One layman, recalling the years he had sat under Morrison, declared that those services had been for him both a graduate course in theology and Bible study as well as a liberal education.
Morrison was a skilled exegete and had a library of useful books on exegesia. Yet he did not allow his finished sermons to show the marks of the craftsman's tools. Before a sermon was preached he had devoted many hours of thorough study to its preparation. When Sunday came he had something to say and said it with clarity and conviction. The secret of his preaching power would seem to lie in his quiet taste, his utter sincerity, his simple style which enabled the common people to hear him gladly, and an infinite capacity for taking pains.
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He was not a dramatic preacher. He stood quite still, entirely without gesture, his hands behind his back, and spoke quietly. Up to 1914 his sermons were fully written out and read from the manuscript in the pulpit but during the war he felt compelled to get into closer touch with the people; from that time he discarded his manuscript and spoke to the people freely. He used to say that he was not an extempore preacher in the true sense of the term and to the end he was as careful and thorough in his preparation as ever.
His sermons are best described as pastoral and devotional. The concerns of a pastor are evident throughout his preaching. The emphasis is on the personal and experiential. There is little reference to the contemporary scene. There are no stories of persons or places. The illustrations that he uses really illustrate; that is, they draw attention to the subject, not to themselves.
He had the happy art of providing suggestive titles for his sermons. Here are a few examples: The Fatal Power of Inattention (Luke 16:25); The Selective Power of Personality (Titus 1:15); The Perils of Unsettlement (Acts 20:24); The Grace of Happy-Heartedness (1 Cor. 7:32).
Obscure texts seemed to yield their treasures to his swift insight. He preached a sermon on How Science Helps Religion on the text Revelation 12:16, "The earth helped the woman." Here are some unusual texts on which Morrison preached: "There is sorrow on the sea" (Jeremiah 49); "God hath made me forget" (Genesis 41:51); "He gave them drink as out of the great depths" (Psalm 78:15).
Morrison could and did preach on the great texts of Scripture. He had an eye for the picturesque but he could also make the familiar text come to life.
It was Morrison's habit at the morning service to handle the greater themes of the Christian revelation and at the evening service to allow himself a wider scope, putting essential things in a somewhat different setting and calling to his aid every interest he could command.
After he had fully prepared his subject, he set himself the task of striving to see how simply he could present it. His simplicity was not the easy thing it might have been thought; it was the fruit of earnest effort.
His aim in these more informal sermons was to win the attention of some of the people who sit lightly to the church, and he succeeded in attracting and keeping great crowds for twenty-six years. People of all classes and ages came on Sunday evenings, drawn not by novelty or sensation, but by the feeling that their longings and yearnings were understood and could be satisfied by the preacher.