Charles Clayton Morrison

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CHARLES CLAYTON MORRISON
EDITOR
THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY


Charles Clayton Morrison
CHARLES CLAYTON MORRISON is the brilliant editor of The Christian Century.  He writes with such virility and insight that he is creating a new type of religious journalism.  He is always alert and aware.  He lives in the vital spheres of thought and penetrates every problem with solving ideas.  He has done what few editors are able to do—he has made his pages glow with an interest and fascination which make his readers eager to read his Editorials.

The pulsing life of our day cannot adequately express itself in the smooth forms of familiar terms.  Radiant, vibrant words are necessary and Mr. Morrison has found them.  In this he is the equal, if not the superior, of any religious journalist of the present time.  To read his interpretations of life is to be thrilled with conviction and vision.  He gives new moral dimensions to the commonplace and finds the ideal relations and import of every event.

When Mr. Morrison's mind has illuminated a doctrine or a rite or an incident of the day, people cannot forget it.  They talk about it.  They learn from it, and its lessons sink into their souls.  They find the good and wholesome things made reasonable and persuasive.  It is the mark of greatness to be able to fashion thus these new and satisfying statements of the old and tried ideals.  There is an abounding faith and a moral grip in Mr. Morrison's utterances.  He is particularly successful in stripping life-questions of all secondary elements.  He has a knack of detecting irrelevant and minor considerations and of stressing the essential features of our complex social order.  His editorial ability to do this makes him a prophet.  Others see the distinctions when he has run the lines of a moral survey.  Habit and humdrum lose their monotony under his hand and throb with new meaning.

He is teaching his readers the serious and yet the joyous art of being sane and enthusiastic idealists.

He works constructively.  He is impatient of waste in the moral life as well as in business and politics.  He is an apostle of conservation by means of union and co-operation.

Efficiency in spiritual concerns is more significant to him than in material pursuits.  To assuage turmoil, to allay agitation, to reduce confusion within the realms of faith and duty in all departments of life seems to be his mission.  But he accomplishes this by dynamic and stimulating appeals, not by limp surrender or weak compromise.

It is a great gift to be able to see the follies, the blindness, the naked sins of humanity and yet preserve confidence in the aspirations and good intentions of men and of institutions.

Mr. Morrison has the sympathy of a tender soul, with the discrimination of a clear mind and the firm stroke of a skilled surgeon.

Such a leader of religious and ethical journalism is a peacemaker and a builder; a seer and a moral statesman.  His message heralds the hopes of the dawning age of brotherhood and justice.  All classes listen when he speaks.




Editor - Preacher - Lecturer
ON THE PLATFORM
THE personal charm and magnetic power of Charles Clayton Morrison are manifested in fullest degree on the platform.  Many factors contribute to this result.

He is endowed with a rare presence.  His young, fine face is the symbol of his buoyant spirit and unworn strength; while his deep, commanding voice reveals the qualities of mature and masterful thought.  Educated in one of the great colleges of the west, he added to that equipment the training in philosophy of one of the greatest universities in the world.  The fields of learning are familiar to him and he has dwelt in them with an independent and illuminating mind.  Therefore he speaks with that peculiar force born of varied experience and profound reflection.  It is his genius to present vivid and surprising observations upon life's routine and its mysteries.

But beyond his unique literary style is a depth of feeling and intuition which convey an indescribably effective and persuasive influence.  The words he speaks are confirmed by an expressive face and by the dramatic consonance of his whole action.  This is not the studied effect of an elocutionist but the natural result of earnest endeavor and long experience in transmitting deep convictions to all types of men.  He has found access to their intelligence and their feelings and speaks to them directly, as if in conversation, with the confidence of being understood and approved.

That is an achievement no school can teach.  It only grows out of an intimate companionship of public thought and communication which few attain.  It is the priceless possession of none other than the really great orator.  Such an ability cannot be won in declamation nor preserved by the man who repeats a set speech for effect or applause.  It is found only where there is the consciousness of a high moral purpose and the urgency of a true social mission.

Mr. Morrison is a preacher but he does not betray the fact by any strident notes or artificial tones.  He preserves the dignity and the depth of feeling which belong to the highest types of that profession and possesses the human qualities and nearness of speech which make his words practical and searching.  He knows how to paint word pictures, and is a master, on occasion, of the cumulative, climacteric periods which lift great audiences to the heights of vision and enthusiasm.

At such moments he is a true artist and gives to the solid truth pinions of prose poetry.  There is thus an inspiration and satisfaction in listening to Mr. Morrison which can be accounted for only by saying that he adds to the instruction and argument of a great mind the appeal and passion of a great soul.

He wins the fresh and laughing hearts of youth to a wholesome seriousness; and convinces hard-headed men and the deeply troubled souls that he understands their worlds too.  Through this many-sided versatility he speaks a universal language and conveys a fruitful message.




Mr. Morrison's Subjects

LECTURES

An Affair of Honor
An Interpretation of Modern Life in Terms of a New Chivalry.

A House Divided
A Discussion of Statesmanship in Religion.

The Biggest Idea in the World
The Single Truth that Permeates Modern Scholarship and Dominates Popular Opinion.




FOR CHAUTAUQUAS

The Personnel of Religion

1
The Prophet
2
The Priest
3
The Missionary
4
The Convert
5
The Saint

The thesis of these lectures is that Religion is not so much a system of doctrine as a community of persons.

The Master Man and His Friends

1
Peter
2
John
3
Judas
4
Paul
5
Jesus Himself.





APPRECIATIONS
In 1910 Mr. Morrison was appointed a delegate to the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Following this historic gathering he made a tour of the larger cities of England and Scotland, addressing great mass meetings on the problems of Christian statesmanship.  His tour was concluded in London where he gave an address at the Anglo-American Conference on Christian Unity.  Concerning this address the London correspondent of The Christian Evangelist said:

But the assembly was thrilled by the eloquence of the next speaker, Charles Clayton Morrison, of Chicago.  He treated of The Next Steps Toward Unity.  Mr. Morrison is a prophet.  He possesses the true prophetic faculty.  He saw visions and he made use of them; and glorious visions they were.  His formulating of the plea for Christian Unity was magnificent, and it gave wings to a subject which is not seldom permitted, even by earnest and intelligent advocates, to flag and flounder in prosaic and tedious aspect.  There is a sublimity about such a plea when some young Apollos like Mr. Morrison shows us how it soars into the theological empyrean above the cold level of contentious dogmatics.


Central Christian Advocate (Kansas City).
Crowns of thorns await him.  He is one of that group of scholars trying to bring to his denomination the larger universality.  One of the most spiritual, generous, winsome scholars of the younger Americans whose writings, while they do not intoxicate with the wine of epigram, do win the mental eye with cameras of fine thinking, and persuade by their noble catholicity and vision quite as much as by argument.  It is always so of prophets.  Modest, he is still all there when it comes to courage.

C. W. Cauble, President
Bethany Chautauqua Assembly.

Mr. Morrison gave five lectures on The Personnel of Religion, at Bethany Assembly, Bethany Park, Indiana, last year.  His messages were heard by large and interested audiences.  So intense was the interest that at the last lecture, at my request, more than one hour and thirty minutes was taken by the audience in asking questions that were readily answered by the speaker.  His work was of the first order.


The Austinite (Chicago).
The subject of the lecture was An Affair of Honor.  Mr. Morrison is a profound scholar, a clear thinker and an interesting and forceful speaker.  He was followed with the closest attention.  No report can give an adequate and correct impression of this remarkable speech.


Illinois State Register (Springfield).
Mr. Morrison is a forceful pulpit orator.  His manner is both attractive and pleasant.  He has the happy faculty of holding his audience with intense interest from the beginning to the close.


Illinois State Journal (Springfield.)
The discourse was a masterly analysis.

Rev. W. H. Book, Reporting Bethany Chautauqua in the Christian Standard (Cincinnati).

Morrison is indeed an attractive speaker, rather magnetic in delivery and startling in statements.  While we do not endorse all he says, we cannot help loving the man.


Shelbyville, Indiana, Daily Democract.
Many who heard him pronounced him to be the most forceful speaker who ever occupied a Shelbyville puplit.

Professor Edward Amherst Ott says:

Charles Clayton Morrison, editor of The Christian Century, is peculiarly called to speak his message in this great hour of the church's history.  His heart is always right and his purpose holy.  His mind has had the best training that University and Library and actual experience could offer.  His voice should be heard on every lyceum and chautauqua platform in this age.  Then, too, his spiritual equipment is re-enforced with splendid oratorical power.  He is a force for good—and it is a joy to say it.



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