2 - Writing

Summary

John Kennedy was a minister for ten years before he published his first work, and then it was only a single sermon printed as a pamphlet. Amidst the demands of a busy pastorate, his free time for writing was very limited, and the preface to his first book is apologetic even by the standards of Victorian publishing:

I might plead that I never wrote with care before, and that I had but little leisure for my first attempt, but if I did not do the best I could, I ought to have done nothing. Amidst my usual employment, when in health, I found no time for ‘making books’, and it was not, till laid aside by sickness from my wonted work, that the purpose of this book was formed. But health returned ere I had begun to write, and, being afraid to abandon my design, I gave to its execution such snatches of time as were left unoccupied by labours which I could not abridge.

Writing, however, became an important part of his work as the years passed, and his total output was impressive for a man engaged in full-time ministry, suggesting that he gave an increasingly high priority in later life to the extensive readership that could be reached via the press in nineteenth-century Scotland. In particular, he wrote a volume of Highland church history, The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, published in 1861. In 1866, he published a full-length biography of a Highland minister of an earlier generation, John Macdonald of Ferintosh, The Apostle of the North. His third major work was a volume of theology, Man's Relations to God, published in 1869. He also produced a variety of shorter publications, including seventeen controversial pamphlets, some of them quite lengthy; many sermons; lectures on various subjects; a series of newspaper articles; and a couple of biographical sketches. This chapter focuses largely on his historical writings, particularly his first two full-length books. The third book will be addressed in Chapter Four, in the discussion of Kennedy as a theologian.

Kennedy the Historian

History, in a personal sense, is vital to evangelical Christians: they have a testimony, a historical account of personal transformation from an old life of sin to a new life of faith. Kennedy had such a history in the evangelical conversion he had experienced following his father's death in 1841.