4. Concern About Spiritual Declension
As Kennedy grew older, he was becoming increasingly concerned about the standard of religion in his time. He looked back to the most godly people of previous generations, noting that “they knew that there is a scriptural standard by which to try . . . [spiritual] experience as surely as faith and life. They were accustomed to think that there are certain essentials in the process by which sinners are brought to Christ and are prepared for heaven, and in the consciousness which that work of grace produces. . . . They may have, sometimes, unduly prescribed a certain order, and excessive minuteness of detail, in one’s consciousness of the great change . . . but they surely were right in thinking that there is a work within the souls of the saved, and a change of mind and feeling resulting from it, on which the light of truth must be brought to bear, in order to its being tested. They were accustomed to think, and to teach, that there may be counterfeits of that work. They knew, they felt and they taught that Satan can act as ‘an angel of light’ in constructing ‘a form of godliness’.” Hence, as Kennedy well knew, the need for self-examination and for discrimination in receiving professed converts to church membership.
He also warned against the danger of those who are assumed to be converted being sent out too soon to serve in the Lord’s vineyard. Before such “novices” were sent out into public service, previous generations looked for a “humble spirit, careful abstinence from the ways of the world, and the faithful discharge of domestic duties”.2
It is helpful to note what Kennedy believed to be the elements of “the preaching which the Lord singularly blessed in times past in Scotland”, particularly as this indicates what he believed were the elements of the preaching he himself ought to address to his own congregation and others. These elements were: “1. An exposition of the claims, and a faithful proclamation of the terrors, of the law of works. 2. A stern insisting on the necessity of regeneration by the creative power of the Holy Ghost. 3. A careful tracing of all salvation to the sovereign electing love of God. 4. A painstaking presentation of the scriptural doctrine of Christ’s Person. 5. A clear statement of the doctrine of the atonement – Messiah the substitute of the unjust, divine blood the purchase price, elect sinners the bought people, and peace and salvation to the purchased people, [as] the unfailing result of the death on the cross. 6. A fuller declaration of the doctrines of grace according to the federal [that is, covenant] system of theology. 7. A scriptural delineation of the exercises of spiritual life in the souls of the regenerated. 8. A searching examination of the grounds on which a religious profession may be based, and of the fruits by which a true profession can be accredited. 9. A zealous declaration of the unchanging authority of the moral law as administered by Christ, and a careful unfolding of its claims to the obedience of all who believe. And 10. A clear, unhesitating proclamation of the gospel call to every sinner, as giving him a warrant to come for a free and full salvation to Christ, and assuring him that every coming sinner shall be saved, and leaving all excuseless who refuse to come.”3
Late 1874 saw Kennedy noting to a correspondent that he had been “unusually occupied”. In addition to preaching, he had been occupied in “writing on these trying church questions”. He was readier to produce pamphlets than to speak at the General Assembly, leading his friend Hugh Martin to lament, “What a pity that our brother Kennedy’s modesty muzzles him on the floor of the Assembly”.4 Later Kennedy himself was to state, “Little did I think when I first entered on the service of the gospel that I would be called to take any part in ecclesiastical discussions. I had no conscious aptness for such work and was not at all disposed to qualify for it” (p 188).
Kennedy mentions in 1871 that he was “much occupied” in “classifying all the sayings of Christ recorded in the Gospels”. He wanted “to arrange and harmonise” what Christ said to enquirers, to the multitude, and to gainsayers to provide “a system of doctrine, giving a summary of Christ’s teaching as a directory to preachers, and then print these and other sayings to produce “a series of lessons suited for general readers” (p 129). But his other responsibilities made him question if he would ever be able to complete this work, and he never did.
One of the earlier “trying church questions” had been the proposal for union between the Free and United Presbyterian Churches. When, in 1863, a committee was appointed in the Free Church to hold discussions with a corresponding United Presbyterian committee, Kennedy was appointed a member. The committees were to examine the points of agreement between the Churches, and it became clear to him that there were significant differences between them, particularly on the atonement and on the establishment principle. Kennedy could not see how these differences could be resolved and he resigned from the Committee.
Speaking in the Synod of Ross, on the proposed union, he spoke of what a United Presbyterian minister on the Committee had said about the double reference theory of the atonement – that Christ had died for the sins of all, but that His saving benefits are applied only to the elect. Kennedy went on to say that he held it “to be a dangerous error. I cannot conceive of a man maintaining this view and, at the same time, maintaining clearly and firmly the doctrine of substitution, and I cannot see how one who does not hold firmly by the doctrine of substitution can hold intelligently the doctrine of an atonement at all.”5 The proposals for union were dropped in 1873 because of the disunion that they created within the Free Church.
During this controversy, William Arnot, a Free Church minister in Edinburgh, spoke in the General Assembly immediately after Kennedy. In his speech, which was in favour of union with the United Presbyterian Church, Arnot expressed the wish that “we may be enabled to conduct the argument as Mr Kennedy has conducted it”.6 It was concern arising out of this controversy that led Kennedy to write his volume, Man’s Relations to God, in the Light of the Present Truth. It contained, of course, excellent material, but it was not considered to be altogether successful in its treatment of the subject.
When, in 1879, there was a “proposal to attach to the [Westminster] Confession of Faith a Declaratory Statement”, Kennedy wrote that the “distinctive Calvinism” of the Confession was “utterly repudiated” by the Statement, “and United Presbyterian subscribers of the Confession are allowed liberty to believe as much or as little of it as they are disposed” to receive.7 No doubt if he had lived to see the similar document adopted by the Free Church he would have made identical comments.
Speaking more generally, Kennedy noted, in what was originally a series of newspaper articles, that “the religious community” was “in a state of drift”. He went on: “In every department there is a movement away from old positions. Orthodoxy is regarded as a sign of stagnation and bondage. Only men who cannot keep pace with the progress of the times can be content to remain on the old dogmatic ground.”8 His writing in most of this paragraph (much of it not quoted here) is heavy with irony, but these were serious warnings, which sadly went largely unheeded. He was conscious that professors of theology in Scotland were appropriating the unbelieving ideas being propagated in Germany (in particular, the so-called higher criticism) and were influencing “the rising ministry and the people to forget that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the gospel is the only ‘word of salvation’”.9 And the long-term result is that Scotland is now almost entirely secular.
Kennedy complained too of people who “look with contempt on the conduct of those who endeavour to present any obstruction to the encroachments of worldliness on . . . religion. These are held up as superstitious who claim a hearing from God when, on other days than Sabbath, He calls men away from the vanities of the world to consider things unseen and eternal. Those who attempt to fence the table of the Lord are represented as mystical and straitlaced, and because conservative of what is scriptural, they are said to be ‘behind the age’. But it is no reproach to be behind the religion of this age, in its present course. To be behind an age that is drifting away from truth and godliness is the only safe, the only dutiful, position. If the Church continues to concede to the ravenous cravings of worldliness, it will speedily transmute itself into an institution for training men out of its pale into the wild wastes of ungodliness.”10 Which is exactly what happened over the generations that followed.
In 1865 agitation began in the Free Church for hymns to be used in public worship. The controversy continued over several years and, in 1872, a collection of hymns was laid before the General Assembly. Kennedy pointed out: “The Lord gave a Psalmody of old. True, it was given under the former dispensation; but could not the Lord give then what would be suitable for all ages? Can men uninspired do now better than He did then? . . . What aspect of His providence is not presented in them? . . . What phase of spiritual feeling, from the deepest groan of agony and helplessness to the highest ecstasy of triumphant joy, is not expressed?” (p 137). At that point in time, no one was expressing a desire to introduce organs into Free churches, but Kennedy discerned that such a desire was not far away. At the conclusion of the speech just quoted from, he warned, “Strange though it may seem, the very men who cast contempt on the Old Testament materials of praise will be the first to borrow the Old Testament mode of praise” (p 139). Only 10 years were to pass before the subject was brought before the Assembly; Kennedy was to write a fine pamphlet entitled, Instrumental Music in the Worship of God.
1Last month’s article gave a number of examples of those who received a blessing under Kennedy’s preaching.
2John Kennedy, Signs of the Times (originally published as The Present Cast and Tendency of Religious Thought and Feeling in Scotland), James Begg Society reprint, 2003, pp 9-10.
3Kennedy, Signs of the Times, pp 11-12.
4Alexander Auld, John Kennedy, DD, London, 1887, p 134. Unidentified quotations in this paper are from this volume.
5“Memoir of the Rev John Kennedy DD” by John Noble, in John Kennedy, The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, Inverness, 1897 edition, p cx.
6“Memoir”, p cxviii.
7John Kennedy, Signs of the Times, p 21. This booklet contains extensive analysis of the Statement.
8Kennedy, Signs of the Times, p 13.
9Kennedy, Signs of the Times, p 15.
10Kennedy, Signs of the Times, p 18.