The Holy Spirit

by G. Campbell Morgan

DURING recent years two movements have been noticeable in the thought of men outside the Christian Church. First, there has been the development of materialism. The teachings of Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer have tended to the denial of the spiritual in man. Thousands of people who have never read their books have been influenced by their outlook upon life. Moreover, a great many of their first positions have been accepted and taught, and are held until this moment, without any due allowance being made for subsequent statements, which have proved that their teaching consisted in the suggestion of hypotheses, rather than the declaration of ascertained facts. According to such teachers all the phenomena of human life are to be accounted for wholly within the range of matter. It is admitted by them that matter is in itself indestructible; but it is affirmed that the rearrangement of it that takes place at death destroys the identity of human beings. In a more cultured and refined form, and with gleams of hope in the form of doubts, men have been gradually drifting towards materialism; and the effect of this has been seen in the average human life apart from the influence and teaching of Christianity. Earthly, sensual, devilish, are words which fitly describe the vast mass of life apart from God. Some of the old forms of fleshly life have indeed ceased, and there is in the minds of men a new respect for personal character, as a result of the presence of Christianity in the world. A correct view of the condition of the masses of the race would reveal the fact that for the most part life is being lived in the realm of the fleshly, the material, the perishing. Thousands of men, while professing to hold the orthodox creed, are yet living in a practical atheism, and a consequent denial of their own spiritual nature.
The second movement outside the Church has taken the form of a revolt against materialism, and has found its expression in attempts to discover the spiritual—to unfold its laws, and to declare its activities. Spiritualism and theosophy are witnesses to this movement. Mrs. Annie Besant is one of the most remarkable instances of it in individual life. There was a time when she—sickened, alas! by the inconsistencies with which she came into contact within what was called, and falsely called, Christianity—turned her back upon the faith of her early years. She found refuge in denial of high and sacred things; and lived wholly, to all appearance, outside the realm of the spiritual. For her to have found her way back to the acknowledgment of the spiritual in any form is a gain. It is, however, a remarkable fact that one who might have been spoken of as the high-priestess of materialism, in a rebound from that position, has taken a leap into the realm of credulity. Belief in a Mahatma, somewhere amid Himalayan heights, who has never been seen, requires a stretch of credence far greater than a belief in the living. Christ of God, Whose presence on the earth nineteen hundred years ago is an indisputable historical fact, and Whose abiding presence is witnessed by innumerable transformations of character during the centuries.

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Kindle Edition, 110 pages

Published January 5th 2017 by CrossReach Publications

G. Campbell Morgan

G. Campbell Morgan (1863 - 1945)

Was a British evangelist, preacher and a leading Bible scholar. A contemporary of Rodney "Gipsy" Smith, Morgan was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London from 1904 to 1919, and from 1933 to 1943.

In 1896 D. L. Moody invited him to lecture to the students at the Moody Bible Institute. This was the first of his 54 crossings of the Atlantic to preach and teach. After the death of Moody in 1899 Morgan assumed the position of director of the Northfield Bible Conference. He was ordained by the Congregationalists in London, and given a Doctor of Divinity degree by the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1902.[1] After five successful years in this capacity, he returned to England in 1904 and became pastor of Westminster Chapel in London. During two years of this ministry he was President of Cheshunt College in Cambridge.[2] His preaching and weekly Friday night Bible classes were attended by thousands. In 1910 Morgan contributed an essay entitled The Purposes of the Incarnation to the first volume of The Fundamentals, 90 essays which are widely considered to be the foundation of the modern Fundamentalist movement. Leaving Westminster Chapel in 1919, he once again returned to the United States, where he conducted an itinerant preaching/teaching ministry for 14 years. Finally, in 1933, he returned to England, where he again became pastor of Westminster Chapel and remained there until his retirement in 1943. He was instrumental in bringing Martyn Lloyd-Jones to Westminster in 1939 to share the pulpit and become his successor. Morgan was a friend of F. B. Meyer, Charles Spurgeon, and many other great preachers of his day.

George Campbell Morgan was born in Tetbury, England, the son of a Baptist minister. His home was one of such genuine piety that in later years he wrote: "While my father could not compel me to be a Christian, I had no choice because of what he did for me and what I saw in him."

When Campbell was 10 years old, D.L. Moody came to England for the first time, and the effect of his ministry, combined with the dedication of his parents, made such an impression on the life of young Morgan, that at the age of 13, he preached his first sermon. Two years later, he was preaching regularly in country chapels during his Sundays and holidays.

In 1886, at the age of 23, he left the teaching profession, for which he had been trained, and began devoting his full time to the ministry of the Word of God. He was ordained to the Congregational ministry in 1890, having been rejected by the Wesleyan Methodists two years before. His reputation as preacher and Bible expositor soon encompassed England and spread to the United States.

After the death of Moody in 1899, Morgan assumed the position of director of the Northfield Bible Conference. After five very successful years there, he returned to England in 1904 and became pastor of Westminster Chapel of London. His preaching and his weekly Friday night Bible classes were attended by thousands. During two years of this ministry, he was president of Cheshunt College in Cambridge.

Leaving Westminster Chapel in 1919, he once again returned to the United States, where he conducted an itinerant ministry for 14 years. Many thousands of people heard him preach in nearly every state and also in Canada. Finally, in 1933, he returned to England, where he became pastor of Westminster Chapel again and remained there until his retirement in 1943.

      The most outstanding preacher that this country has heard during the past thirty years"-this was Dr. James M. Gray's estimate of Dr. G. Campbell Morgan whose ministry spanned the Atlantic and reached from the days of D. L. Moody to the era of World War II.

      Born on a farm in England in 1863, he was brought up in a strict Puritanical home where he amused himself by preaching to his sisters' dolls. Although his first sermon before a responsive audience was delivered in a Wesleyan schoolroom at the age of thirteen, he was engulfed in doubt and confusion concerning his faith after preparing for the ministry.

      Remembering those two chaotic years, Dr. Morgan later wrote, "The only hope for me was the Bible....I stopped reading books about the Bible and began to read the Bible itself. I saw the light and was back on the path." For seven years thereafter, his reading concerning the things of God was confined to the Word of God itself.

      Ordained a minister of the Congregational Church in 1889, the young man became the leading preacher in England, holding several pastorates. Later he became widely known in the United States and Canada as a Bible conference speaker, lecturer, pastor and teacher before returning to England in 1935 to become the pastor of Westminster Congregational Church in London.

      Dr. Morgan was a prolific but profound writer of books, booklets, tracts and articles. Among his best-known books are Parables of the Kingdom; the eleven volumes of the Westminster Pulpit; The Crises of the Christ; the ten-volume work, The Analysed Bible; the Triumphs of Faith series; and An Exposition of the Whole Bible.

His earthly life of testimony and ministry came to a close in May, 1945.

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