XV. BAILIE JOHN KENNEDY


'Die well.'--_Rutherford_.

Bailie John Kennedy, of Ayr, was the remarkable son of a remarkable
father. Old Hugh Kennedy's death-bed was for long a glorious tradition
among the godly in the West of Scotland. The old saint was visited in
his last hours on earth with a joy that was unspeakable and full of
glory: the mere report of it made an immense impression both on the
Church and the world. And his son John, who stood entranced beside his
father's chariot of fire, never forgot the transporting sight. He did
not need Rutherford's warning never to forget his father's example and
his father's end. For John Kennedy was a 'choice Christian,' as a well-
known writer of that day calls him. And he was not alone. There were
many choice Christians in that day in Scotland. Were there ever more,
for its size, in any land or in any church on the face of the earth? I
do not believe there ever were. Next to that favoured land that produced
the Psalmists and the Prophets, I know no land that, for its numbers,
possessed so many men and women of a profoundly spiritual experience, and
of an adoring and heavenly mind, as Scotland possessed in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. The Wodrow volumes should be studied
throughout by every lover of his church and his country, and especially
by every student of divinity and church history.

But we need go no further than Samuel Rutherford's letter-bag; for, when
we open it, what rich treasures of the religious life pour out of it!
What minds and what hearts those men and women had! And how they gave up
their whole mind and heart to the life of godliness in the land, and to