Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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their emphasis on different aspects of what the apostle
called the 'many coloured' wisdom of God.""2-
That selection of balanced preaching topics keeps a
pastor always close to the preaching topic: Jesus
Christ. In accordance with this, Stewart chose to
devote his entire series of Beecher Lectures, not to
methods either of understanding congregations or to
constructing sermons, but to explicating the message
itself, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'3'.
But one also finds, in Stewart's writing, grounds
for agreement between Stewart and 'Stewart lecturers' on
the question of selecting sermon topics. Stewart agreed
with Lloyd-Jones on the unchanging nature of the Gospel,
rooted in the historic events of the life of Christ.
Yet, Stewart admitted, much more freely than Lloyd-Jones,
that each generation possesses significant
characteristics that distinguish it from all which
precede it. He devoted the entire first lecture in the
Warrack series to a discussion of the contemporary world
in which the listening clergymen preached. As presented
below, Stewart felt that presentation of the unchanging
Gospel must adapt to the changing times.
Lloyd-Jones called preachers to proclaim the
Biblical message because it offered "the Truth." Stewart
called preachers to communicate a similar Biblical
message, but his rationale differed. Of course, Stewart
believed the truth of the kerygma, but at least as
critical, if not more so for him, was the fact that the