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:

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