“Tennent was a man of extensive learning and his ministry was marked by vital evangelism and spiritual power. Both in his pulpit and before the Synod he declared the unchanging necessity of the new birth; he urged that true evidence of regeneration be restored as the requirement for membership, asserted that an unconverted man was unfit for the ministry and pleaded for a return to evangelical fervency of life.

Tennent had four sons, all of whom experienced the call of God to the ministry, and, fearing the baneful influences of the usual places of education, he trained them in his own home. Other young men asked for the same training and in order to accommodate them Tennent built a one-room school house which, in contempt, its detractors termed The Log College. His own wide erudition enabled him to provide these men with a thorough theological education; but he did more than that; he nurtured them on evangelical truth and sent them forth, mighty in the faith, fearless for God and aflame with Gospel zeal.” — Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the 18th Century Revival, Vol. 1 (1970, 2014), pp. 415-416