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:

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.