3. Days of Gospel Blessing
To what extent was there fruit from Kennedy’s labours? Obviously, only a general answer can be given. Auld spoke of his preaching being blessed to the conversion “of not a few”. But he felt able to state without hesitation another result of his ministry: how largely it “was owned as the means of enlightening, instructing and encouraging the hearts of thousands of the followers of Christ throughout” the north of Scotland. He adds, “If the Highlanders are generally regarded as a moral, Bible-reading, Sabbath-keeping, law-abiding people, they owe it largely to the teaching and preaching of such men as Mr Kennedy”.^2^ How much, sadly, has changed since then!
As an example of the effects of Kennedy’s preaching, we may take the testimony of someone whose initials were HS and later became a Free Church minister: “I was concerned as to my state before God, as being responsible for not fulfilling the end for which man was created: to glorify and enjoy God. I was much troubled by the sinfulness of my nature, for although restrained from open sins, yet the bent of my mind was earthly and carnal; and even when attempting spiritual duties, vain thoughts and worldly imaginations would overpower me, so that I seemed to be aggravating my sin by engaging in the forms of religion. It is true that I believed that Christ had fulfilled the law of God in behalf of His people, but my faith gave me no comfort; rather the reverse, for it seemed ineffectual in making me conformed to Christ and spiritually-minded; so I concluded it was not genuine.”
This man heard that Kennedy was to preach 12 miles from where he lived. He took longer walking there than he expected and arrived just in time to hear the preacher give out his text: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters . . .” (Is 55:1). The man described Kennedy’s sermon and his own reaction: “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’.”
This hearer was conscious of “the growing fervour, yet deep solemnity,” of Kennedy’s words, and they “quite overcame” him, so that he experienced what he called “a begun heaven”. He added that the preacher “exhibited Christ as the living waters to which the text invited, not only as by His atoning death satisfying the sinner’s thirst for peace with God, but as also in His risen life procuring the outflow of the Holy Spirit to dwell in the hearts of those who responded to the call, and then traced up all to the fountain of God’s sovereign grace, given in Christ Jesus before the world began” (pp 104-6). This is only one of many testimonies to the blessing that rested on Kennedy’s preaching which Auld records in his biography of Kennedy, and the number who benefited from his preaching, not only in Dingwall, but much more widely, cannot be estimated.
A Skyeman who attended a communion season in Stornoway recorded the “extraordinary liberty” Kennedy experienced in preaching on the Sabbath morning, as he declared “the glorious majesty, love, worthiness, beauty and suitableness of the Lord Jesus Christ in all His mediatorial offices”. Someone else, possibly in Inverness, who had often heard Kennedy preach, commented that he “was chiefly useful in solving the difficulties of the Christian life and in enlightening and comforting the Lord’s true people. But there were fruits of another kind also. A woman who was the terror of my childhood, and her tongue the scourge of the district, was, under the preaching of Mr Kennedy, quickened into a new life which was so clearly manifested in after years that anyone could see the serpent transformed into the dove. She was long known as a consistent Christian. . . . Three of her children likewise profess to have received the like precious faith through the same ministry as was blessed to their mother” (p 113).
Somebody who knew Kennedy personally spoke of “his sympathy with all spiritual and even speculative difficulties”, and went on, “None knew better the depths of doubt and unbelief into which men’s minds are prone to fall, and none was more skillful and successful in dealing with such cases. . . . These he met with all the resources of his large experience and with the light which the unerring Word of God brought to bear upon them. . . . A more tender hand in dealing with spiritual concerns was never exercised by anyone. He was certainly mindful of the bruised reed and smoking flax. At the same time, he had no sympathy with, and gave no support to, those who merely made difficulties and doubts the apology and lever for overthrowing or unsettling faith in the fundamental truths of the Word of God. . . . There were few who could more effectively dispose of error or more scathingly expose the insincere. He held that the highest flights of reason ought to be submitted in the last resort to the light of revelation. . . . Frequently did he use, in the fullest import, the words that end all controversy for faith, ‘Thus saith the Lord'” (pp 120-1).
An insight into his personal experiences is given in the following extract from his diary entry for 14 January 1845: “My soul for some time in a very unpromising state. My backslidden state is indicated by my formality in private duties, little soul-wrestling with God, and no true enjoyment in reading the Word, but the form gone through in a slavish spirit; by the want of spiritual meditation on the truth . . . unwatchfulness and untenderness to sin in conversation, in the employment of my time, and in contact with temptation in duty. . . . Self appearing in everything; every duty is besmeared with it, every motive impelled by it. . . .
“After writing the above I addressed myself to prayer, and after a few minutes of darkness and temptation, the Lord was pleased to give me a wonderful enlargement of soul, in which I was drawn forth in earnest longing after Christ, saw somewhat of His excellency, and felt somewhat of His wondrous love, in drawing out my bowels after Him, and I found freedom in pleading for my congregation, friends and acquaintances in Christ, for the Church and for the service of tomorrow” (pp 98-99).
A few days later he wrote, “More lively impressions of eternity and my need of the blood of Christ. Pleading for a broken and a contrite spirit, that I may value precious Christ and because Jehovah promises to dwell with it” – with the broken and contrite spirit (p 99).
His varying feelings about his work are revealed in a diary entry written a few days later: “Preached with more than usual liberty on Sabbath, but self prevailed, and I was left in a dismal state all the week after. . . . Preached in chains from Matthew 22:1, and with more liberty from Hebrews 12:28,29. The same liberty at Kiltearn, from John 6:37 (pp 99-100).
In the course of his ministry, Kennedy had calls from Dunoon, Tain, Glasgow and Australia, and in a letter from Gairloch in 1872 he refers to a second call to the Gaelic congregation in Greenock: “At present I can see nothing that indicates I should part with my present charge, and am writing tonight to Greenock with a view of stopping further proceedings. I desiderate, however, still more assurance that my doing so is according to the mind of God; but I have long since come to the conclusion that dubiety suffices to justify one’s remaining where he is. . . . Meantime, as my duty, when I came to Dingwall, was made very clear to me, I must abide there until it is made as clear to me that I should leave it.”
In the same letter Kennedy comments on the communion season he was then attending in Gairloch: “Today I had more of understanding than of heart-work, but at least I was conscious of how far short my feeling was of my thinking. When the mind gets what whets the heart’s thirst, though this adds to the pain, it yields some profit. I had a solemnising view since coming here of God’s long-suffering. . . . It suspends the execution of the curse of the first covenant and gives opportunity for the forth flow of the grace of the second” (p 82).
The amount of work that Kennedy accomplished is scarcely credible. In the middle of October 1870 he speaks of having preached three sermons in Dingwall on the Sabbath; on the Tuesday he took part in an induction service; and he travelled to Burghead, on the Moray coast, to preach there on the Thursday. In November of the following year he lists first his three sermons on a Sabbath; that evening he “made a few visits to sick people”; on the Monday he preached three times; on the Tuesday he preached once, performed a baptism and delivered what he calls a “lecture” in the evening (presumably the address at the prayer meeting); on the Wednesday there was an English “lecture” and prayer meeting. And one questions if the rest of the week was free from public duties, though he does describe this as a time of “an unusual amount of work”. He also mentions that he has “been better in health greatly than for some time” (p 129).
In the summer of 1872 Kennedy speaks of having spent a number of weeks at successive communion seasons throughout the Highlands; he did not feel any weariness “while the work and the sweetness lasted”. But he did confess that a reaction set in afterwards through “overwork” (p 131). In Caithness, in particular, there were many who valued Kennedy’s preaching. Auld comments, “How cheerfully they followed him in his varied labours!” David Steven was one of them; he wrote, “Mr Kennedy gives evidence that he is a minister of the Lord’s own making” (p 145). Another highly-esteemed Caithness worthy said of the Dingwall minister: He “above others is a means of warming my cold heart and reviving something of the love of days gone by” (p 146). Yet Kennedy himself spoke of feeling that he was “more ignorant and unwise than ever” (p 147).
^1^Last month’s article gave some further information about Kennedy’s spiritual experience, before going on to speak of him being settled as the Free Church minister in Dingwall.
^2^Alexander Auld, John Kennedy, DD, London, 1887, p 96. Unidentified quotations in this paper are from this volume.