occasion moved him to inspired utterance, he drew upon the deep wells of
his being, and spoke without effort as waters flow from a fountain. This
quality characterized many of his speeches, such as the one in Music
Hall after the Armistice of 1918 which he himself considered his best,
and those at Masonic gatherings when men flocked to drink in his words
and to be in his presence. He overshadowed other speakers, and what
Henry Ward Beecher said of another is doubtless applicable to Mr.
Nelson: "When he speaks first, I do not care to follow him, and if I
speak first, then when he gets up I wish I had not spoken at all."
The worth of so much preaching troubled him at times, and he too had his
darker moments. Sometimes he paced up and down Howard Bacon's study
never saying a word, or perhaps bursting out in boyish petulance, "When
I am down, the parish is down. Why can't they stay up?" At a staff
meeting one morning he told the incident of an organization that had
requested him to address them, and when he asked on what subject, the
reply was "Oh! just talk!" He passed this off as a sort of reflection on
his fluency of words.
Preaching was desperate business to him because "the burden of the Word
of the Lord" lay upon him, and if he rose to great heights, he also was
dashed down to the depths. To preach for forty years from the same
pulpit is an exacting task, and the net result of such an experience is
no better summed up than in the remark of a humble parishioner by whose
house he was walking one morning with Frederick C. Hicks. It was Monday,
and the woman was hanging out her wash. Mr. Nelson said, "Let's stop and
ask her what she remembers of my sermon." The good soul was non-plussed,
and could not recall even his text. And then with a leap of inspired
insight she said, "But Mr. Nelson, this cloth is whiter every time I
pour water over it." Perhaps this is the lasting effect on every humble
soul who patiently waits as God communicates His truth in earthen
vessels.
People came to be in Frank Nelson's presence. He never let them down. He
had said of William S. Rainsford's preaching: We came here as church
people, professing the faith, and as "we sat before him we saw poured
forth the reality of the thing we had professed to believe in ... He
took us to whom religion was a profession, and made it a passion."
Christ Church people find these words set up poignant echoes of a day
when they sat before Frank Nelson and heard the living Word of God.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] _Central Anglicanism_, Charles W. Lowry, Jr. _The Witness_ May 27,
1943. Used by permission.
[14] _The Servant of The Word_, Farmer p. 6, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Used by permission.
[15] Farmer in his brilliant book, _The Servant of the Word_, makes this
illuminating comment on preaching:
"The wisdom of the reformers appears in always associating the speaking
of the word with the other sacraments, and the protestant habit, which
is sometimes derided, of always having an address at every meeting is
seen to have sound reason behind it. It is part of our whole
understanding and valuation of the person and the personal way in which
God deals with him. I want the thrusting intrusiveness, the
interjection, of another's serious speech. I believe there can be no
substitute for the sermon." _Ibid_ pp. 80-81.
_Beyond
Cincinnati_
_"He was easily the prince of us all in diocese
and national church."_
--_ZeBarney Phillips_
6
The diocese of southern Ohio, of which Christ Church is a part, was
vastly strengthened by the leadership of Frank Nelson. In the earlier
years of his rectorship he had had little time for diocesan affairs, not
that he was indifferent, but he was essentially the kind of person who
did one thing at a time, and never allowed himself to be diverted from
the immediate task. Moreover, because he was impelled by burning
convictions to express freely his pronounced views, he was considered
radical, and was misunderstood and disliked by many churchmen. The
diocese of those earlier years was conservative and static, and politics
then played a more weighty part than now. A clerical friend in speaking
of Mr. Nelson candidly stated, "I had to grow into friendship with him.
In those early days I had a sort of prejudice against him as a militant
opponent of things, but I soon saw my mistake and recognized that he was
of nobler cast." He never sought position, and never until 1916, with
one exception, was he elected a deputy to the General Convention, which
is the highest body of authority in the Episcopal Church. Even when the
Convention met in Cincinnati in 1910 and Christ Church was the host to
numerous services and meetings, he had no vote. Until 1916 he had
represented his diocese at the General Convention only in 1904; he was
defeated for re-election in 1907 because he had defended Dr. Algernon
Crapsey in a once famous heresy trial.
His larger interest in the diocese probably had its beginning when in
1908 as a member of the Social Service Commission he visited the Hocking
Valley, and was shocked by the abominable living conditions of the
miners and the almost intolerable injustice of their economic
circumstances. His interest, thus fired, increased with the years until
he came to be depended upon in every sphere of diocesan life, serving on
the Standing Committee, the Bishop and Chapter, the Board of Strategy
and Finance, and in practically every other committee and department of
importance. He was most insistent on maintaining the missionary program,
which he held to be the very heart-beat of the life of the Church. Even
during depressions, Christ Church never lowered its missionary giving
of $24,000, and one year voted $3000.00 from its parish budget to make
up a deficit in the missionary budget because as he said "We have failed
to educate the people." His thorough knowledge and good judgment were of
infinite value to a succession of bishops. On the occasion of Mr.
Nelson's Fortieth Anniversary, the present Bishop, Henry Wise Hobson
said, "In all parts of the Diocese I have heard clergy and lay people
say such words as these: 'The spirit of honesty, courage, fellowship,
and service which has grown up in the life of our Diocese is primarily
the result of the influence of Frank Nelson, whose own spirit has been a
contagious force in our midst.'" Others who have observed the remarkable
growth and increasing strength of this Diocese say that its present
vitality has been generated, not by numbers, nor by wealth, but by the
passionate spirit of certain recognizable characters of whom Frank
Nelson was easily the leader. During Bishop Reese's long illness, Mr.
Nelson largely conducted the business of the Diocese, and for a man with
such positive convictions, he was extremely fair in presiding at the
Convention. He leaned over backward to be just, and did not silence even
those who brought up petty reasons for disagreement on the subjects
under debate.
When in 1929 the illness of Bishop Reese necessitated his resignation,
the Diocese spontaneously turned to Frank Nelson as his successor. There
is a certain piquancy in the contemplation of the change that by this
time had come over the Diocese. A man who at one time had been
distrusted, and branded as radical if not reckless, had so won the
respect and affection of his associates that they desired to express
their trust and belief in him by electing him to the highest office of
his Church. Reverend Sidney E. Sweet, now Dean of Christ Church
Cathedral, St. Louis, nominated Mr. Nelson at the Convention saying, "He
is a man whose intellectual and spiritual gifts rank him with the finest
in the Church throughout the United States. It will make the Diocese of
Southern Ohio proud to present the name of Dr. Nelson to the House of
Bishops as the representative of this Diocese." Another discerning
friend, Alfred Segal of _The Cincinnati Post_, put the case
dramatically when he wrote in his column: "The other day Rev. Frank
Nelson stood on the threshold of ecclesiastical glory. He needed but to
take one step and he would have been on his way to the eminence of
Bishop. But he turned away, though many welcoming hands beckoned him."
In declining the nomination, Mr. Nelson said that his decision came as a
result of consultation with friends whose opinions he valued, and from
his own best judgment which counselled against his acceptance. He felt
that it was desirable to elect a man with no local associations, and his
own long ties with the diocese made him an unsuitable candidate. He had
confided in friends his lack of diocesan consciousness, and confessed a
reluctance to assume at his age another kind of work. Furthermore, the
parish of Christ Church and the city were by now so deeply embedded in
his very soul that even a change, if not a severance, of such ties was
unthinkable. He put forward the name of Dr. Howard Chandler Robbins, who
later refused the election. The selection of Dr. Robbins, important as
it was, nonetheless seemed secondary to the insistent attempts of
leaders to place this humble servant in the office of Bishop. Upon Mr.
Nelson's entry into the luncheon hall after the convention, he was
greeted by a tremendous ovation. He was a strong man among strong men.
The following letter from the late Right Reverend William Lawrence of
Massachusetts did not dissuade him from his firm decision:
November 22, 1929
My dear Frank:
You well know that it is my rule not to "butt in," but as a
Pullman conductor once told me, "there ain't no use in having
rules that you can't break when you have to."
I believe that you respect my judgment; my judgment is that you
are the one man who has the qualifications to be Bishop of
Southern Ohio. I know your loyalty to your parish and your humble
estimate of yourself. But the Diocese and the opportunity which
the Church will give you as Bishop are greater than your parish.
Think of Trinity, Boston, at Brooks' election and its result
today. Spaulding of Utah brought into the House of Bishops a
breeze of fresh air, a new life and courage which abide there
still--You will do the same.
Think of the cheer that your election will bring to Vincent,
Reese, and the whole Diocese.
Let them have your name and your life. I never wrote such a
letter before and no one knows that I am doing it now.
Yours affectionately,
William Lawrence.
At the succeeding convention another concerted effort was made to induce
Mr. Nelson to become Bishop. It was refreshing to find the office
seeking the man, especially a man who had never sought for himself
positions of prestige, a man never found in the society of office
seekers. Although he was gratefully aware of the well-meaning intentions
of his friends, and felt in the proposed honor the warmth of their
personal affection, he did not want it said that he had permitted the
election and then declined it. In as tactful a manner as possible he
labored to prevent the Committee on Nominations from presenting his
name. During a stormy session of the Committee a movement was under way
to over-ride Mr. Nelson's wishes and present his name as the nominee of
the Committee anyway. At this juncture Dr. Hicks, his close friend and a
Vestryman of Christ Church, rose and protested with considerable
indignation, "Gentlemen, this means you simply do not know Frank
Nelson." The debate went on, but Mr. Nelson remained firm, saying on the
Convention floor, "I _may_ not be Bishop of Southern Ohio," and he used
the word _may_ in the ancient sense of having "power to prevent." "I
cherish the tribute, but I tell you without recourse to thought or
prayer that I cannot do it." Finally, the Convention proceeded to the
happy election of Henry Wise Hobson, and the Diocese of Southern Ohio
remembers with gratitude that it owes Bishop Hobson to Frank Nelson.
From 1916 until his death, Mr. Nelson was a deputy to the triennial
meetings of every General Convention, and became the principal
spokesman in the House of Deputies. This body is not always as decorous
and staid in its deliberations as the House of Bishops, but Mr. Nelson
at all times commanded a respectful hearing among the deputies. He came
to be one of the leaders who, as a veteran church-paper correspondent
put it, "could read the signs of the times." His opinions carried
enormous weight though not habitually swaying votes.
In Diocesan circles as well as in Christ Church, he was absolutely
fearless in utterance, and was among those who were eager for the
Episcopal Church to make large ventures of faith. Like Bishop Brent, he
commanded a vision and a breadth of spirit which were incomprehensible
to those who could not conceive of a universal Christianity free of
sectarian doctrines and dogmas. In this respect he reflected and
perpetuated the greatness of Phillips Brooks who thus stated his
position: "I cannot live truly with the men of my own church unless I
also have a consciousness of common life with all Christian believers,
with all religious men, with all mankind." As a natural consequence of
such conviction, Mr. Nelson was insistent that the Episcopal Church
become a constituent member of the Federal Council of Churches, and
lived to see accomplished that small but significant step towards
cooperation among the churches.
In the debates that occurred in various years on such subjects as the
proposal to eliminate the word "Protestant" from the official name of
the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, and on
the status of the Presiding Bishop, he was very firm but kindly and
tactful in setting forth the Protestant emphasis in the
Catholic-Protestant fabric of his church. He argued that the word
"Protestant" in the title is there to protect the right of every sort of
churchman. His candor was disarming, and he could get away with such
unvarnished statements as this: "As you know I am a Protestant of the
Protestants. I do not belong to the Catholic party in the Episcopal
Church. I belong to the Protestant party. I believe in Protestantism; I
do not believe in Catholicism, I never have, and please God, I never
will. I believe in Protestantism; but I believe more, and deeper, and
further and broader, and higher in manhood and womanhood. I can see a
vision of God in the man and in the woman, in the Catholic as well as in
the Protestant, in the Jew, in the atheist, as well as in the
Episcopalian."[16] He was alert to any move that threatened the
democratic basis of the Episcopal Church and diminished the power of the
clergy and the laity, holding in the instance of the Presiding Bishop's
status that the proposal for something similar to an archbishopric would
introduce a monarchical form of government into a church whose
government closely resembles that of the United States.
At those conventions when the Prayer Book was under revision, Mr.
Nelson's spiritual discernment, large-heartedness, and wise judgment
were an important supplement to the work of the liturgical authorities.
One of the really notable speeches of any General Convention was his
plea for the church to place the emphasis in the Baptismal Service where
the Apostles did, namely, on discipleship rather than on Creed. "The
Creed ought to be on the Altar, not at the door of the Church," he said.
"I want the Creed in the service, and I believe it will receive more
emphasis than before if it is inserted where I have proposed to place
it.[17] The important thing required of Christians is to follow Christ.
It is harder to follow Christ than to accept a creed, and God forbid
that I should make membership in the Church easier than Christ made it."
His earnestness and deep religious feeling made a profound impression,
but there were those who saw in the proposal an opening wedge for the
subordination of the creeds, and timidity and caution overcame the surge
of approbation which followed immediately on his speech.
Commencing in 1925 and continuing until his death, Mr. Nelson served on
the Joint Commission on Holy Matrimony, which dealt with the highly
controversial issue of divorce. In upholding the high standards embraced
in the canons of the Church, he supported that section of the
Commission which sought to take into account the far-reaching human
factors involved in marriage and divorce. He was absolutely convinced
that the Church was not approaching the problem in the right way. To him
it was not an ecclesiastical problem but a definitely human affair. He
said he preferred to submit a delicate, ethical problem to a human
bishop rather than to the arbitrary operation of a rule. He maintained,
"Divorce is now on a legalistic basis. That was not the way of our Lord,
and the Commission desires to lift it out of the legal atmosphere into
the sphere of the fellowship of the Gospel." Towards this end the
Commission had (in 1931) drawn up a proposed canon which was the result
of six years' study on the part of an extremely able group of clergymen
and laymen. Among the latter were some of the great lawyers of America,
such as George W. Wickersham, Roland Morris, and Professor Joseph Beale
of the Harvard Law School. This Commission proposed that "any person to
whom a divorce from a former marriage has been granted for any cause by
a civil court may apply to his Bishop to marry another person." In other
words the Commission was endeavoring to have the matter decided not by
some hard and fast rule which was bound to do many injustices to
individuals, but by a more general principle to be interpreted by the
Bishop or Marital Court. The proposal was defeated, but in the battle
which ensued and has not ceased "Frank Nelson," says Bishop William
Scarlett of Missouri, "was a leading figure. He was trying to see this
whole matter through what he believed to be the mind of Christ, and to
act and legislate accordingly."
At the Church Congress in Richmond, Virginia, in 1926 in a paper on
_What Is Loyal Churchmanship?_ he boldly stated:
Even when it comes to the canon in regard to remarriage of
divorced persons, when I find in my conscience, standing before
God in the presence of Christ, as I try to do, that a man and a
woman have a right to be remarried, I will remarry them and take
the consequences. I do not mean that I would go about seeking
ways of disobeying the Church. I am putting extreme cases. Of
course I do not mean that.... My first loyalty, my highest
loyalty is to the Spirit and to the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ
as God gives me grace to see it.... The human soul is more sacred
than constitution or canons. Canons and forms of worship are used
to illuminate and guide men's minds and souls to Christ, not to
dominate them or compel them to conform to this or that.[18]
In a few exceptional instances he remarried divorced persons. He held
the present canon of the church to be utterly ridiculous in permitting
reinstatement to communicant status following remarriage after divorce:
"If one commits so grave a sin as to demand excommunication, how can one
be reinstated while continuing to live in that sin? It is absurd on the
face of it."[19]
There were those who sneered at his position, saying it was
individualistic and amounted to the setting up of oneself against the
law of the church, yet he of all people was most conscious of the sin of
pride and excessive individualism. At his last Convention in 1937, he
reemphasized the point that the object of rewriting the marriage canon
was not to liberalize divorce and remarriage: "We have been trying to
interpret the mind of our Lord. We have presumed to separate men from
the love of God by excommunication. This Commission is trying to set
free to a higher plane this tremendous question which is facing us, to
lift this tremendous relationship from regulation to the life of the
spirit. We want this church to face reality." Nevertheless, the
Commission marched from one defeat to another, but it still marches!
There was passed in 1931 one constructive piece of legislation bearing
on instruction in Christian marriage which was enacted largely through
the extremely forceful defense of Frank Nelson.
The same human touch which guided all his thought and effort was
apparent in his work on another Commission, namely, the Budget and
Program. He usually was chosen to present the report in the House of
Deputies, and it was always a masterly presentation. Like Gladstone, he
had the faculty of making people like figures, because he set them forth
in terms of human values or in what the newspaper writer calls
"human-interest" stories. This same humanness was delightfully manifest
on occasions when friends endeavoured to make him the presiding officer
or President of the House of Deputies. He would never consent, and
humorously said that if he became an official, he would have to attend
all the extra meetings and couldn't play golf!
In 1937 the General Convention met in Cincinnati. Though far from well
and worn out after the usual strenuous year in his parish, Mr. Nelson
gave up a large part of his vacation to assist in the arduous
preparations always entailed by such affairs. At the opening service in
the University Stadium he was selected by the Presiding Bishop to read
one of the Lessons, the deserved recognition of his place in diocese and
national church.
In the extensive work of forwarding the policies set up by the General
Conventions he was called upon, as one of the representative rectors, to
speak in many parts of the country. He was foremost in commending the
Nation-Wide-Campaign or budget plan of operation instituted in 1919, as
a means of re-awakening the church to a sense of national
responsibility. Despite heavy work in parish and city he never spared
himself, and willingly put his services at the command of the Presiding
Bishop. Only eight months before his death, he spent an entire week in
the Diocese of Massachusetts speaking two and three times a day to
groups of vestrymen on the forward work of the church.
When General Convention met in Kansas City in 1940, the first meeting
after Mr. Nelson's death, the President of the House of Deputies, the
late ZeBarney Phillips, said at the opening session:
Later on we shall have the regular memorial to all members of the
Convention who have died during the triennium, but as the
Convention opens without them I cannot refrain from paying
tribute to some of those whom we loved best and best remember.
First you will all agree is Frank Nelson who was the outstanding
member of this House at Cincinnati. His genuine Christian
devotion, his courtesy, his fairness and his gentleness can never
be forgotten. Let me tell you one little thing that shows his
character. You all know his type of churchmanship, and yet, for
the sake of others he placed candles on his altar for the
corporate communion. It was a little thing but it was so like
Frank Nelson.[20]
Whether in parish, city, or the whole Episcopal Church, his work was
affected by a mighty vision of the Kingdom of God on earth which set him
apart as an unusual servant who humbly read the scroll of life as it is
unrolled to the children of men. He passed on to others the torch of
faith which lights the path to the City of God.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Address at the Centennial of Christ Church, 1917. He spoke in this
vein at Conventions though I cannot locate exact statements in official
records.
[17] Mr. Nelson's proposal placed the Creed immediately after the
Lesson.
[18] _The Church and Truth_, p. 138, Macmillan Co. 1924. Used by
permission.
[19] Letter to the author, September 12, 1932.
[20] Letter to Mrs. Nelson from Mr. Richard Inglis of Cleveland.
_The Mystery of
Personality_
"_There is not one of us but in some measure
is in his debt._"
--_The Cincinnati Enquirer_
7