The second Sunday I preached at Broadway Church, Louisville, Ky., Mr. Charles R. Long, a leading member of that church, I believe the president of the Louisville Water Company, the Chairman of the Democratic Party of the State of Kentucky, and withal a very devout Methodist, I believe Chairman of the Board of Stewards at that time, invited me to dine with him. There was no one present at the table except Mr. Long and his excellent, devout wife. After dinner we retired to the sitting room, and Brother Long said, "I wish to have a talk with you. You have a wife and children; they need your presence and do you not think that it would be far better for you and your family, and your usefulness as a minister of the gospel, to be settled in a good station, than that you should be separated from your family and roaming the country as an evangelist? In the station you would have much better opportunity for study, and for the development of all of your abilities as a preacher, and the shepherd of a flock rather than to undertake to spread over such a wide territory with your ministry. We have an excellent and well furnished parsonage, this church pays ample salary for the comfortable support of yourself and family, and at the close of this four months' service we shall be glad to have you appointed pastor of the church for four years.
I saw the possibilities of a useful life in the pastorate. Dr. Broadus was then one of the great men at the Baptist Theological Seminary, and I felt under the circumstances it would be possible for me to make great improvements in my theological education, but my call to the evangelistic field was so definite that I did not hesitate to give Brother Long and his good wife the reason why I could not remain in the pastorate. I explained to them that I was as definitely called to the evangelistic field as I was called into the ministry; that while I loved the pastorate I felt compelled to devote myself to direct soul winning. I explained to them the longings in my heart to be with my wife and children.
I spoke with tears in my eyes, and tears came into their eyes, and when I concluded they both said they could understand how that under the circumstances I should continue in the evangelistic field.
A few days before Conference Brother Overton, the presiding elder of the Louisville District, came up to my office where I was writing an editorial and wanted to know if I had made up my mind to accept an appointment. I looked up and said, "Brother Overton, if a committee should come to me from Dr. Talmage's Church in New York and should offer me $10,000 a year to take charge of that great church I would not and could not consider it for a moment. I feel without any doubt or question that I am divinely called to the evangelistic work." He stood and looked at me for awhile and then with tears in his great kindly eyes he said, "Morrison, I will never say another word to you about giving up your evangelistic work." He had spoken to me on the subject frequently but he never did again.
When I made my first trip to California I was entertained for some weeks in the Glide mansion in Sacramento where I was engaged in revival services. Mr. James Glide, husband of Mrs. Lizzie H.
Glide who has done so much for Southern Methodism in the homeland and foreign field, and for Asbury College, seemed to take quite a liking to me. He was many times a millionaire, a man of remarkable business ability. He was not a converted man but deeply interested in the work in which his wife was engaged, and complained that as he saw it many ministers of the gospel were not manifesting the zeal they ought to win sinners to Christ. One day he said to me, "If you will stay here in this city and preach the gospel I will build you a fine church and pay you a good salary. No one else need give you a dollar either for building or salary. I will do it myself." I answered Mr. Glide at once that I could not consider such a proposition. He was born and reared in England, came to California when a young man, and was most fortunate in many enterprises; among other things he had vast sheep ranches. He raised the finest breed of sheep, thousands of them, and sold highly-bred males to sheep raisers in Australia. He also grew wheat, thousands of acres. He was a most interesting gentleman, growing a bit old, but full of activity, and I admired and loved him very much.
He rented a large mission down in the city, paid a pastor, and would sometimes go down and sit on the back seat while his wife on her knees at the altar labored among the most sinful people of the city. He said to me one night with tears on his cheeks, "Morrison, my wife is winning more souls to Christ than all the preachers in this city." He told me that a preacher of the Christian Church asked him if he believed anybody could be sanctified and live a holy life, to which he replied, "I have been living with a woman now for three years who professes and lives that experience, and the devil will never make her give it up. I have tried and failed, and it is not worthwhile for the devil to waste his time trying to get my wife to give up her faith and testimony in this doctrine and experience of sanctification." I am glad Mr. Glide was happily converted before his death and gave a good testimony of saving faith.
Some years later when I was engaged in revival meetings in Los Angeles, where I held quite a number of meetings and had come to know many of the good people, and especially those who stood for the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification, a prominent and wealthy man came to me and said,
"There is quite a group of us here who are ready to pull out of the several churches of which we are members and build you a handsome church and pay you a large salary if you will come to us preaching the Wesleyan doctrine and become our pastor. We feel sure that at once you will have large congregations and a following from a number of churches that will build up a membership of a class of devout, earnest people who are interested in the salvation of the lost; and make such a church as we desire and believe is possible; a great spiritual center and a soul-saving organization which will be able to bring many sinners to Christ." I had but one answer and that was that I had a call into the evangelistic field, and that it was so clear and plain that I could not for a moment give that work up to turn to anything else.
Many propositions have come to me in my long life in the ministry, suggesting that I change my church relationships, and I have been severely criticized because I did not do so, to which I have always been able to answer that I know my heavenly Master knows I am ready and willing to obey his call, and that I have never heard from him any call to change my church relations. Of course the reader will not understand that I have been by any means perfectly satisfied with the way much goes on in the church of which I am a member, but it does mean I have loved her with a fervent heart, and she has blessed me far beyond my deserts, and I have never found any good reason, or felt any spiritual impression, to forsake her communion and fellowship.
SOME CHAPTERS OF MY LIFE STORY
By H. C. Morrison
CHAPTER 21
THE ENLARGED EVANGELISTIC FIELD
At the close of my four months at East Broadway Methodist Church in Louisville I entered with fresh vigor into the evangelistic field. I held revival meetings in Knoxville, Tenn., with Rev. Will Dyer and Rev. James Burrough, classmates of mine at Vanderbilt. They united their churches and we had a very gracious revival. Many souls were blessed, a number entering into the experience of sanctifying grace.
Will Dyer was afterward President of Martha Washington College and died in peace many years ago. Rev. James Burrough was a remarkably true soul; we were very close friends at Vanderbilt. He joined the Holston Conference and was Secretary of that body at least forty years. He was for some time editor of their conference Organ, presiding elder, pastor of prominent churches and loved and honored throughout Southern Methodism. He was several times a member of the General Conference; he passed away some years ago.
Dr. Sam Steel, pastor of McKendree Church back in the days when he was one of the greatest orators in Methodism, North or South, and when McKendree was looked upon with its tall, beautiful spire, as the Mother Church of Southern Methodism, invited me to come and assist in revival meetings. We had great congregations and a large number of people were blessed at the altar of prayer. There was a preachers' room at the front of the church where the ministers would leave their hats and overcoats and sometimes sit awhile before going into the service, and frequently finish the last puffs on their stub of a cigar rather than throw it away unused to the limit. Some of the prominent preachers of the city did not seem to be especially impressed with my ministry. One evening I said, "Brethren, if you cannot help us do not hinder us, for we have a difficult task and need all the help we can get. We are not in need of opposition and adverse criticism." I made quite a plea for sympathy and assistance rather than opposition.
The brilliant Dr. Emory Hoss, then Editor of The Christian Advocate, frequently attended our services. I do not think that he was favorably impressed; he was present on the evening when I made the plea to the brethren not to oppose us. He used to write brilliant, sometimes sarcastic, paragraphs for the front page of the Advocate, and that week when the Advocate came out the first paragraph on the front page read something like this: "Some people imagine themselves strongly opposed in the performance of their task, when they are not thought of at all. They imagine that some one is obstructing their efforts when they are not at all in the thought or concern of those whom they have concluded are strongly opposing them. Such persons remind me of an old Negro chief of a tribe in darkest Africa who met with some travelers passing through his region and, finding they were Englishmen, he straightened up to his full height and asked, 'What does Queen Victoria think of me?' He was a bit disappointed to learn that Queen Victoria had never heard of him." Some of the brethren
had the laugh on me when they read this paragraph, remembering that the brilliant editor had been present when I made my plea for sympathy and help rather than opposition.
At the close of this meeting Dr. Steel wrote an account of the revival for the St. Louis Advocate which gave me a very fine advertisement as an evangelist, and I got calls from many states. This enlarged my influence and was a great help to the circulation of the paper which had now dropped the word Kentucky and was The Methodist.
I began to receive calls to the great holiness camp meetings in a number of the states where I preached and got acquainted with many thousands of people. This opened the pulpits of leading churches, North and South. I held three revival meetings in Columbus, Ohio, a great center of Methodism. The Lord blessed our work there. I held a revival meeting in what was then the leading church of Methodism in Toledo, Ohio. Rev. Hutsinpiller, the pastor, was one of the most delightful Christian gentlemen one would meet in a lifetime. We had a very gracious meeting; people came in large numbers. There was something about my southern way of expression that seemed different and attracted attention. When the pastor handed me a check for my services, a liberal offering, he said,
"Dr. Morrison, what I have received from your ministry is worth to me every dollar of this check if no one else has been benefited. I have gotten six sermons out of suggestions that have come to me from your messages without using any of your matter. My mind has been stimulated, thought aroused, I have made notes and will be able to develop six good sermons which have come to me from your preaching, without at all infringing on your messages." I have never had any pastor express himself more graciously to me than this very delightful gentleman did on presenting me with the generous offering from his congregation.
From this time forward I had many calls from great city churches far more than I could fill. I held revival meetings in Boston, Mass., in New York City, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and all of the larger cities in the south down to New Orleans. I assisted in a number of revivals in that wonderfully charming old city where the Lord blessed us in a gracious way.
Later on, I received calls and assisted in meetings in St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, and in smaller towns, camp meetings and tent meetings, scattered about in all the regions that I have mentioned. The Lord blessed my ministry in about forty county seats in Kentucky, where I had great congregations and delightful fellowship with Southern Methodist pastors who were men of consecration and zeal, and with whom I labored with a good degree of success in winning sinners to Christ, and seeing quite a number of the Lord's people blessedly sanctified.
Meanwhile there was going on throughout Methodism quite a controversy on the subject of what the opposition called "second blessing sanctification." Pamphlets were published, discussion went through the columns of the church periodicals and we hardly had a meeting of the Kentucky Conference that the presiding officer did not say some very sarcastic things about those persons who were professing themselves to be holy. When our Conference met at Harrodsburg many years ago, presided over by Bishop Wilson, who lived in Baltimore, Maryland, he stood up to read the appointments and spoke something like this: "Brethren, you are intelligent, good men, but it might be wise if after you have adjusted yourselves in your new appointments, if the presiding elders of the
various districts would call their preachers together at some central point and spend about ten days in some Upper Room in prayer for an anointing of the Holy Spirit." After a few words of exhortation along this line he made some very sarcastic and cutting remarks about the "second blessing" group who were constantly witnessing and insisting that they were sanctified. Bishop Wilson was a great man, a profound thinker, one of the greatest preachers I ever heard. His sermons made profound impressions, all of which made his remarks the more painful to us who were witnessing to the sanctifying power of our Lord Jesus. We were deeply wounded. Five or six of us met under a tree out in front of the Methodist Church, and with trembling voices and tear-stained faces, we joined hands and pledged ourselves to each other and our Lord anew, that we would be faithful witnesses in sermon and testimony to the saving and sanctifying power of the atoning blood of our Lord Jesus.
Our hearts were "strangely warmed" as we stood there awhile in silence, and then separated for our various fields of service. I am the only one now living of that little group of humble men of God;
they have all died in peace and gone home to Paradise where I hope to meet them in bonds of love which death cannot sever, and will abide forever.
SOME CHAPTERS OF MY LIFE STORY
By H. C. Morrison
CHAPTER 22
A GREAT SORROW CAME INTO MY LIFE
When I located to evangelize, at the invitation of Mr. Bain and his wife, my family went to live with them in their home in Lexington. Mr. Bain was constantly in the field and I was in the evangelistic work; my wife had a delightful home with one of the most devoted mothers I have ever known. Six years slipped away rapidly and she was taken sick while I was holding a meeting in New Orleans. I was telegraphed of her serious illness and hurried to her bedside, and found her in a very critical condition. Something like a year before this sickness she had received the most gracious baptism of the Holy Spirit and bore witness to full salvation through faith in Christ.
She tarried some three days after my return, on the verge of Heaven, and went away to meet her Lord with a beautiful testimony and in great peace. Our sorrow was beyond all words of expression, but there was a sweet peace in our heart and a comfortable assurance that we would meet again in a sinless world where sorrows never come.
At once I went with a deeper consecration and a more tender love for souls into the evangelistic work and was wonderfully blessed of the Lord in soul winning. I believe my first meeting after my saintly wife went home to the Father's house was held at Stanford with Brother W. E. Arnold. The Lord did great things in our midst, four young men were converted in that meeting who entered the ministry, some of them becoming great soul winners.
My next meeting was in Trinity Church in Chattanooga, Tenn. Dr. John B. McFerren, a nephew of the celebrated elder John B. McFerren of Publishing House fame, was the pastor, one of the finest men I ever labored with. The laymen had been carrying on a revival prayer meeting for some time before my arrival. At the close of my first week Dr. McFerren and a dozen members of the Board of Stewards spent the entire night after the Friday evening service in prayer in the church. All Saturday there was a strange sense of the divine presence. Sunday morning the great church was packed with people and at the close of the sermon not less than seventy-five persons came to the altar. The old church in which these meetings were held is still standing; some of the great men of that church received their Pentecost that morning, among them a Brother Snow, who owned a stove factory and employed quite a number of men, and Harry Chapman, who lived for many years afterward and was a beautiful witness for his Lord and much beloved in Chattanooga for his generosity and kindness to the poor.
Mr. McFerren, a great preacher, and much beloved pastor, with all of that group who spent the night with him in prayer, have long since gone up to worship at the feet of our Lord in Paradise. I was on the go almost constantly, in meetings that took in a wide range of country. preaching in churches, camp meetings, rented halls, tents and brush arbors. There was a remarkable spirit of