Those men who are clamoring for a new theology, new truth, and a new gospel, do not know in their hearts, the power of the old theology, the old truth, the old gospel. The revelation contained in the Scriptures, the laws of Moses, the history of Israel, the psalms and proverbs, the prophecies, the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, and the apocalypse contain all the truth necessary for a salvation, civilization, upbuilding, enlightenment and development of our own race to its highest possibilities. What the times need is holy men who will faithfully preach the truths contained in the Bible. The gospel of the day of St. Paul, Martin Luther, and John Wesley, is the gospel we need today. It is the power of God unto salvation. Men who are preaching it faithfully see no need of a new gospel. Those who are preaching against the old gospel see nobody saved from sin and degradation under their false teaching.
One of the greatest needs of the time is a consecrated and zealous ministry -- men who have been sinners, who have tasted the bitterness of true repentance, who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, who have been cleansed from all sin with the blood of Christ, who have become tabernacles filled with the Holy Ghost, who have no desire for the world's honors or the world's wealth; who feel it the highest honor to be called into the ministry, and who are content with the wealth which is laid up in heaven, and who, with love for all men, and fear of no man, are preaching the word with full faith in its power to accomplish the will of God. Such men will be able to turn the world upside down.
H. C. Morrison
INSIDE BACK COVER TEXT
Shall it be evolution or Revival for America? I believe the preachers of America hold the key to the situation; if a thousand of them or more would shake off the things that bind them, the things that hold them too much to earth, there would come about great moral, social and spiritual upheavals in America. Too many of our educated preachers are in bondage to intellectuality; they want to do the thing through brains instead of heart. They lack moral and spiritual passion; they are the victims of man-made programs. They are tied to ideals which drag instead of lift. Our great institutions of learning have little or no faith. Christian Education, so-called, in many of our church schools, has been rendered effete by professors who have no regard for Bible religion; they rob their students of their Christian experience.
Revival! Yes -- here is our salvation! We must have a Revival in America that will clean up the lives of the people, rich and poor, alike; a revival that will convert the masses and classes alike. A revival in which "born again" men and women will change society and government.
H. C. Morrison
CONTENTS
1 -- Henry Clay Morrison 2 -- The Prophet 3 -- The Warrior 4 -- The Orator 5 -- Evangelist
1 -- HENRY CLAY MORRISON -- PROPHET, WARRIOR, ORATOR
Chrysostom has said, "'The true shekinah is man." In the Bible we read: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ... So God created man in his own image." We are going to discourse about such a man -- the kind of man that God and Grace make. Such a man is the subject of this sketch -- Henry Clay Morrison.
Carlyle said: "A good man living for high ends is the noblest picture to be seen on earth ... great men lift us out of the vacancy and despair of a frivolous mind, out of the tangle and confusion of society, buried in bric-a-brac, out of the meanness of unfeeling mockery, and the heaviness of unceasing mirth, into a loftier and serener region. The study and contemplation of the life and ministry of Dr. Morrison cannot but have an uplifting and ennobling effect upon our mind and heart, because his life and career were a burning protest against the easy-going, self-pleasing, vain and self-satisfied spirit that pervaded the church and the age in which he lived.
Of the great Elijah it has been said, "His life rose up as a fire, and his words blazed as a torch." We think of Dr. Morrison in such terms; he was one of God's ministers of flame. "With eloquence divine, his tongue was armed; he drew his audience upward to the sky; he bore his great commission in his look."
Great occasions call forth great sacrifices and great men. "When the church is dying," said Dr. Parker, "God sends men like Wesley and Whitefield to blow it into a flame." Dr. Morrison was like one born in due time to carry on a ministry of grave and great importance to his church and country; and both nature and grace endowed him with faculties and powers that marked him as one chosen of God for a great mission. He was born in the Victorian Age -- an age illustrious with great men. It was an age of poetry -- Tennyson, Browning, Byron, Longfellow, Whittier. It was an age of orators -- Gladstone, Bright, Philips. It was an age of great preachers -- Munsey, Simpson, Spurgeon, Talmage, Beecher. It was an age of great revivalists -- Finney, Moody, Inskip, Harrison, Sam Jones, Godbey. It was an age when the Methodist Church in city, and town, and village, was enjoying prosperity, crowded churches and popular religion. It was a church-going age, when the pulpit held a high and dignified place in the nation, when all over the land there were great and powerful preachers. It was an age, also, when a great forward movement for Christian holiness was inaugurated by the formation of the National Association for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness by such men as Osborne, the world-traveled evangelist missionary, John S. Inskip, the fire-touched orator and leader, Alfred Cookman, saintly pastor-evangelist, McDonald, the classic writer and preacher, Daniel Steele, the devout scholar and Greek exegete. This Holiness Movement was in its purity and power untouched by the fires of fanaticism or radicalism, and it spread like fire through the land. Bishops and elders, preachers, great and small, were allied with it; the Pentecostal flame was spreading in the churches, small and large. Camp Meetings, where the hosts gathered, were times of marvelous spiritual enthusiasm. Vineland, Manheim, Urbana, Round Lake, Ocean Grove, witnessed scenes of power and blessing, the like of which had never before been witnessed in the land. Ministers, officials and church members were getting their baptism of fire, and the churches were reaping glorious harvests in revivals when hundreds and thousands were swept into the kingdom.
Dr. Morrison was truly a born-again preacher and evangelist. When pastor he was in constant demand for revival meetings among his brethren, and wherever he went revivals broke out. His call to preach came early while he was working on the farm, and when he would hire himself out, sometimes at twenty-five cents a day. He tells us of his first attempt to preach. It was a failure. His text was, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He gave out his text, then forgot what to say. He cried: "God has called me to preach." He tried to go on and still forgot what he was to say. But he said, "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has called me to preach." Again he halted, and said finally: Friends, I can't preach tonight. My sermon is gone from me, but I have a call to preach." Then he broke out into tears, and some of his audience wept with him.
It was settled. Henry Clay Morrison, the orphan boy, brought up by his grandfather, going out to work on the farm at 25 cents a day; not much schooling, no training, but having had a glorious conversion, and the fire of the Lord burning in his soul he heard the Voice and said: "I am called to preach." And what a call! There is nothing like it, this call to preach. I think Jowett, in his Yale Lectures, gives us a very good idea and conception of what it means; "That sense of the divine initiative -- a solemn communication of the divine will, a mysterious feeling of commission which sets him in the road of this divine vocation bearing the ambassage of a servant and instrument of the Eternal God."
"Thy talents, gifts and graces, Lord Into thy blessed hands receive; And let me live to breathe thy Word, And let me to thy glory live; My every sacred moment spend In publishing the sinner's Friend."
2 -- THE PROPHET
"While swings the sea, while mists the mountain shroud, While thunder's surges burst on banks of cloud, Still at the Prophet's feet the nations sit."
Ezekiel depicts, somewhat, the prophet's call and experience in these words: "Now it came to pass ... that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God ... The word of the Lord came expressly ... the hand of the Lord was there upon him." We have here four important things that enter into the prophet's call and commission -- the Opened Heavens, Vision of God, the Word of the Lord, and the Hand of the Lord. The prophet is a man who knows God in the deeper life. Isaiah gives us an insight of that in chapter six; in fact, if there had been no chapter six there would have been no fifty-third or sixty-first chapter of Isaiah. This prophet had his baptism of fire as a prophet; his vision of God came to him in the temple. It was a vision of the holiness of God. It was a time of soul purification and purgation. It was a time when his lips were touched by the sacred fire, and a time of special divine call? with the answer, "Here am I; send me."
Henry Clay Morrison, at an important epoch in his ministry, had a call like this, and out from it he went forth as a prophet. His experience of entire sanctification, he did not reach at a single bound; it was not a blessing easily obtained and easily forgotten. It was something that burned its way into his inmost soul. His Pentecost came when he was pastor of a fine church in the Highlands across the river from Cincinnati. While a revival was on in his church a letter came to him from a beloved brother in the ministry, Rev. H. B. Cockrill, telling him of his having received his Pentecost. It stirred his soul. He wanted and must have this blessing. In prayer with Rev. J. H. Young, who was assisting him in the revival, the fire fell. He was prostrated and fell as one dead upon the divan. He tells about it: "Just as I seemed to come to myself and recover the use of my limbs, a great liquid fire, the size of a large ball, seemed to descend and strike me in the face, then dissolve and enter into me. I leaped and shouted aloud: 'Glory to God!'"
This was his Kadesh-Barnea. He had to go further yet. Holiness as an experience was something new. To testify to it was uncommon and he went on and had some wilderness experiences; while he held some fine churches and carried on evangelistically, he was not out clear and clean; he had to cut loose from some things that were holding him; finally he reached a crisis after days and nights of agony. Yes, real soul travail anguish and dying out; for some fifteen days he struggled, and fasted, and prayed. "I was," he said, "in an awful school. It would hardly be lawful for me to go into details and tell what the Lord revealed to me of the nature of sin and the hatefulness of it ... Satan buffeted, ridiculed, taunted and tempted me almost beyond endurance."
At this point a Presbyterian Professor of Theology came to his help, who said to him: "My young brother, the Lord has not forsaken you, but is leading you into what Mr. Wesley called Christian Perfection; the Baptists call it 'Rest of Faith,' the Presbyterians call it 'The Higher Life,' or the 'Fulness of the Spirit.'" On the day when full deliverance came, Brother Morrison was so exhausted from loss of sleep, praying and fasting, that he fainted; twice during the day, he became unconscious, then, thank God, the floodgates gave way and the Blessing fell upon him.
Oh friends, preachers and young preachers, let me stop here for a moment to say that this great blessing of Pentecost, or Entire Sanctification, is not to be obtained by a process of syllogism, or by mere assent or merely taking it by faith. You remember the Roman captain who said to Paul (Acts 22:28), respecting his citizenship, "With a great sum obtained I this freedom." When we have heard Dr. Morrison in some of his great sermons when he has lifted us up to the seventh heaven of ecstasy and vision, we have had cause to remember that it was with a great sum that he obtained that freedom. Like Moses, and Luther, and Wesley, and Booth, he counted the cost, paid the price, and obtained the blessing and the power.
Henceforth Henry C. Morrison was to become one of the heralds and champions of holiness; and with tongue of fire preach the great Gospel of a Full Redemption and to become its eloquent advocate and propagandist as Preacher, Prophet, Editor, and Educator.
In a peculiar sense he was to become one of God's prophets for the spread of holiness; as a witness to an unpopular doctrine. Of course, he had to suffer for it. The popular young preacher, with the gold-handled cane and the plug hat was called to take his stand with the folks who stood for holiness and the deeper things of God. He had to part company with the worldly folks who wanted to be in the church and the world at the same time. To become a prophet and herald of holiness, he was called and could say:
"Christ the Son of God hath sent me o'er the widespread lands, Mine the mighty ordination of the pierced hands."
There is a story told of John Wesley being called to meet Bishop Butler, the high church prelate of Bristol. When Wesley testified to the Bishop the wonderful things of the Spirit the learned Bishop said: "Sir, the pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Spirit is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing." But it is these extraordinary experiences in the Holy Ghost that produces prophetic men like Wesley and Morrison.
Dr. Morrison as a prophet never played the role of "fore-teller" He was more than that -he was a "forth-teller." He could say: "Thus saith the Lord." He never indulged in fanciful predictions, or in cheap hearsay prophecy. He never sought popular audiences by announcing fantastic subjects. To him, the prophetic office was sacred and he never would lower its standard by commercializing it, or using it for vain purposes.
Dr. Morrison looked like a prophet. He was built that way. In the crowded church, auditorium or tabernacle, when he would appear, people would think and say: "Behold the prophet cometh!" It was as a prophet he preached. To him, the pulpit held the pre-eminence; not for him the round table and its empty questions; not for him the forum and its discussions; not for him the symposium with its intellectual conceits. His call was a prophetic one. As a prophet he stood up, as a prophet he proclaimed; as a prophet with a prophet's passion, he poured forth the message from on high.
3 -- THE WARRIOR
"They climbed the steep ascent to Heaven, Through peril, toil and pain, O God to us may grace be given To follow in their train."
Martin Luther once said: "I was born to fight devils and factions. It is my business to remove obstructions, to cut down thorns, to fill up quagmires, and to open and make straight paths; but if I must have some failings, let me rather speak the truth with too great severity, than once to act the hypocrite and conceal the truth."
Dr. Morrison was born to be a warrior. To him, the ministry was no picnic, but a crusade; it was no parade, but a battle. He could say at the close of his ministry: "I have fought a good fight." He fought sin in high places and low, and never hesitated to speak out with a trumpet voice against the sins of the church, as well as those of the world. In all his warfare he was fearless and unafraid. He was specially vigorous in his battling against false doctrine and modernism in the church. He unsheathed his sword without hesitancy when doctrines contrary to the word of God and the established standards of the church were taught and preached.
Dr. Morrison was endowed with the prophet's vision and fire; the warrior's courage and daring, and the passion of the soul winner. His time and age felt the impact of his great soul. He was one of God's mountain-top men and he dwelt much on Sinai's heights, at Pisgah and at Camel. In his preaching there was the far vision of the prophet, the rapture of the seer and the exultant spirit of the herald calling the people to heights sublime.
He was one of Gods warriors who faced danger for the Truths' sake, feared not the cost of sacrifice and toil. He early forsook softness and ease for the battle front. The call to arms for God and the truth met with a ready and fearless response. At the front of the battle he was always found. He waged a good warfare. To him the ministry was a divine vocation, a call to serve and suffer and toil. His sermons were the blast of glorious and rapturous trumpets, his appeals were to the conscience and the heart. He chose the rugged way not the easy. He was a good soldier of Jesus Christ who always kept his armor bright.
To Dr. Morrison religion was a passion and the ministry a crusade, not a profession. He was one of God's men whose soul was kindled by the hallowed story of the Christian faith.
When young and popular as a preacher he became like unto that merchantman who found one pearl of great price -- full salvation -- and he went and sold all that he had and bought it and thus he became poor in the world's esteem in order that many, yea, multitudes, might be made rich. This was the event of his life which made him become a herald of holiness and a great leader in that crusade of evangelism. And this was what made him become to Methodism, especially, the peculiar gift of God at a time when doubt and discount were playing havoc with the great doctrine of perfect love. As a good soldier he unsheathed the sword in defense of sound doctrine, he fought a good fight, broke down walls of opposition, and became the leader of hosts of men whose hearts God had touched. Southern Methodism shall never forget what Henry Clay Morrison did to set the gospel of full salvation to a new tune and give it a happier place among the churches.
4 -- THE ORATOR
"O for a trumpet voice, On all the world to call, To bid their hearts rejoice In him who died for all! For all my Lord was crucified; For all, for all, my Saviour died."
Dr. Morrison was by nature peculiarly gifted. It might be said of him, he was a born orator as was Spurgeon, Parker, Bascom and other great pulpit lights. He had a magnificent physique. His splendid head crowned in his latter years with locks of snowy white, his face and countenance were like that of George Whitefield's "a magazine of eloquence." His voice was vibrant carrying notes soft as a child and loud as a trumpet. Whitefield said, "I love those that thunder out the Word; the Christian world is in a deep sleep; nothing but a loud voice can waken them out of it."
That's what God gave Henry Morrison, a trumpet voice. Few there were who could excel him in histrionic power; with him, oratory was not acquired; it was natural as music is to the musician, or poetry to the poet. "The acid test of true oratory," said one, "is the power to touch and revive the sleeping passions in others." Oratory is something inborn or inbred in a man. "It's in me -- it's in me," cried Sheridan when he failed before a hissing audience, "and it shall come out."
Disraeli, the Jewish Prime Minister of England, in his first speech in Parliament failed, but he cried out, "The day will come when you will hear me." Same with Henry C. Morrison, the youth, when he forgot his sermon and was dumbfounded, cried out, "God has called me to preach." He was sure of that and it was that call and conviction that brought out the orator.
In the gospel there is everything to inspire and produce the orator if it is born within him. There is majesty and magnificence about the gospel message that sets the soul of the preacher on fire. As one has said, "The gospel preacher has the best field for tender, solemn and sublime eloquence; the most august objects are presented; the most important interests are discussed; the most tender motives are urged. God and angels, the treason of Satan, the creation, ruin and recovery of a world, the incarnation, death and resurrection and the reign of the Son of God, the day of Judgment, a burning universe, an eternity, a heaven and a hell, all pass before the eye. What are the petty dissensions of Greece or the ambition of Philip? What are the plots and victories of Rome, or the treason of Cataline compared with this? If the ministers were sufficiently qualified by education, study and the Holy Ghost; if they felt their subjects as much as Demosthenes and Cicero did they would be the most eloquent men on earth, and would be esteemed wherever congenial minds were found." Gospel oratory is really "speech thrilled by the power of a supernatural conviction and persuasion." The gospel orator is well described by Cowper, the poet:
His theme divine, His office sacred, his credentials clear; By him the violated law speaks out Its thunders. And by him in strains as sweet As angels use, the Gospel whispers peace; He stablishes the strong, restores the weak, Reclaims the wanderer, binds the broken hearts And arous'd himself in panoply complete Of heavenly tempers, furnishes with arms Bright as his own and trains by every rule of holy discipline, to glorious war The sacramental host of God' elect.
In the ministry of Dr. Morrison we see all these matters illustrated. His gifts as a gospel orator were never frustrated on things of earth. He could have achieved a fortune if he had gone on the lecture platform, but every bit of that sort met with a positive refusal. Too often the gospel preacher is spoiled for the brilliant orator at such a price. Dr. Morrison was not for sale, nor his gifts or convictions. His great gifts were not earth born, and he would not employ them on earthly matters. God's great gifts to him were to be devoted to holy purposes. He came like one of old "to interrupt the repose of the pulpit, and shake one world with the thunders of another." He had great dynamic as well as dramatic power.
A story is told of a professor going with one of his students to hear bishop Simpson preach one of his greatest sermons. When they came out, the student began to talk about his elocution. The professor answered, "Elocution! Why that was not elocution -- that was the Holy Ghost." So on great occasions when Dr. Morrison soared on wings of thought and holy emotion the people sitting under him felt that there was more than human power in that sermon. It was the Holy Ghost.
Hugh Price Hughes, the fire-brand of the British pulpit, once said to Dr. Jowett, "The evangelistic preacher is always on the brink of an abyss." True, there is always something astir in his soul. "Till thought becomes a passion it hardly becomes a power." Preaching to Dr. Morrison was a passion and, as such, he was always a model and a great example. not only to those to whom he preached, but to those whom he taught. The students at Asbury College were a privileged company. When Dr. Morrison would come in from some of his campaigns and would preach at chapel, and speak at special student gatherings, they were sitting at the feet of one of the great master preachers of America. It is no small wonder that Asbury turned out many great preachers and evangelists. Many a time his morning messages would flash with thought sublime, sparkle with humor, thunder with truth, thrill with eloquence and charm like poetry set to music. His eloquence and passion and speech were a rebuke to the tranquillity of the pulpit, the worldliness of the church, and the do-nothingness of a multitude of professing Christians. He seemed to say, as one of old, "Brethren, not to be aflame is madness, if we believe our creed." He stood out against cold, formal, tepid, milk-and-water type of religion. His conviction was, if the church would be pure the church must be passionate. He decried the modern tendency to suppress emotion in religion and in the church. He believed that the fires of devotion and consecration should ever be kept burning on the altars of the church.
Our task is done. Our tribute paid to a great man -- a good man -- one of God's great men. When shall we see his like again? We shall miss him. Once in Westminster Abbey, London, we stood before the tablet of John and Charles Wesley; upon it is inscribed these words: "God buries his workmen, but carries on his work." Great preachers, evangelists, missionaries, believers, die, but God carries on their work. "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them."
In a real sense Dr. Morrison's works will follow on. Though he has gone to his long home for his eternal rest yet his work carries on. By the sermons he has preached and published, and the books he has written, he still carries on. By the preachers, evangelists and missionaries whom he inspired and taught, his work will carry on. By the College and Seminary to which he gave time and money and untiring interest and devotion, he still carries on. By the Press which he established and maintained which sends out to the nation and to the ends of the earth messages by periodicals and books in undiminished volume, he still carries on.
"They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever."
5 -- EVANGELIST
Happy, if with my latest breath I may but gasp his name; Preach him to all, and cry in death, Behold, behold the Lamb!
Dr. Morrison dedicated his life from beginning to end to soul saving evangelism. His whole ministry was spent that way and death met him on his way to a revival meeting in the Methodist Church. He died in harness, just like Whitefield. The sentiment expressed in the above verse exactly fitted his dying hour.
As an evangelist his soul was on fire. To him, evangelism was a passion and the ministry a crusade, not a profession. He was one of God's men whose soul was kindled by the hallowed story of the Christian faith. To him the Gospel was something glorious. We have seen him in the pulpit at times as though he stood on Pisgah's heights and viewed the landscape o'er, and was enraptured as he told of Canaan the happy land.
It has been well said, "Masses of precious truth imparted by an able and faithful pulpit sometimes lie inoperative, at least in that which is most essential because unquickened by the Spirit, by fervor of appeal and by vanity of motive made intense and almost irresistible. To do this evangelists are in demand."
"Evangelists are of divine appointment and have their peculiar work in the rousing of the churches, the conversion of souls, the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom, and the glory of His name."
"When the church is dying," said Joseph Parker, "God sends men like Wesley and Whitefield to blow it into flame."
We believe Dr. Morrison was raised up and appointed by God for a very special type of evangelism. When young in the ministry he had frequent calls to help in revivals and all the time he could spare from his busy pastorates he gave to revival work among the churches; then after receiving the baptism of the Spirit he eventually gave all his time to soul-saving and became one of the great evangelists of his century, and he traveled through the nation preaching the great salvation in churches, halls, camp meetings, conventions and tabernacles. In the Holiness Movement he came to the front all over the nation after the great John S. Inskip had passed to his reward.
Perhaps it might be said Dr. Morrison had doors opened to him that the average evangelist could never hope for, his eloquence and gospel oratory stirred the churches all over Methodism, North and South, and he held revivals in many of the great churches of the nation and brought blessings to untold thousands, including many ministers whom he led into the experience of holiness. He was particularly used in the great Conferences of his church. At the Annual Conferences all over Methodism he preached and also at many of the General Conferences. In the days of Joyce, Mallalieu, McCabe and other bishops of the M. E. Church, he was often the evangelist of their Conferences as well as at the General Conferences.
Sometimes in his evangelism he met with serious opposition from official men. On one occasion he was invited by the pastor of a large Methodist Church to hold a revival but the higher powers through the presiding elder refused permission and the meeting was called off, but there was a smaller church in the same city which opened its doors to him. He went there and preached to crowded houses. It was in this meeting he came in contact with a young man named E. Stanley Jones, who wanted advice as to what college he should attend. Dr. Morrison advised him to go to Asbury College. He went to Asbury and graduated, received his call to India while there and from Asbury he went to India and made sacred history, and all the world knows the result. Dr. Morrison as an evangelist touched many lives which went out to bless the church and the world both at home and abroad. Bishops, elders, officials high and low, pastors, educators, missionaries came under the spell of his marvelous and fire-baptized ministry.
As an evangelist Dr. Morrison always drew his message from the Cross and Pentecost and he preached always with the altar before him; he preached to save and sanctify the soul. Catherine Booth, mother of the Salvation Army, complained that in her age the gospel preachers in the average pulpit "Neither damned the sinner nor sanctified the saint." Not so with Morrison's gospel, he preached the terrors of the Lord and the matchless provisions of the gospel of full redemption to save and sanctify and satisfy the needs and longings of the soul; his gospel was always vitally and thrillingly compelling and irresistible.
John Wesley said: "Give me one hundred preachers who care for nothing but God and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen. Such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of God upon earth."
Henry Clay Morrison was such a man as Wesley had in mind when he penned these words.
The words of Bishop Ryle of the English Church very potently apply to the preaching and ministry of Dr. Morrison.
"Let others hold forth the terrors of hell and the joys of heaven. Let others drench their congregations with teachings about the sacraments and the church. Give me the Cross of Christ. This is the only lever which has turned the world upside down, hitherto, and made men forsake their sins. And if this will not, nothing will. A man may begin preaching with a perfect knowledge of Latin Greek or Hebrew; but he will do little good among his hearers unless he knows something of the Cross. Never was there a minister who did much for the conversion of souls who did not dwell much on Christ crucified. Luther, Rutherford, Whitefield, McCheyne were all most eminent preachers of the Cross. This is the preaching that the Holy Ghost delights to bless. He loves to honor the Cross."
Some one said: "One energetic man is worth more than a thousand intellectual babblers."
It was said that listening to Theodore Roosevelt in some of his great speeches was like "standing in a field of magnetic force." Rowland Hill said: "Because I am in earnest, men call me an enthusiast. When I see eternal destruction about to fall on poor sinners and call on them to escape, shall I be called an enthusiast? No, sinner, I am no enthusiast in so doing, and I call on thee aloud to fly for refuge to the hope set before thee in the gospel."
Dr. Morrison was a prince among the holiness evangelists of his age; he broke down walls of opposition to Scriptural holiness by his unique and eloquent preaching. He said: "It is not the preaching of holiness that produces ill-will, strife, dissension, and the breach of peace. It is the rejection of holiness which brings all of these evils. It must be remembered that we have in the Church multitudes of unconverted people -- men full of the world, dealing in futures of all sorts -gamblers, at the same time officials in the church. We have women bedecked with jewelry and covered all over with the stamp of the world. These multitudes don't pretend to live by the New Testament standard; they know and think nothing of the command which says: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." This worldly company who call themselves the flock of Christ, will flock to a cake-walk, but sanctification, -- Oh, it's awful! it will split the Church, cause ill-will, dissension and factions in the Church."
As an evangelist Dr. Morrison was God's special gift to the church and nation; he was a voice calling sinners to repentance and the church unto holiness; he was a messenger going through the land with lips touched with the sacred fire proclaiming the great salvation through the precious blood. Evangelism to him was something tremendous, the salvation of souls and the sanctification of believers was the great objective; at all costs he must have souls and see revivals break out. Money did not count with him; he never commercialized preaching; he had the King's business always on his heart and soul, and because of this soul passion thousands of people all over the world bless his memory and thank God that he came their way and opened up to them the riches of God's grace. His consecration could well be expressed in the language of the hymn:
"My talents, gifts and graces, Lord, Into Thy blessed hands receive; And let me love to preach Thy word, And let me to Thy glory live."
