In this whimsical way Frank Nelson spoke of himself one day in
conversation with a friend on some point of ritual. It is abundantly
evident that he was in no way a bigoted churchman, and with all his
fine, broad sympathies he stood forth as a Protestant. He represented
that aspect of the Catholic-Protestant structure of the Episcopal
Church, he conducted the services in Christ Church from that angle, his
preaching reflected it, and the absence of the clerical collar
emphasized it. There is a measure of truth in his droll description of
himself.
In the first decades of this century Mr. Nelson was one of a group of
broad-churchmen whose influence was just beginning to be felt.
Theologically he was a liberal with reservations, and stood in what is
now called "Central Anglicanism" in the sense of "essential orthodoxy,
continuity, and breadth and liberality within limits, checked by the
principle of discipline, and an outlook, above all, theocentric;
fidelity to Christianity as the religion of the Incarnation, and of the
Church viewed as Christ's mystical body."[13]
The truth is that he was different from certain brands of so-called
liberals. Like many of them he was an individualist but not, as in the
popular conception of that word, an eccentric. His individualism resided
in his strong personality, whole and complete rather than partial. He
had an immense scorn of the petty narrow-minded points of view. He said,
"There is no one so narrow as the broad-minded liberal! Look out! Be
sure that you do not develop a closed mind toward the other man's point
of view!" Frank Nelson stood in the stream of the best traditions of
historic Anglicanism. He had, for instance, a tremendous feeling of
reverence for the Altar and the appointments for the celebration of the
Holy Communion; and his manner of conducting the Lord's Supper brought
that service very close to the most sensitive of worshipers. On the
first Sunday of each month the Holy Communion was celebrated at eight
and at eleven A.M., and he made it the chief factor in building
up the younger members of the parish into the Church. Usually Christ
Church was crowded for the first as well as the later service, and it
was immensely impressive to contemplate the congregation that came at
the early hour of eight o'clock from all parts of the city and from
distant suburbs. There is communicated serenity as well as reverence in
the stately, liturgical service, but that feeling-tone is dependent on
the minister conducting it. Mr. Nelson was a medium for the
communication of the very spirit of Christ in that service. The ancient,
familiar words were given a fresh beauty by his manner and his natural,
virile voice. His methods reflected certain qualities of his character.
It was his custom to read the service up through the Sanctus from the
north end of the Altar, moving to the center for the remainder, and at
the moment of the consecration of the Bread and Wine to turn halfway
around so that the congregation could see the blessing of the Elements.
It was in part an observance of the Apostolic custom of the minister's
standing behind the Altar and facing the congregation, and one which he
had learned from his days at St. George's under Dr. Rainsford.
In a time of much disparagement, Frank Nelson and his parish upheld the
fair reputation of the Church. Bishop Hobson says, "Many a minister and
many a church have taken heart and courage because of his ministry."
Because he was unafraid to experiment and venture on fresh approaches to
old problems, he risked misunderstanding and criticism. He had a marked
sense of the dignity of his office, and all who worked on the staff of
Christ Church were aware that he was the rector, a czar if you will, but
one with a gloved hand. He ran the parish, but not for his own sake nor
from delight in power. As a matter of fact, he distrusted power,
particularly when wielded by small men in the office of Bishop, and
because of that distrust, and because of the democratic nature of the
government of the Episcopal Church, he held the leadership of rectors
to be equal in value to that of the Episcopate.
In the management of the parish, he was "a man set under authority." He
expected hard work of those to whom he delegated responsibility. Though
he occasionally interfered, he invariably backed up his leaders even
when they were in the wrong. He did not hesitate to criticize: a
retiring choir-master said to his successor, "He is a tyrant, and you
won't last three months." After eighteen years, he is still there! There
were those who sometimes found Mr. Nelson abrupt, but as they came to
understand his temperament and to appreciate his insistence that things
should be run decently and in order, they were the very ones who would
have stood on their heads for him because his nature inspired endless
devotion. It is easy to lose sight of human values in a large
institution, but he was the kind of person who was quick to apologize
for any rudeness, and if the instance had to do with some fine point of
procedure, he would grin and say, "But I was right!"--and he was. A
unique thing about his rectorship was his willingness to take the blame
upon himself when something went wrong. He felt he was at fault for not
having given his subordinates the right training. The conception he held
of his office of rector impelled him to give each year a comprehensive
report of his parish work along with an audited financial accounting of
all monies that he had handled personally.
In the services of Christ Church, Frank Nelson's individuality found
complete expression. The Prayer Book offices were marked by an absence
of ceremonial, but filled with a profound simplicity and a noble
dignity. People coming from other parishes and accustomed to
considerable ritual and better architecture (Christ Church has been
likened to a Moorish mosque!) learned that such externals occupy in
reality a subordinate position in the Christian life, as the rector's
manner and forceful preaching lifted them to the plane of spirit-filled
worship. He was concerned not with the creation of an atmosphere in
which to bathe with satisfaction one's feelings about God but with the
living message of the Gospel. One came at last to love the old church
building because there the spirit was fed, the mind enlightened, and the
will impelled to action.
People came to be in his presence. They found a new, bright sense of the
glory of religious faith; they felt how precious is the least of the
human vessels into which God pours His Spirit. The man in himself
communicated a personality so wholly infused with the grace of the Lord
Jesus that his hearers were stirred to action, which result stems from
the authentic note in preaching. "Effective preaching can only mean
effective in the sense of doing God's work."[14] Frank Nelson did God's
work. He stirred people to do God's work. The atmosphere of conviction
generated by the preacher is due to his whole personality rather than to
his words; hence the impact made upon his hearers at the moment of his
speaking is never conveyed through the printed page. Its influence,
however, continues in their lives, and measured by this standard Frank
Nelson was a powerful and effective preacher. The gift of swift,
magnetic, eloquent speech was his. Words with the quality and vigor of
intuitive imagination poured out of him. Yet preaching was never easy
for him, and as it was dominated by his characteristic intensity and
fervor, he was nervous beforehand and exhausted afterward. His emotional
range sometimes led him off the main thread of a discourse; at times he
ranted; and more than once preached an entirely different sermon from
the one outlined in his written notes. His preaching was "feeling warmed
up to vision," and the word of God passed through him to men. He
believed tremendously in preaching; there were few services in Christ
Church at which he did not preach,[15] but he was not a so-called
popular preacher; crowds did not constantly fill the pews. To some his
driving power was wearing, and even some of his admirers would exclaim,
"Oh, I do wish Mr. Nelson would not tear his throat so when he
preaches." But his very force of delivery, and his vehemence were a part
of the man, and he no more could have preached in another manner than
have changed his stature.
But these characteristics had compensations or off-setting factors.
After Mr. Nelson's exchange with the rector of St. Paul's Church, Rome,
Italy in 1912, a certain dowager commented, "Mr. Lowrie's sermons made
me feel comfortable, but Mr. Nelson makes me feel a miserable sinner!" A
newcomer, on his first Sunday in Cincinnati, went to Christ Church
intending to "sample" several churches before casting his lot with one.
The choir came in, followed by a young, boyish-looking clergyman whom
the man presumed to be the assistant. During the sermon Mr. Nelson
continually entangled himself in his stole and gave the impression of
one so inextricably caught up in his message that he was a part of it,
stole and all! The newcomer was Frederick C. Hicks, later the President
of the University of Cincinnati. He did not go elsewhere but continued
at Christ Church and eventually became a vestryman.
Mr. Nelson did not talk in an amiable sort of way about the Christian
virtues; his sermons, thank God, were not colorless essays on the
doctrine of God, and the Church. He preached with abandon, and there
issued forth a fiery stream of conviction that stabbed his hearers into
life. Within those in whom the seed found good soil there was
reproduced his hunger for righteousness, his integrity of character.
What we heard from the pulpit of Christ Church was the product of
hard-won battles, the forthrightness of a man stirred by his struggle to
live as a follower of Jesus Christ. He was no respecter of persons but
of personality, saying "We don't dare to be Christians." Some said Frank
Nelson did not preach doctrinal sermons, but if not, then church
doctrine needs another name, for this man preached the Christian faith,
pouring it forth in great bucketfuls. If after hearing him one didn't
know something about the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, then there
is no such thing as doctrine.
The rector was sensitive about his failure to attract larger
congregations, and deprecated his ability as a speaker. He was forever
saying that he could not preach, and that he preached too long, but
jested that he was too old to change! Once in the midst of an
after-dinner speech, he paused to make an aside to his friend, J.
Hollister Lynch, "Am I talking too long?" "Yes," whispered Dr. Lynch,
but he kept right on! Cincinnati is not a church-going city like
Pittsburgh, for instance, but, as one witty observer has remarked,
"Cincinnati has fewer moral lapses!" In making judgments on this point,
one should take into consideration the fact that there was a large Roman
Catholic constituency, and that the predominant German population of
Cincinnati which came in such large numbers during the middle of the
nineteenth century, was definitely anti-religious. Christ Church,
moreover, is a downtown church, and the greater number of the
communicants live in suburbs. His parish took him for granted as was
inevitable over a forty-year period, but when we recall his multiple
civic associations, and the fact that whenever he spoke there was a
religious foundation to his address and in his presence, we perceive
that Mr. Nelson's preaching reached far beyond the bounds of Christ
Church.
The sermons of Frank Nelson were pervaded with a fine ethical
perception. He was in the succession of the ancient Hebrew prophets in
their profound love of justice and concern for humanity. He had a keen,
quick feeling for spiritual values, and succeeded in relating them in
vital fashion to the throbbing stress of daily living. Beyond his
piercing eloquence, captivating as it most certainly was, was the
compelling fact that in his interpretation of the religious significance
of human experience he stood forth like a pine tree towering above
scraggly growth. No one can ever forget that tall, dynamic figure in the
spacious pulpit of Christ Church preaching the Word of God with gripping
power. It was not merely the power of virility and eloquence, but the
power of grasp, of comprehension, the ability to communicate truth and
make it come alive, and cry out for expression in the hearts and lives
of his hearers. We felt the majesty of the human spirit, the impatience
of sure faith with the rags and blemishes of doubt and cynicism. "Like
rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth," Frank Nelson
poured out his soul, and revealed the grand proportions of human
destiny.
In his beautiful address at the Helen S. Trounstine Memorial Service, a
portion of which follows, we find one of the best examples of Mr.
Nelson's ability to interpret human experience, as well as of his
intuitive understanding of another's travail of soul:
And then her courage. There are the lesser courages and the
greater. There are many who dare face danger and undertake hard
tasks, and face ridicule and failure. It is a fine and a true
courage and I do not underrate it. Helen Trounstine had it and
had it to the full. She tackled hard tasks; she faced some men
whose interests she opposed. She fought out her fights against
all comers, and never flinched. She would go into the court or
into the saloon or dance hall, the places of commercial
recreation, and fight her fight with all, for what she believed
to be right; and she won most of the time. It was a noble thing
to see that delicate woman unafraid before the problems and evils
of the world.
Yet that was not the finest courage she had. That other finer
courage is the one that I would emphasize. It was given her to
reconcile a spirit filled with high ideals and great desires,
with a body weak, often bent and torn with pain, unsuited to the
tasks she longed to do, until at last she was stricken with utter
helplessness waiting for the end. For only a few brief years was
her body adequate, even a little, to her will. And instead of
bending before that limitation and saying that she could do
nothing because of it, instead of growing bitter with resentment
at a fate that had so burdened her, she but grappled with it the
more determinedly. With utter courage of heart and mind, she
fought her inner fight and won the victory of cheer and energy
and peace. With no excuse and no complaints, and no relaxing of
her will before the limitations of her strength, she lived and
loved and served as if she had the health she longed for. The
limitations of her stricken body meant the giving up of many dear
desires, of hopes that would have made life sweet and joyous, of
work she yearned to undertake.
Any of you who have had much to do with one stricken with a sore
disease, who knows he never can be well again, know that it is
not the sickness, the physical weakness and pain that make the
problem and the tragedy. It is the reconciling of the will to
surrender life's hopes and the readjustment of the life to the
conditions that have got to be, that nothing can change. That was
Helen Trounstine's problem and her tragedy. She sat down with her
fate and fought that fight and won it. It must have meant many
hours of untold darkness and suffering and bitter questioning and
struggle. But of such hours she gave us no outward sign. At least
I saw none in the years I knew her, except that finest one of
all, the victory of her soul in the glad and joyous doing of what
remained within her power.
It is not surprising that his addresses on Good Friday and his sermons
on Easter Day were more nearly adequate to those great days than is
commonly the case. He cared for these days tremendously, and never
ceased to be heartened by the throngs that crowded the old church,
filled up the chancel, and stood in the vestibule through the Three
Hours on Good Friday. It seemed as if the whole city was aroused as
people from offices and factories, and from the outlying districts came
to these special services year after year during his long rectorship. It
stirs the imagination to think of that gathering, the rich and the poor,
the highly-cultivated, and the meekly endowed, shop girls and clerks,
the faithful and those groping for faith, all drawn by the mysterious
fire kindled by this man of God. There was a concentrated intensity to
his preaching on these occasions, for he saw clearly and felt deeply the
tragedies of life. In that vibrant voice and in his passionate concern
for the soul of men, there burned a white-souled homage to God, and a
faith and love that spoke to each one's condition. Out of his long
brooding over the darkly colored stream of history, and the chequered
progress of Christianity of which his daily contact with the city's life
as well as his study gave him profound knowledge, there came forth
"great out-bursts of unshakable certainty which stand up like Alpine
peaks in the spiritual landscape of humanity." The integrity of the man
along with the power and dramatic quality of his speech was unveiled for
all the world to see. One recalls in this particular a certain Good
Friday after World War I when he took up Sarah Bernhardt's ghastly
reversal of the First Word from the Cross, "Father, do _not_ forgive
them for they _know_ what they do," and with terrific intensity
literally shouted, "That is a lie straight from hell."
His preaching always illumined a fine feeling for the mastery of
language, and those who heard him over the span of the years were
conscious that in his Good Friday addresses he employed plain,
Anglo-Saxon words, fundamental, strong words that lent a cumulative
effect to his speech. Because of his modesty he never consented to the
publication of any of his Good Friday addresses, which is lamentable for
without a doubt they represent his best preaching. A full, stenographic
report, however, was made of his last addresses in 1939, and certain
paragraphs from the Third Word may well be quoted. This Word from the
Cross, "When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple standing by
whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then
saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother!", was greatly loved by his
people because he gave to it an interpretation that was entirely
original:
As those of you who have been here on other Good Fridays know, I
give that my own interpretation. Some say that I am wrong: that
when Jesus Christ said "Woman, behold thy son," He meant He was
directing her attention to His friend, St. John, who would be a
son to her now that He was going away. Perhaps. But I like to
think the other way: that He was revealing to that mother of His
the thing that should justify her motherhood, and her faith, and
her love. He was saying, as it seems to me, things like this:
"Behold, your Son, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh. Known
and yet unknown. The Son whom the angel announced to you long ago
among the Judean hills. The things that you have treasured and
pondered in your heart must be brought out now to allow God to
open to you their hidden meaning. For I am your Son, your
first-born. In these years of wonder and strangeness I have not
forgotten the love and care and protection given me. Through you
I grew up in the knowledge of the Scriptures and the love of
God's House. No, I have not forgotten those years in the
carpenter's shop in Nazareth, and the laboring for daily bread.
Neither was it easy to break away, and leave home, but God called
me, and deep down in your heart you were glad that God chose
me--it was the confirmation of all that the angels had whispered
in your heart. You were proud of me, sure that God had somewhat
in store for me that had never been known in the world, never
known to the mothers of other sons. And then murmurs came to you
of opposition, of the hostility of men high up in the synagogues,
weird reports of my deeds, and strange teachings, and finally all
that I said and did seemed to go against the authority and
sanctions of your religion, and you were fearful of my mind. And
now I have come to this disgraceful end. This cross is the
fruitage of those thirty years spent with you and in the
fulfilling of God's pleasure. This fruitage of the Cross is not
the fruitage that God gives to the sons of evil as seems to be
the just fruitage of these thieves crucified beside me. In
reality this Cross is the crown of my life, and some day the
world will see it, and take Me unto itself, and the Cross will
have become a throne."
It is the word of justification and comfort that Jesus gives the
broken-hearted Mary. It is the word of God to woman. "Now we see
through a glass darkly, but then face to face." In Jesus, the son
of Mary, we see what the world will be like 'when the years have
died away.'
It was on these special occasions that he so frequently was inspired.
Easter Day, for instance, with its many services and huge congregations
stimulated him to the utmost, and to many of us it seemed as if we stood
in one of the vestibules of immortality, certainly in the temple of this
man's faith. He preached at both the eight and the eleven o'clock
services, and each time with undiminished vigor and clarity of thought.
In the interim, he personally greeted all the parishioners who remained
after the first service for breakfast in the parish house.
Frank Nelson loved the ministry, and his convictions glowed and radiated
pervasively. Innumerable scenes flood the memory, and I recall an
ordinary Sunday which included the early celebration of the Holy
Communion at eight forty-five A.M.; an address to his Chapel
Class at nine forty-five; and a sermon at eleven o'clock; in addition to
all these he went, in the afternoon, to a labor union memorial service.
There he repeated the morning's sermon from the text, "The last enemy
that shall be destroyed is death." It was the fruit of all his ministry
to the bereaved, and of his penetrating, sympathetic insight into the
loneliness and devastation of death's inroads. As he brought the
Christian faith to bear upon the problem, he imparted by clarity of
thought and eloquence of words as well as by accent and genuineness of
emotion that certitude which is possible only for one who himself
possesses that which he proclaims. This sermon was a notable example of
Phillips Brooks' definition of preaching, "Truth conveyed through
personality." The few notes here included give only a glimmer of the
range of his thought, and do not adequately convey the personal factor
which made one want to rise up and call him blessed:
Men have ever striven to conquer death, and never succeeded.
Christ too died and though He rose from the dead, He did not
return to this life and take up its habits and tasks again. St.
Paul was not thinking of overcoming death in this way, but rather
of the new consciousness and gift of power that Christ has given
men. Christianity is a conquering power. Faces what appears to
be the impossible, what experience declares to be impossible, but
does so with the word that "all things are subject to Christ."
"We see not yet all things put under him--but we see Jesus."
There is nothing that may not become subject to the spirit of man
through Christ.
Christ facing human problems: the fear of God's wrath,
superstitions arising from doubt of God's moral goodness,
sickness, sorrow, hopelessness, sin, worldliness, bitterness of
spirit and mind, suffering, and at last conquering death as an
enemy by His resurrection.
Death's mastery over us is not a physical thing. It is its power
over our spirits, its apparent defeat of hope, of work begun, of
love entered into, of faith laid hold upon, and the bitterness
that is the fruit of that defeat. Through Christ the power of
achievement was strengthened, and released by death. We resent
death perhaps--reason for shrinking is that so impersonal and
physical a process should be able to overcome a spiritual
consciousness and experience. We resent always the victory of a
lower over a higher order. (Feb. 28, 1926)