Who Was Gardiner Spring? The New York Pastor Who Stayed 63 Years

Biography Preaching Christian Life

Gardiner Spring was an American Presbyterian pastor who lived from 1785 to 1873. He served one congregation, the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, for sixty-three years, from 1810 until his death. He was one of the best-known preachers in America in his day, and he wrote more than twenty books. The one most people still read is Essays on the Distinguishing Traits of Christian Character, a searching little book on how to tell a real Christian hope from a false one.

Here's a fuller look at his life, what he taught, and which of his books to start with.

A minister's son who meant to be a lawyer

Spring was born on February 24, 1785, in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His father, Samuel Spring, was a well-known New England minister, and his parents hoped Gardiner would follow him into the pulpit. For a long time he had other plans.

He entered Yale College at fifteen and graduated in 1805. After college he taught school for a time in Bermuda, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1808. He married young, and he started a law practice that looked set to do well.

Then he heard a sermon. The New York preacher John M. Mason was preaching in New Haven from the words "To the poor the gospel is preached," and Spring was so moved that he gave up the law and turned to the ministry. He spent a year at Andover Theological Seminary, and in 1810 he was called to the Brick Church on Beekman Street in lower Manhattan.

Sixty-three years in one pulpit

He never left. Colleges asked him to be their president, Dartmouth and Hamilton among them, and he said no. He believed his work was to preach and care for one flock, and he gave his whole life to it. When the city grew northward, the congregation moved uptown, and he went with it. In his later years a younger associate shared the load, but Spring remained pastor until he died on August 18, 1873, at eighty-eight.

He was a leader among Presbyterians too. He served on the board of Princeton Theological Seminary and was moderator of the Old School General Assembly in 1843. In May 1861, as the Civil War began, he moved the resolutions that bear his name, calling the Assembly to declare its loyalty to the federal government. They passed, and the Southern presbyteries soon withdrew to form their own church. It was the most debated act of his life, and historians still argue over it.

What he taught

Spring was a careful, serious preacher in the old Reformed line, and he quoted Owen and Edwards freely. Four concerns run through his books.

Is your hope real? His first and most famous book, Essays on the Distinguishing Traits of Christian Character (1822), was written to help church members examine themselves. It opens with a picture he never let go of:

There is a hope that is as an anchor to the soul; and there is a hope that is as the spider's web.
Essays on the Distinguishing Traits of Christian Character, Introduction

He first clears away what does not prove a person a Christian: good morals, a form of religion, correct ideas, even deep conviction of sin. Then he describes the marks of real grace, beginning with love to God for who He is:

The enemies of God may love Him for what they imagine Him to be; none but the real friends of God love Him for what He is.
Essays on the Distinguishing Traits of Christian Character, Love to God

The cross. Spring wasn't content to leave readers looking inward. In The Attraction of the Cross (1845) he points them to Christ crucified as their only hope and their only way to holiness. A sinner is accepted, he says, on one ground:

It is not what he has done, but what Christ has done.
The Attraction of the Cross, The Cross a Completed Justification

Prayer. The Mercy Seat takes the Lord's Prayer one petition at a time. Spring insisted that real prayer starts in the heart and is fed by the Bible:

God first gives the heart to pray, and then the words; he does not give the words first, and afterwards the heart.
The Mercy Seat, The Instructions of the Bible as to the Matter and Manner of Prayer

Preaching. After nearly forty years in the pulpit he wrote The Power of the Pulpit (1848) for ministers and for the people who sit under them. His rule was short:

Christ must be the theme, the scope, the life, the soul of the pulpit.
The Power of the Pulpit, The Truth of Which the Pulpit Is the Vehicle

He also wrote two books defending the Bible. The Obligations of the World to the Bible traces what law, liberty and family life owe to Scripture, and includes a lecture calling slavery "utterly at war with the law of nature and the law of God." The Bible Not of Man argues that no human mind could have produced the Bible.

A friend of missions

Spring lived through the years when American Christians first sent missionaries overseas, and he cared about the work. In 1820 he published a memoir of Samuel J. Mills, the young man who did as much as anyone to start American foreign missions and who died at sea in 1818, coming home from West Africa. Spring ends the book with a line about what one devoted life can do:

Without resources, without vigorous health, without fame, and with only a heart devoted to God, how much may be effected in one short life!
Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel J. Mills, Conclusion

Why he's still read

Spring is read today for one reason above the rest. He takes the question "How do I know I'm really a Christian?" seriously, and he answers it from Scripture without flattering anyone and without leaving anyone in despair. He tests you hard in the Essays, then sends you to the cross, where your safety rests on Christ and not on yourself. Pastors still pass his books to church members who aren't sure where they stand, and to young preachers who need to be reminded what the pulpit is for.

Where to start

TheWay Library has fourteen of his books, all free to read. Start with Essays on the Distinguishing Traits of Christian Character, fifteen short essays that you can read one at a time. (Our copy was restored from an old scan, so you'll meet a misread letter now and then.) Then read The Attraction of the Cross, which answers the questions the Essays raise. If you want help with prayer, try The Mercy Seat. If you preach, read The Power of the Pulpit.

Our guide to Gardiner Spring's books describes all fourteen, and our collection of Gardiner Spring quotes gathers his best lines. For more on the question his Essays ask, see our list of the best Christian books on assurance. You'll find all his books on the Gardiner Spring author page.