"Second, his insistence on expository preaching. His ruling passion is to keep first things first. Exposition of the Bible is what the common people are wanting and in the church where it is provided, there will be no empty seats. Third, the central factor in his ministry is the living Word, springing up within him, sustaining the soul, and strengthening the mind. This is the explanation of his being able to accomplish so vast an amount of work even though the physical casket he possesses is frail."
Failing health and the strain of the first World War caused him to resign in 1916. He spent a year working for the YMCA, training their young men for work at the front, and then for a year as minister at Highbury Quadrant Church in London. In 1919 he returned to America and held Bible conferences and lectured on the Bible for two years at the Los Angeles Bible Institute.
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In 1929, Morgan became pastor of Tabernacle Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. In 1933 he returned for a second term of service at Westminster Chapel. In 1943 his health compelled him to resign and he died on May 16, 1945, at the age of eighty-two.
Morgan adhered to the old methods in expounding the Scriptures. First the central idea, out of which grew the divisions, which he arranged with lucidity. His word-pictures of biblical incidents and scenes are vivid and striking, abounding in color and vitality. He began his study of any book in the Bible by reading it aloud fifty times. Then he proceeded to a microscopic study of the book, after which he prepared his outline. Only then did he turn to exegetical works and to the expositions of other preachers.
One who heard Morgan often said: "He gets more out of a familiar passage of Scripture that I did not know was there than any man I have heard preach. Jowett said of him, "His one aim is to let the Bible tell its own eternal message. In that work he has a genius that is incomparable."
One of his four sons, all of whom entered the ministry, said of him: "No man ever worked harder than my father. One who spoke of the marvelous simplicity and lucidity of his interpreting Scripture little realized the amount of painstaking work and study involved."
When asked how he made his sermons he could only give some very general statements as to his methods: "Two things are vital. First, personal first-hand work on the text; and then, all scholarly works available. I never take down a commentary until I have done personal work, and have made my outline."
He spoke from a brief -- carefully prepared -- and gave himself freedom of utterance. When it was once said to him, "You can preach and you know it," he frankly replied: "I have no hesitation in affirming that I can preach. I do not know any-thing else under the sun of which I am willing to make a similar affirmation. It is the one thing I want to do and cannot help doing. I would do it as a recreation if I was not permitted to do it as a vocation."
A Canadian minister says of Morgan: "I recall his research into the formation and meaning of certain uncommon architectural terms for a sermon on 'the pillar and ground of the truth.' For an Easter sermon his etymological search concerning the words itself took several hours. He studied with prayerful thoroughness and had a reserve of knowledge far beyond what the actual sermon content required. He got so fully into his subject that his subject got fully into him."
Once he visited a cherry orchard in British Columbia and was amazed at the abundance and size of the fruit. He said to the grower: "Anyone can see that cherries are easily grown here." The fruit grower said: "We are fighting for the life of these cherries 365 days in the year." Morgan used that reply as an illustration for a sermon on Christian watchfulness.
His appearance in the pulpit was impressive and arresting. His tall, gaunt figure, his high narrow head, his pale eyes, his long, thin, speaking hands, his clear voice reaching everywhere without effort, can never be forgotten. He preached with every fiber of his being for nearly an hour, feeding his hearers with strong meat.
He was an aristocrat of the pulpit with the command of a perfect oratory. His elocution was perfect and his dramatic power of no mean order. His eloquence was not only in words and tones but in his eyes and gestures, and in his perfect choice of words.
For over half a century he had saturated his thinking in the sublime language of the Book that he knew as few men did. As Horton Davies says of him: "He proves conclusively the varied spiritual wealth that is at the disposal of the preacher who mines the deep lodes of the Bible."
