Dr. Henry Clay Morrison - Founder of Asbury Seminary

I have received permission from the Wesley Center Online to convert some of their resources into Word Documents and post them here for conversion into Logos Personal Books.

The Wesley Center Online has an extensive library of Methodist and Holiness Movement related resources. They are in PDF format and available for download. I highly recommend them for anyone interested in Methodist history and theology in general, and the American Holiness Movement of Methodism in particular. Also, anyone interested in Asbury Seminary might interested in material by Dr. Henry Clay Morrison, who was a famous Methodist evangelist of the early 20th Century, twice President of Asbury College, and founder of Asbury Theological Seminary.

This is the first of several resources I will post here. It is "Some Chapters of My Life Story" by Henry Clay Morrison.

0363.Some Chapters of My Life Story.docx

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Mike Childs

I will be adding more of Dr. Henry Clay Morrison in replies to this post so as to not create too many threads.

The file below contains Commencement sermons from 1913, 1914, and 1915 by Dr. Morrison. This would have been in his first Presidency of Asbury College. Dr. Morrison would have been in his fifties, with more than 30 of his most productive years of ministry still ahead of him.

8737.Commencement Sermons.docx

Mike Childs

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/608053#Comment_608053

Baptism With the Holy Ghost by Henry Clay Morrison

2158.Final Baptism of HG.docx

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/609707#Comment_609707

Thanks for doing this.

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/609708#Comment_609708

Much appreciated.

Mike Childs

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/609707#Comment_609707

"Five Great Needs" by Henry Clay Morrison.

4657.Five Great Needs.docx

I don't know exactly why I am so fascinated by Henry Clay Morrison, but I am. I love history, and this man is a significant and unique figure in American Methodism. He left quite a legacy in Asbury College and Asbury Theological Seminary. Asbury is not an official United Methodist Seminary, (not owned by the UMC), yet it has more United Methodist students than any two (perhaps three) United Methodist seminaries in the world. (I delight to tell my fellow Methodist pastors that I went to the largest United Methodist seminary in the world - Asbury.)

Part of my fascination is that there were still people around the Asbury campus who remembered Dr. Morrison when I was a student at Asbury. Dr. McPheeters, David Sermons, Dr. Stanger, and many others. And I often talked to them about this dynamic figure, Henry Clay Morrison. I heard many fascinating stories.

From what they told me, Dr. Morrison was very human, with human failings and a big ego. He was also a great and godly man. He was a man of his time and culture, and his opinions reflect some of the prejudice of that time. It is easy to see the prejudices of those in the past, but hard to see our own. But his opinions that come out in his writings are fascinating to me, whether I agree with him or not.

And sometimes his opinions are very surprising: For example, this is an unusual opinion for the 1930's which comes from "Five Great Needs".

"Millions of toy pistols are sold every year; the imitations are almost perfect; they have with them caps that make quite a report when snapped, and the little fellows armed with these pistols imagine themselves to be desperadoes and charge about in mimic hold-ups and robberies. It seems strange that any parent would buy a toy pistol, and in this way sow the small seeds in the imagination, desires and actions of a child that are likely to prepare the way for the carrying of deadly weapons and the use of them. State legislatures ought to enact laws preventing their manufacture and sale."

What would he think games like "Grand Thief Auto"!!!!

Claybon Collins Jr

Thank you!!

Mike Childs

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/610839#Comment_610839

The Confessions of a Backslide by Henry Clay Morrison

4718.1The Confessions of a Backslider.docx

Dr. Henry Clay Morrison was a very popular evangelist before and after becoming a College President and Seminary founder. He was in great demand nation wide, and he established a publishing house to keep in touch with his supporters / donors etc. This continued throughout his career. Among the books and booklets that he published is "The Confessions of a Backslide".

I am not sure who this backslider is. But his testimony, edited by Dr. Morrison, is recorded here. Note his Spanish-American War experiences.

Apparently, this is taken from letters written from prison. The man refers to "the sins and crimes which have brought me to the cell from which I write these letters, with the hope that someone, reading them, may take warning and avoid the snares into which my feet have become entangled."

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/611229#Comment_611229

The Confessions of a Backslide by Henry Clay Morrison

Thanks. This one looks interesting. I would love to know who the person really was.

Mike Childs

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/611319#Comment_611319

The Confessions of a Backslide by Henry Clay Morrison

Thanks. This one looks interesting. I would love to know who the person really was.

I will see what I can find out. Would like to know myself. Whoever he was, he was a Spanish American war veteran. I just regret that the people that I knew, who knew Dr. Morrison well, are all gone now.

I am now working on Morrison's book "The World Evangelism Tour". It is a fascinating detailed account of his 10 month round the world mission / crusade in 1909. It is an amazing picture of the world at that time, as seen by this true character of American Methodism. Will take a week or two before it is ready to post. It is larger than those posted so far.

Mike Childs

1780.Final Optimism of Premilennialism Final- Henry Clay Morrison.docx

Henry Clay Morrison was Dispensational Pre-millennial in his eschatology. Though I am not Dispensational, I just love to read this guy. And he so often surprises me. He had a strong social conscience. For example, check out this statement about the oppression of the poor in America:

"We can but believe that in the expression “the last days” the Apostle has in his thought the closing period of the Gospel Age, the approach to the end of the time just prior to the coming of our Lord to set up His kingdom among men. He tells us that men shall become 'lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers.'”

"Is this not startlingly true of the times in which we are living? The covetous spirit is prominent everywhere. Take, for instance, the great trusts, the greed that is manifested. Groups of millionaires are organized throughout the world to control the necessaries of life. Take the coal barons; they have bought up and control those parts of the earth that produce fuel; they fix the prices of labor and the sale of the products of labor, and are masters of the situation. They live in palaces, they revel in luxury, while those who risk their lives underground to produce their wealth, live in miserable huts, in many instances, with poor sanitary conditions, and their labor is so manipulated that a large percent of their time they cannot work at all. In order to keep up the price of coal, the mines are shut down, the laborers and their families are in dire want and become objects of charity, while the owners squander their millions in marriages, divorces, sailing the seas in palaces, and building magnificent homes in different countries, with many of those homes a large part of the year shut up and kept only by servants, while they luxuriate about the world. And thus, we might go forward with comment on present day covetousness."

"One great trust controls the oil, another the lumber, another cement, another dressed stone, another the meat products, another the grain, another the cured fruit, another the fresh fruit, another the wool, another the cotton, and so we might go on indefinitely. The spirit of covetous greed is manifested everywhere, the rich growing richer, more insolent and proud, the poor growing poorer, more discontented, threatening and lawless. Perilous times have come."

Not bad for a 1927 evangelical social conscience, in my opinion.

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By the way, most of these Henry Clay Morrison books have been made available by The Wesley Center Online, and I thank them.

This one is from Asbury Theological Seminary. Asbury makes this and many resources by Dr. Morrison available free of charge as a scanned ebook or PDF file. I have converted it to a Word Document for making a Logos Personal book.

Asbury allows noncommercial educational and personal study use of these resources. No commercial use allowed. I have contacted them with my plans to post this for Logos personal books. Please do not use this for anything but personal use. Thanks.

Mike Childs

"The World Tour of Evangelism" by Henry Clay Morrison

3404.1Final The Tour.docx

In 1909, Henry Clay Morrison was at the top of his fame as a Methodist Holiness Evangelist. The holiness movement was also near its peak among Methodism. The “Holiness Union” was an organization that Morrison helped to found to promote the Wesleyan doctrine of Entire Sanctification. That year the “Holiness Union” decided to sponsor a world-wide evangelistic effort to preach the gospel, win souls, encourage missions, and spread the teaching Entire Sanctification around the world. They voted to send Henry Clay Morrison on an evangelistic world-wide mission. After being sure that his family was taken care of in his absence, Morrison set out on a 10 month evangelistic campaign around the world in July of 1909. He tells of his experiences in this book. He literally preaches his way around the world – England, France, Italy, Jerusalem, India, China, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and more. His fame as an evangelist meant that he was in great demand all over the world.

This is my favorite of Morrison’s books because it literally gives a picture of the world in 1909 through his eyes. This is a snapshot of history that is unique, and it is a snapshot of world missions about the turn of the 20^th century. The trip was a great success. Here is a letter from a Methodist Bishop in the Philippines thanking him for his impact on Christianity there:

“Some weeks after we left Manila, I received a very encouraging letter from Bishop Oldham. I will quote a paragraph from this letter, which gladdened my heart... 'When I cabled you, I did not know how marked a step forward your coming would bring. I called the mission together yesterday to discuss especially the matter of revival and I found the men’s hearts are all aglow, but they all feel that we must organize Revival bands in which Americans and Filipinos shall go together all over our territory to call the people to repentance and the Christians to a deeper life of holiness. Your coming has practically fixed the holiness idea as the birthright of every man in the Methodist Church, and I desire these revival bands to move through the country not only for the sake of sinners, but that we might have sincere saints.'”

This is Henry Clay Morrison in his prime as an evangelist, before he became a college president and founder of a seminary. You get to know somebody when you travel with them. His strengths (and they were many) and his weaknesses and the prejudices of his time all are there. But many times he surprisingly transcends the prejudices of his time with real spiritual insight. There is surprising wit and humor, and he visits people like E. Stanley Jones and Pandita Ramabai of India. He preached in the church at Nagasaki, Japan, and there is a picture of the Japanese Christians and missionaries in Nagasaki that I find haunting in view of what happened there in 1945.

There are 27 interesting photographs in this book. Most photos of Morrison that I have seen are in his old age, but these are in his prime.