passed since the formation of the Third or South Church and the installation of its first minister, the Rev. Thomas Thacher. During this period, it had received eleven or twelve hundred members into its fellowship, more than eight hundred persons had owned the covenant in the presence of its congregation, and more than five thousand children had received the ordinance of baptism from its pastors. Emerging from the storm of strife in which it had been organized, it had taken its place immediately as one of the leading forces in the moral, social, and religious life of the town, and at the middle of the eighteenth century it was second to no church in New England in its Christian activity and usefulness. Another quarter of a century of great prosperity lay before it, and then, at the beginning of the American Revolution, with many other interests and institutions, it was to enter upon an experience of depression and loss.
We return now to the records of the church: