Who Was G. Campbell Morgan? The Bible Teacher of Westminster Chapel
G. Campbell Morgan was an English preacher and Bible teacher who lived from 1863 to 1945. He had no college or seminary training, yet he became one of the best-known Bible expositors in the English-speaking world. He was pastor of Westminster Chapel in London twice, first from 1904 through the years of the First World War, and again from 1933 to 1943. He crossed the Atlantic dozens of times to teach in America, first at D. L. Moody's invitation, and he wrote around eighty books. People called him a "prince of expositors," because he could take a whole book of the Bible and show you how it fit together.
Here's a fuller look at his life, what he taught, and which of his books to start with.
A boy who preached
George Campbell Morgan was born on December 9, 1863, on a farm near Tetbury in Gloucestershire, England. His father, George Morgan, was a Welshman who had left the Plymouth Brethren to become a Baptist minister. Campbell was a sickly child and was taught at home rather than at school.
When he was about ten, D. L. Moody made his first great preaching tour of Britain, and the boy never forgot it. He preached his first sermon at thirteen. Within a couple of years he was preaching in country chapels on Sundays and holidays.
"That Bible found me"
As a young man Morgan went through a crisis of faith. The books of the day were full of attacks on the Bible, and for a time he lost his hold on it. Accounts of his life say he shut away his books, bought a new Bible and decided to read it for himself, with an open mind, to see whether it would prove itself. It did. He later said simply that the Bible found him. From then on, his whole ministry was given to teaching the Book that had found him.
For a while he taught school in Birmingham. In his early twenties he left teaching to give himself to preaching.
Rejected, then called
In 1888 Morgan applied to become a Methodist minister. He preached a trial sermon before the examiners, and they turned him down. The story told by his family is that he sent his father a one-word telegram: "Rejected." His father wired back: "Rejected on earth. Accepted in heaven. Dad." Morgan later said he thanked God for closing that door.
Around the same time he married his cousin Nancy. They had several children, and four of their sons became ministers.
The Congregational churches welcomed him. He was ordained and served small churches in Stone and Rugeley in Staffordshire, then a church in Birmingham, and in 1897 a church in north London. His preaching drew crowds wherever he went.
Moody and America
In 1896 Moody invited Morgan to teach in America. It was the first of more than fifty trips across the Atlantic. He lectured at Moody's Bible school in Chicago and at the summer conferences in Northfield, Massachusetts, and after Moody died in 1899 he helped lead the Northfield conference for several years. His studies in Malachi, published as Wherein?, began as addresses to students at Moody's school. You can read more about Moody in our article on who was D. L. Moody.
Westminster Chapel
In 1904 Morgan became pastor of Westminster Chapel, a large Congregational church near Buckingham Palace. He filled it. On Friday nights he held a Bible school where crowds came to study a book of the Bible together. He also started a summer Bible conference at Mundesley, on the Norfolk coast, and for a few years he served as president of Cheshunt College, a training school for ministers.
During these years he wrote many of the books in TheWay Library, among them The Crises of the Christ, his study of the seven turning points in the life of Jesus. He also wrote a chapter for The Fundamentals, the set of essays defending historic Christian belief; see what are The Fundamentals.
He left Westminster near the end of the war, and from 1919 he spent more than a decade teaching across North America, at conferences, colleges and churches, including a pastorate in Philadelphia.
Back to London
In 1933, nearly seventy, Morgan returned to Westminster Chapel. In 1939 he brought the young Welsh preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones to share the pulpit, and in 1943 he handed the church over to him. He died in London on May 16, 1945, at eighty-one.
What he taught
Morgan's method was simple to describe and hard to do. Read a book of the Bible many times, until you see its plan. Then teach the whole, and show how each part serves it. His multi-volume Analyzed Bible grew out of this, and so did his Friday night Bible school.
He held firmly to the gospel of the cross. In his lectures on Evangelism he wrote:
We must be very suspicious of any new evangel that has no Cross in it.
Evangelism, chapter I, The Evangel
And he expected the preacher's life to match the message:
And the man who preaches the Cross must be a crucified man.
Evangelism, chapter III, The Evangelist
He taught that holiness wasn't a rare attainment but the normal health of a believer's life. In The Simple Things of the Christian Life he put it plainly:
I cannot live the holy life if I am neglecting at any point something that in my inner heart I know I ought to be doing.
The Simple Things of the Christian Life, chapter II, Holiness
On prayer, he noticed what most of us skip over in the disciples' request:
They did not say, Lord, teach us how to pray, but, "Lord, teach us to pray."
The Practice of Prayer, chapter I, Preliminary
Why he's still read
Preachers still read Morgan to learn how to see the shape of a Bible book. Ordinary readers read him because he's clear. He doesn't bury you in footnotes. He shows you what the passage says, how it hangs together, and what it asks of you today.
Where to start
TheWay Library has seventeen of his books, all free to read. If you're new to him, start with The Practice of Prayer, a short book built on the Lord's Prayer. For a young Christian, try Discipleship, his first book. For something longer and deeper, read The Crises of the Christ. And for the Holy Spirit, read The Spirit of God.
Our guide to G. Campbell Morgan's books explains all seventeen, and our collection of G. Campbell Morgan quotes gathers his best lines. You'll find all his books on the G. Campbell Morgan author page.