Page:History of Gardner, Massachusetts (1860) - Glazier.djvu/158

154 of Heaven, and unite our voices with an innumerable multitude, in the song of blessing and honor, glory and praise to Him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb forever and ever. Amen.

The first movement of the South Gardner Baptist Church was in the year 1830, when twenty-three brethren and sisters of the Baptist Church in Templeton, who resided in Gardner, represented by letter to the church that "they thought their number and circumstances such that it would be for their advantage, and the general interest of the cause of Christ, to be organized into a distinct church"—and on the fifteenth of November, in the same year, an Ecclesiastical Council was convened at the house of Sullivan Jackson, in South Gardner, for the purpose of organizing and recognizing the church.

The council was composed of delegates from the churches in Templeton, Westminster, Princeton, and West Boylston. The venerable pastor of the Templeton church, Rev. Elisha Andrews,