I have been preaching for over sixty years and have never missed an opportunity of hearing great preachers in Britain and in America. The two who have made the most lasting impression on me are W. E. Sangster, the subject of an earlier study, and James Stewart, both of whom I would have gone any distance to hear because of their passionate intensity and evangelical fervor.

Stewart was born in Dundee in 1896. He served for twenty-two years as a pastor at Auchterarder in Perthshire, Beechgrove Church in Aberdeen, and the last ten years at North Morningside Church in Edinburgh.

From 1946-1966 he was Professor of New Testament at New College, Edinburgh. In 1945 he delivered the Warrack Lectures on preaching, Heralds of God. He dealt with the preacher's world, his theme, his study, his technique, and his inner life.

In 1952 Stewart gave the Beecher Lectures at yale, entitled A Faith to Proclaim. This was concerned with the content of preaching. The five lectures were on proclaiming the Incarnation, forgiveness, the Cross, the Resurrection and Christ.

In the Warrack Lectures his first concern is to insist on expository preaching. "There are rich rewards of human gratitude waiting for the man who can make the Bible come alive."

His second plea is for a due observance of the Christian Year. The great festivals set our course and compel us to keep close to the fundamental doctrines of the faith. They summon us from the bypaths to the great highway of redemption.

His third plea is that the preacher puts into the making of a sermon the very best he has. "Stint no toil to achieve clear thought, fit language, true construction, decisive appeal."

If the preacher visualizes his congregation as he prepares his sermon this will provide the essentials of "directness, liveliness, verve and immediacy." To this end he urges his hearers to prepare a full manuscript for the pulpit, but to learn it so well that they can be independent of it.

On the construction of sermons Stewart advises that introductions be short, that divisions should be flexible in number, and that endings should clinch the entire purpose of the sermon and should never hesitate to use a direct personal appeal.

He stresses the value of the freshness and fertility of illustrations, arguing that "truth made concrete will find a way past many a door when abstractions knock in vain." He warns against the use of the threadbare anecdote or the hackneyed quotation.

Finally, he suggests that too much Andante with never a touch of Allegro or even Presto can be fatal. His own preaching has exactly the pace and verve to excite and hold the interest of any listener.

The intensity and authority with which Stewart prays, reads the lessons and preaches, are an index of the urgency of the herald's task. He proclaims the mighty acts of God culminating in the Incarnation, the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and in his stirring appeals to commitment.

Dr. Horton Davies says: "So much modern preaching is hesitant where Stewart is assured, so vague where he is definite, moralistic where he announces good news. He is direct where others are devious, exhilarating where others are dull."