Gardiner Spring (1785–1873)

Gardiner Spring was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1785, the son of Samuel Spring, a Congregational minister of some note, and graduated from Yale in 1805. After teaching in Bermuda for a brief time, he attended Andover Theological Seminary, a school which his father had helped to found. In afficher plus 1810, the Brick Presbyterian Church of New York City was looking for a pastor. Their first call to a minister from New Jersey had been rejected. They then looked for regular pulpit supply, inviting among others the renowned Lyman Beecher, but this too was unsuccessful. A few in the congregation had heard a young candidate for the ministry named Gardiner Spring preach in a nearby church, and were quite impressed. He was invited to fill the pulpit for three weeks by the session of the Brick Presbyterian Church. After his first sermon, the session and the congregation voted unanimously to call him as their pastor, a love relationship which lasted 62 years afficher moins