministry is prioritised, the Church of Christ will benefit.

Footnotes

1
Innes MacRae, Dingwall Free Church: the story of 100 years and more (Dingwall, 1970), 7. ↩︎
2
Douglas Ansdell, The People of the Great Faith: The Highland Church, 1690-1900 (Stornoway, 1998), 14. ↩︎
3
James Sievewright, Memoirs of the late Rev. Alexander Stewart, D.D. (Edinburgh, 1822), esp. 216–354. ↩︎
4
Sievewright, Alexander Stewart, 261-2, 346. ↩︎
5
MacRae, Dingwall Free Church, 10-2. ↩︎
6
MacRae, Dingwall Free Church, 10-2; Report, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 3 May 1884. ↩︎
7
John Noble, ‘Memoir of the Rev John Kennedy, D.D.’ (xxix-clxi) in John Kennedy, The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire [first pub. 1861], [New and Enlarged Edition], (Inverness, 1897), lii. ↩︎
8
MacRae, Dingwall Free Church, 10,-6. MacRae prints a handsome painting of this church building. ↩︎
9
MacRae, Dingwall Free Church, 10–2. ↩︎
10
C.f. John B. Orr. The Scotch Church Crisis: The full story of the modern phase of the Presbyterian struggle (Glasgow, 1905), 85n. ↩︎
11
MS Minute Book of Free Presbytery of Dingwall, 24. ↩︎
12
John Fraser, ‘Rev John Kennedy, D.D.’, in Disruption Worthies of the Highlands (1886), accessed online (17.11.2014) at URL: http://highlandchristianity.blogspot.co.uk/p/john-kennedy.html. ↩︎
13
Report, Aberdeen Journal, 9 September 1857. ↩︎
14
Maurice J. Roberts, ‘John Kennedy of Dingwall’ (4-31), The Banner of Truth, (August-September 1984), 19. ↩︎
15
MacRae, Dingwall Free Church, 10-20. MacRae thus corrects an erroneous estimate of 45 members. ↩︎
16
MacRae, Dingwall Free Church, 12-3. ↩︎
17
Donald Macleod, “The Highland Churches Today’ (146-76), in James Kirk, ed., The Church in the Highlands (Edinburgh, 1998), 154-5. ↩︎
18
‘The Late Dr Kennedy of Dingwall’, The Signal, iii, 6 (June 1884), 161–7. ↩︎
19
Allan Macdonald MacKillop, A Goodly Heritage, Sine Martin, ed., (Inverness, 1988), 101. ↩︎
20
Norman C. Macfarlane, ‘John Kennedy’, in Apostles of the North (Stornoway, 1931), accessed online (22.05.14) at URL: http://highlandchristianity.blogspot.co.uk/p/john-kennedy-by-norman-c-macfarlane.html. ↩︎
21
MacKillop, A Goodly Heritage, 103. ↩︎
22
MacRae, Dingwall Free Church, 16ff. ↩︎
23
Report, Aberdeen Journal, 3 May 1884. ↩︎
24
Roberts, ‘John Kennedy of Dingwall’, 19. ↩︎
25
Report, Caledonian Mercury, 4 June 1849. ↩︎
26
[Anon], In Memoriam, Rev John Kennedy, D.D. (Inverness, n.d., 1884), 98. The Metaphor is a telling one, referring to the Biblical account of Elisha succeeding Elijah as God’s prophet in 2 Kings 2:13-5. ↩︎
27
In Memoriam, Kennedy, 54. This figure may not be much of an exaggeration; Kennedy’s fellow Highland minister Gustavus Aird assisted 23 communions (i.e. out of 52 weekends) in 1887, c.f. Allan W. MacColl, Land, Faith, and the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 2006), 185. ↩︎
28
Archibald Auld, Memorials of Caithness Ministers (Edinburgh, 1911), 253. ↩︎
29
Alexander MacRae, Life of Gustavus Aird, A.M., D.D. (Stirling, 1908), 137. ↩︎
30
Report, Glasgow Herald, 29 April 1884. ↩︎
31
Alan P.F. Sell, Defending and Declaring the Faith: Some Scottish Examples, 1860–1920 (Exeter, 1987), 228, n.7. ↩︎
32
Bertha Porter, ‘John Kennedy (1819–1884)’ in Dictionary of National Biography, xxx, (1885–1900), accessed online (17.11.14) at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kennedy,_John_(1819–1884)_(DNB00). ↩︎
33
Ewing, Annals, I, 235. ↩︎
34
Renfield had previously been pastored by a Highlander, Duncan MacNab, but following Kennedy’s refusal of the call, the minister was the English-born higher-critic Marcus Dods, c.f. Ewing, Annals, I, 53, 252. The fact that a congregation could extend consecutive calls to two ministers of such radically different views indicates how unapparent were the divergent trajectories in the Free Church in the early 1860s. ↩︎
35
Report, Aberdeen Journal, 9 September 1857. The prior ministers were John MacRae (1794–1876), who had retired, c.f. G.N.M. Collins, Big MacRae: Rev John MacRae, Memorials of a Notable Ministry (Edinburgh, 1976); and Charles Calder Mackintosh (1806–68), c.f. W. Taylor, ed., Memorials of the Life and the Ministry of Charles Calder Mackintosh (Edinburgh, 1870), who had accepted a call to Dunoon. ↩︎
36
Greenock Free Gaelic Church instead called Kennedy’s cousin, John Kennedy (1833–70), in 1859, and thereafter in 1873 successfully called Murdoch MacAskill (1838–1903), who went on to succeed Kennedy himself in Dingwall in 1884, c.f. Ewing, Annals, I, 199, 214. ↩︎
37
Report, The Scotsman, 2 October 1871. ↩︎
38
Roberts, ‘John Kennedy of Dingwall’, 30. ↩︎
39
‘The Late Dr Kennedy of Dingwall’, 161-7. ↩︎
40
Report, Dundee Courier, 8 October 1883. ↩︎
41
Ian R. MacDonald, Aberdeen and the Highland Church, 1785-1900, (Edinburgh, 2000), 270. ↩︎
42
Alexander Auld, Life of John Kennedy, (London, 1887), 126; The Late Dr Kennedy of Dingwall’, 161-7. ↩︎
43
Report, Aberdeen Journal, 27 August 1873. ↩︎
44
Auld, Life of John Kennedy, 126–33. ↩︎
45
As by the Ross Synod, to be Professor of Systematic Theology, Report, The Scotsman, 19 April 1872; and by the Argyll Synod, to be Church History Professor, Report, The Scotsman, 27 April 1872. Both vacancies were in the Free Church College, Glasgow, and were filled by J.S. Candlish and T.M. Lindsay respectively. ↩︎
46
Report, The Scotsman, 18 November 1875. ↩︎
47
Ewing, Annals, I, 44–5. ↩︎
48
As asserted in John Kennedy, Sermons [First pub. 1885], (Inverness, 1888), viii. ↩︎
49
In 1849 and 1863, c.f. Ewing, Annals I, 44-5. ↩︎
50
Fraser, ‘Rev John Kennedy’; William Robertson Nicoll, ‘The Religion of the Scottish Highlands’, British Weekly, lxxxiii 4m (1 June 1888); Auld, Life of John Kennedy. ↩︎
51
Nicoll, ‘Religion of the Highlands’. ↩︎
52
Macleod, Scottish Theology, 327. ↩︎
53
Jason Barron, ‘Memoir of Rev John Kennedy, D.D., Dingwall’, originally published in installments in the Inverness Courier, 1893; accessed online (17.11.14) at URL: http://nesherchristianresources.org/ JBS/kennedy/Memoir_of_Dr_Kennedy.html. ↩︎
54
Donald Beaton, Some Noted Ministers of the Northern Highlands [first pub. 1929], (Glasgow, 1985), 274. ↩︎
55
William Walker, Additional reminiscences and a belated class-book: King’s College, 1836-40 (Aberdeen, 1906), 33-4. ↩︎
56
Quoted in [Anonymous], ‘The Prince of Highland Preachers: A Sketch of Dr John Kennedy of Dingwall’, accessed online (15.11.14) at URL: http://reformedbooksonline.com/scottish-theology/free-church-of-scotland/kennedy-john-of-dingwall/the-prince-of-highland-preachers/. ↩︎
57
Macfarlane, ‘John Kennedy’. ↩︎
58
Roberts, ‘John Kennedy of Dingwall’, 13. ↩︎
59
All three quoted in Roberts, ‘John Kennedy of Dingwall’, 2. ↩︎
60
Barron, ‘Memoir of John Kennedy’. ↩︎
61
J.K. Cameron, The Clerkship of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland (Inverness, 1938), 99. ↩︎
62
Donald Munro, Records of Grace in Sutherland (Edinburgh, 1953), 44. ↩︎
63
Neil Cameron, Ministers and Men of the Free Presbyterian Church (Glasgow, 1993), 109. Cameron records that the other aptly replied: ‘There are men Lochaber who will not leave a bait on his hook’! ↩︎
64
Macfarlane, Apostles of the North, 93. ↩︎
65
Donald Maclean, ‘Memoir of Rev John Noble’ (xvii-lxxv), in John Noble, Religious Life in Ross (Inverness, 1909), xxiii. ↩︎
66
The Late Dr Kennedy of Dingwall’, 161-7. ↩︎
67
MacDonald, Aberdeen and the Highland Church, 271. ↩︎
68
Letter, Glasgow Herald, 19 September 1892. ↩︎
69
John Macleod, ‘An Argyllshire Worthy’ (231-85), in G.N.M. Collins, John Macleod, D.D. (Edinburgh, 1951), 262. ↩︎
70
‘Mr Alex Ross, of Manchester and China’, quoted in James S. Sinclair, ed., Rich Gleanings After the Vintage from ‘Rabbi’ Duncan (London, 1925), 6. ↩︎
71
A classic text of Gospel invitation, ‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me’. ↩︎
72
Quoted in Donald Beaton, Memoir and Remains of Rev Donald Macfarlane (Glasgow, 1929), 122. ↩︎
73
[Anonymous], ‘The Prince of Highland Preachers’. ↩︎
74
George Macdonald, Men of Sutherland [first pub. 1937], (Dornoch, 2014), 141. ↩︎
75
Munro, Records of Grace, 112. ↩︎
76
Auld, Life of John Kennedy, 96. ↩︎
77
Macleod, ‘An Argyllshire‘, 250-1. ↩︎
78
Niel M. Ross, ‘Introduction – A Prince Among Preachers’ (vii-xxv), in John Kennedy, Sermon Notes 1859-1865 (Lochmaddy, 2007), xvii. ↩︎
79
From dates and initials given by Auld, probably Henry Shepherd from Dundee, later minister of Cambuslang, a reminder that Kennedy’s serious spiritual ministry was not restricted to Highlanders, ↩︎
80
Auld, Life of John Kennedy, 105. ↩︎
81
[Anonymous], ‘The Prince of Highland Preachers’. ↩︎
82
Quoted in Ross, ‘A Prince Among Preachers’, xvii. ↩︎
83
Quoted in Cameron, Ministers and Men, 121; the quotation is from 2 Corinthians 12:2, generally understood to refer to a spiritual experience of the Apostle Paul. ↩︎
84
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), 8 ↩︎
85
Munro, ‘Lament on the Death of Dr. John Kennedy’, 9-10. ↩︎
86
J.R. Fleming, A History of the Church of Scotland, 1843-1874 (Edinburgh, 1927), 180. ↩︎
87
Nicoll, ‘Religion of the Highlands’. ↩︎
88
‘Dingwall Free Church’ (47-8), Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland (March 1970), 47. ↩︎

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