RARE "American Minister" Gardiner Spring Cut Signature For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "American Minister" Gardiner Spring Clipped Signature. 

1785 – August 18, 1873)  was an American minister and author. Spring

was born on February 24, 1785, in Newburyport, Massachusetts,

the oldest child of the politically well-connected Reverend Samuel Spring. His parents directed him towards the ministry,

which he initially resisted. He attended grammar school in Newburyport, but he was also privately

tutored by Chief Justice Parsons. At the age of 15, he entered Yale College, where he became the class-mate of John C. Calhoun. He delivered the valedictory address at the

Commencement exercise in 1805. He did not then appear to incline toward the

Church, and on leaving college pursued the studies of law in the office of

Judge Daggett, in New Haven. The principal

portion of his time, however, was occupied in teaching, and he established an

English school in the Bermuda Islands, where he spent fifteen months. He was

admitted to the Bar in 1808, and commenced practice under favorable auspices,

but he subsequently abandoned the profession against the wishes of his wife,

whom he married in 1803, and declared his intention of becoming a minister.

This sudden change he himself attributed to the effect of a sermon preached by

the Reverend John Mason, in New Haven, from the text, "To the poor the

Gospel is preached". He described the impression the discourse produced as

miraculous; he could not restrain from tears, and from that moment he followed

the ministry with zeal and piety. Spring spent one year at Andover Theological

Seminary, and was ordained in 1809. After receiving calls from

several New England parishes he preached in Cedar-street Church in the

following spring, and in the same year, by unanimous call, was invited to the

pastorate of the old Brick Church on

Beekman street in New York City. Spring frequently received calls of higher

trust and responsibility, including the presidencies he did not desire to abandon his first field of labor, and during the

sixty-three years of his pastoral care of that church he was regarded as second

to no preacher in this city. His congregation moved to Murray Hill in 1851, and

in the following year he accepted as his associate Rev. Wm. G. T. Shedd. Spring

was appointed to the Board of Princeton Theological Seminary in 1814. In 1848

he wrote a book called "The Power of the Pulpit," comparing the

pastorally-trained ministers with those who had been trained in seminaries. The

conclusion was that pastoral effectiveness was better when students spent time

with the more mature ministers. Spring's beliefs were summarized by John M.

Frame, Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy, Reformed Theological

Seminary, Orlando, Florida, as: "(1) that the seminary faculty maintain

close supervision, not only over a student’s academic progress, but also over

his social and spiritual development; (2) that the seminary faculty itself

consist of men with extensive pastoral experience; (3) that no student be

ordained to the ministry until he has spent a time of apprenticeship with an

experienced pastor."  He was also a

trustee of Lafayette College from

1853 to 1861. He famously moved the controversial Gardiner Spring

Resolutions, which were adopted by the General

Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in

May 1861 and precipitated the creation of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America and

the schism of the Presbyterian Church along regional lines and that lasted from

the American Civil War until

1983. He died on August 18, 1873.