36. G. Campbell Morgan (1863–1945)
Dwight L. Moody had a knack for finding men and helping them channel their gifts into the work of soul-winning and building the church. One of his greatest “finds” was George Campbell Morgan—pastor, evangelist, Bible teacher extraordinary—the man who long before his death on May 16, 1945, was known throughout the English-speaking world as the “prince of expositors.” Jill Morgan’s life of her father-in-law, A Man of the Word: Life of G. Campbell Morgan, ought to be read by every Christian who is serious about teaching and preaching the Word of God. I try to read it again each year; it always sends me away with a new zest for studying the Bible and sharing it with others.
Morgan’s beginnings were as inauspicious as possible. He was born on December 9, 1863, in the little village of Tetbury, England. His father was an independent Baptist minister with Brethren leanings, and he believed in courageous preaching and living by faith. Somewhat frail as a child, Morgan received his early education at home. He had always “played at preaching” as a child, setting up his sister’s dolls and preaching to them; it was not a surprise when, at the age of thirteen, he asked to preach in a public meeting. He gave his first sermon in the Monmouth Methodist Chapel on August 27, 1876, and his theme was “salvation.” Nobody in that little assembly that day realized that Campbell Morgan would be one of God’s choicest instruments for spreading his Word in the years to come.
The family situation made it necessary for Morgan to find employment early, and he chose to become a teacher, a profession for which he was admirably gifted. But he took every opportunity to preach the Word, and God blessed his ministry. In the beginning he was quite aware of his gifts and was prone to display them. But one night a friend walked home from the meeting with him and gently pointed out his error; from that night on, Morgan preached to express the truth, not to impress the people.
Like many young men at that time, he went through an eclipse of his faith. In desperation, he locked all his books in a cupboard, secured a new Bible, and began to read it. “If it be the Word of God, and if I come to it with an unprejudiced and open mind, it will bring assurance to my soul of itself,” he said. He canceled all his preaching engagements and devoted himself to the Bible. The result? “That Bible found me!” From that day on, Morgan never indulged in defending the Bible; he permitted the Bible to defend itself.
In 1886, Morgan was well known in his area as a Bible teacher, and he even conducted a follow-up mission for the hundreds who had been reached through Gipsy Smith’s campaign in Hull. In his heart he felt a call to the ministry, but he knew he was unschooled. His first inclination was to join the Salvation Army, but both Gipsy Smith and Catherine Booth advised him to “go on with the work you are doing.” Morgan appeared at the Lichfield Road Church in Birmingham on May 2, 1888, to preach a “trial sermon” in consideration for entering the Methodist ministry. He had been accustomed to addressing many hundreds of people in his meetings—the Hull meetings drew two thousand—and on that day, in a church auditorium that seated over one thousand people, he faced an audience of only seventy-five. He failed miserably and was rejected from the Methodist ministry. He wired his father: “Rejected!” His father wired back: “Rejected on earth—accepted in heaven.”
On August 20, 1888, Morgan married Annie Morgan, better known as “Nancy.” He hesitated to propose to her because all he could offer was the life of an itinerant evangelist, but she knew that God’s hand was upon him. “If I cannot start with you at the bottom of the ladder,” she wrote, “I should be ashamed to meet you at the top.” After a year of the itinerant ministry, the Morgans settled down in the little town of Stone in Staffordshire, where he became pastor of the Congregational church; and on September 22, 1890, he was ordained.
As it did the writer of Hebrews, “time would fail me” to relate the life and travels of this amazing teacher of the Word. One of his best friends, Samuel Chadwick, said that Morgan was a “nomad,” and no doubt he was right. Except for twelve years at the famous Westminster Chapel in London, Morgan’s ministry was made up of short pastorates punctuated by brief periods of itinerating.
He left the Stone church to go to nearby Rugeley in June 1891, staying there two years. In June 1893 he went to the Westminster Road Congregational Church in Birmingham, where he stayed until December 1896. He was recommended to this church, by the way, by J. Gregory Mantle, the Methodist preacher who had helped to “reject” him eight years before! From 1897 to 1901, Morgan pastored the New Court Church in North London; and from there he moved to the United States to direct the Northfield extension ministry for Will Moody.
Morgan ministered in the States until November 1903, when he sailed back to Britain and was contacted by the officers of Westminster Chapel, one of Congregationalism’s greatest churches, at that time in desperate shape. In September 1904 he began what was to be his longest pastorate. He finally terminated it in 1917 and became interim pastor, for one year, of the Highbury Quadrant Church in London. Then he returned to the States for nearly seven years of ministry, living first at Winona Lake, Indiana, and then moving to Athens, Georgia. He tried five months as pastor of the Covenant-First Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, but it just did not work out and he resigned. For one year he was on the faculty of Biola College in Los Angeles, resigning because he felt a fellow teacher had been wrongly judged by the board. For three years he pastored the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, resigning in 1933 to allow his son Howard to become pastor (all of Morgan’s four sons became preachers).
Next Morgan did a remarkable thing: he returned to Westminster Chapel in London to become pastor again. He had pastored the church during World War I, and now he would pastor it again during World War II. From 1938 on, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was his associate in the work; and when Morgan resigned in August 1943, Lloyd-Jones became pastor and continued to lead that great church by means of the devoted exposition of the Word of God. Morgan died on May 16, 1945.
I have read Morgan’s life many times; I have read his books, his sermons, and his expositions. And I still ask myself, “How do you explain a man like this?” He did not have the privilege of studying in a Bible school or seminary, yet he wrote books that are used in these schools (and by preachers around the world). He sat on the faculties of three schools and for three years was the president of a college. He never resorted to cheap tricks or oratory to get a crowd, yet wherever he went, people had to be turned away. Both as a pastor and as an itinerant Bible teacher, he was relatively isolated from the common people; yet his messages show his deep understanding of the needs of the common man. How do we explain him?
One answer, I think, is the providence of God. Morgan himself said something at a 1937 Moody Centenary service in Westminster Chapel that, though he applied it to D. L. Moody, could just as easily be applied to Morgan. “In the history of the Church, times and a man have always seemed to come together . . . and . . . God generally finds the man where men are not looking for him.” Morgan’s successor, Lloyd-Jones, pointed out that Morgan came on the scene in Britain just after the great Moody-Sankey meetings, when thousands of new converts needed to be taught the Word of God. Morgan met that need. In his early days Morgan was a successful evangelist, but gradually the gift of teaching the Word came to the forefront. He exercised it widely and with wonderful results.
God had to prepare his man for his work, and he did that during Morgan’s early pastorates, when he was “buried” and alone. He himself has admitted that “all the spadework” for his Bible studies was done during his two years at Rugeley, when the winters were long and cold and he was confined to his study. Instead of wasting his time because his church was small, Morgan invested it in the concentrated study of the Word, and God prepared him for a wonderful ministry as a result.
High on the list of events that helped to widen Morgan’s ministry was his association with D. L. Moody. The evangelist had never heard Morgan preach, but he invited him to speak at Northfield and at the institute in Chicago in 1896. Morgan was to cross the Atlantic fifty-four times during his lifetime. He returned to Northfield in 1897 and again in 1899, the year that Moody died. “He is one of the most remarkable men who ever came to Northfield,” said Moody. “I believe him to be filled utterly with the Spirit of God.” After the evangelist’s death, Will Moody sailed to England to ask Morgan to come and assist in the Northfield ministry, and Morgan accepted. “It’s a plain case of burglary!” declared Joseph Parker when he heard that Morgan was moving to the States, and most of Britain’s religious leaders agreed. But what else was Morgan to do? “I have long felt that God was preparing me for a ministry to the churches, rather than to one particular church,” Morgan explained. “Now the door stands open for such a work. It has not opened in my own country where I had hoped and thought it would.” In a sense, America “discovered” Morgan before Britain really understood what she had. When Morgan returned to Britain three years later, he was given a king’s welcome. The prophet was no longer without honor in his own country.
I think the real secret of Morgan’s ministry (apart from his spiritual devotion) is found in one word—work:
Let me state in the briefest manner possible what I want to impress upon the mind of those who are contemplating Bible teaching, by declaring that the Bible never yields itself to indolence. Of all literature none demands more diligent application than that of the Divine Library.1
When asked the secret of his success as an interpreter of the Word, he would say, “Work—hard work—and again, work!” He himself was in his study at 6:00 in the morning, and he never permitted anyone to interrupt him before lunch. Some of us pastors may not be able to avoid some interruptions, but certainly we can make better use of our time. Morgan would read a book of the Bible forty or fifty times before attempting to preach on it or write about it. Jill Morgan correctly titled her biography of her father-in-law A Man of the Word.
Along with The Study and Teaching of the English Bible, you will want to secure two other books: Preaching, by Morgan; and The Expository Method of G. Campbell Morgan, by Don M. Wagner. These three books are a good analysis of “the Morgan method.” Of course they are no substitute for reading Morgan’s expository works, which every preacher and teacher ought to do. You may also want to add This Was His Faith, a collection of excerpts from Morgan’s letters, edited by Jill Morgan. You will be surprised to discover in this book what Morgan believed about the condition of the heathen, Calvinism, speaking in tongues, falling from grace, and a host of other topics.
During his ministry Morgan was criticized in two areas: money and theology.
“You are an extravagant man!” someone said to Morgan one day. He replied, “I am not an extravagant man, but I am an expensive man.”
When other British preachers were trying to balance their budgets, Morgan was enjoying a “motor-car”—and being criticized for it. He received large honoraria for his ministry and, without question, earned every bit of it. In all fairness to Morgan, it should be stated that he did not make any of the arrangements for his meetings, nor did he make any demands. Arrangements were usually done by his associate, Arthur Marsh, or by some other Christian leader. So to criticize Morgan would be completely wrong. Furthermore, he was lavishly generous toward others, even to the point of adopting entire families until they were able to make it on their own. No doubt Morgan’s use of finances was more American than British.
As far as theology is concerned, Morgan was too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals. He considered himself a preacher of the fundamentals of the faith, and certainly anyone who studies his books (especially The Crises of the Christ) will have to agree that he did. But he would not identify himself with any “theological camp” or carry the flag for any religious leader. He was his own man, and nothing would make him violate his conscience. He resigned from the Biola faculty because he thought his friend J. M. MacInnis was wronged. He even dedicated one of his books to MacInnis, describing him as “true as steel to the evangelical faith.” He wrote:
I have long felt that, whereas I stand foursquare on the evangelical faith, I have no patience with those people whose supposed fundamentalism consists in watching for heresy and indulging in wicked self-satisfaction because they have an idea that they alone ‘hold the truth’—hateful expression! Whereas in many ways I agree with their theological position I abominate their spirit.
Especially during his latter years of ministry in the States, Morgan was attacked in the religious press. During a meeting in New York City, Morgan spoke openly in the pulpit about the cruel lies men had spread about him; and it so upset him that he actually fainted.
More than one writer has criticized Morgan for his “nomad ministry.” Ernest H. Jeffs in Princes of the Modern Pulpit stated that Morgan might have been a better preacher had he stayed in one place and taken time to pastor a church. “A preacher who lives in a whirl of change and travel and ever-changing audiences loses touch to some extent with the daily problems of the ordinary man,” Jeffs wrote.2 No doubt this is true, but I cringe to think of what the world would have lost had Morgan wasted his time on committee meetings, denominational gatherings, and (as he said once) “arguing over who would have the key to the back door.” He had a gift; he developed and exercised it; and the Christian world is the richer for it. True, he did not make pastoral visits, but this does not mean that his messages were divorced from the needs of the people. If this is true, why did thousands come to hear him? Had Morgan adopted the lifestyle of the typical pastor, we would have been robbed of a rich treasure.
There is one interesting thing about Morgan’s preaching that I have never seen discussed anywhere—his seeming avoidance of the doctrinal epistles. He was basically a preacher of the four Gospels, but he never expounded, verse by verse, the great doctrinal epistles— Romans, Ephesians, and Hebrews. “He left them for me,” Lloyd-Jones told me one day, “and I’m glad he did!” I think one reason Morgan avoided these letters is that he was basically a devotional preacher, not a doctrinal preacher. This does not mean he avoided doctrine, but only that he did not emphasize it (Lloyd-Jones is a doctrinal preacher par excellence!). Morgan’s ministry was to all the churches, and doctrinal controversies found no place in his system.
Perhaps we need a man like Morgan today, one who will minister the Word with clarity and power and make the Bible “come alive,” one who will ride above the ripples and waves of denominational competition and theological controversy, one who is true to the doctrines of the faith but who also is able to share the Word in love with Christians of many denominational affiliations. Certainly H. A. Ironside was such a man, as was A. C. Gaebelein. But even they were identified with certain “branches” of evangelical faith and to some degree limited in their ministries. G. Campbell Morgan seemed to belong to all the churches and to Christians everywhere, not because he compromised, but because he majored on the great essentials of the faith and did not get detoured by the accidentals. He paid a price for this, to be sure, but we are the richer because of the price he paid.
Whenever you find a book by Morgan, buy it and study it. Read his life story and get acquainted with this unique teacher of the Word. You do not have to agree with him to learn from him; he would be the first one to say that. “My work is wholly constructive,” he wrote in 1923, “and I believe that that is the only kind that is really of value.”3 We need more of this constructive ministry today.