hurch from 1894 to 1899 under the prophetic leadership of the Reverend
William S. Rainsford. This notable rector possessed unusual gifts and
exerted an incalculable influence upon the Episcopal Church. He gathered
about him a group of young men the like of whom has never been found
elsewhere. St. George's stands as the pioneer of what was known as the
"institutional church," and in the midst of the teeming activities of
the parish house and a heterogeneous congregation, Dr. Rainsford set
loose his young and enthusiastic assistants. They experienced a training
comparable to the clinical instruction gained by an intern in a modern
hospital. Under his tutelage these men received a course in applied
religion, and their rector set a standard of preaching, parish
administration, and pastoral care that not one of his "boys," as he
called them, failed to practice in an unusual manner. Dr. Rainsford's
impassioned preaching of the essentials of Christianity as opposed to
those aspects which are merely traditional, and his forceful efforts,
radical for those times, to democratize a conventional Episcopal parish
were significant contributions to church life throughout America.

Although Dr. Rainsford exerted a lasting influence upon all his young
assistants, he set his stamp to a marked degree upon Frank Nelson. For
the first time in his life this young man, the choicest flowering of a
cultured home, lived among the underprivileged, spending his afternoons
climbing interminable tenement stairs, and his evenings in the parish
house. He came to know poverty and squalor and the honest worth of
struggling humanity. If "The Rector," as Dr. Rainsford's "boys" called
him, bade them preach on the street corners, he himself had done the
same. His example and his personal religious faith were those of a
living St. George touched with the heart-stirring Gospel of Love. Under
him young Nelson found the services and work of the church taking on a
meaning that was like a cool, refreshing breeze. Things concerning the
Church, doctrine, and ritual, which had formerly perplexed his youthful
mind, now seemed subordinate.

Dr. Rainsford evoked a loyalty which held his young men long after they
had "graduated," and when he died in 1933 at the age of eighty-three,
many of his former assistants were in the chancel of old St. George's
for the burial service. One who was present said, "We shall not see a
service like that again, for we shall never see and