Frank H. Nelson of CincinnatiHerrick, Warren Crocker
Religion
Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati
Herrick, Warren Crocker
Nelson, Frank Howard, 1869-1939
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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