"I see no benefit in a controversy," he wrote. "It will be a fierce technical dispute about propositions, at the expense in the churches of vital godliness.... Others may blow the bellows, and turn the doctrines in the fire, and lay them on the anvil of controversy, and beat them with all sorts of hammers into all sorts of shapes; but I shall busy myself with using the sword of the Lord, not in forging it."
Pro-slavery riots had begun, and the printing-press of James G. Birney was destroyed by a mob of Kentucky slaveholders. Young Beecher was sworn in as a special constable, and for several nights, well armed, patrolled the streets with others, to protect the colored people. He was learning bravery early, and he had need of it through life.
Mr. Beecher graduated in 1837 from Lane Seminary, and through the influence of a Yankee woman, Martha Sawyer, was asked to go to Lawrenceburg, Ind., to preach. "There was a church in that place," says Mr. Beecher, "composed of about twenty members, of which she was the factotum. She collected the money, she was the treasurer, she was the manager, she was the trustee, she was the everything of that church."
There were about fifteen hundred persons in the little town, situated at the junction of the Ohio and Miami Rivers. There were four big distilleries in the place, and a steamboat load of liquor was carried away from it every day.
"When I went there and entered upon my vocation of preaching," says Mr. Beecher, "I found a church, occupying a little brick building, with nineteen or twenty members. There was one man, and the rest were women. With the exception of two persons, there was not one of them who was not obliged to gain a livelihood by the labor of the hands. So you will understand how very poor they were....
"I was sexton in the church. There were no lamps there, so I went and bought some and filled them and lit them. I swept the church, and lighted my own fires. I did not ring the bell because there was none. I opened the church before every meeting, and shut and locked it after every meeting. I took care of everything in the church."
The salary was to be $300—it was raised from $250—of which the Home Missionary Society was to give $150.
His friends in Cincinnati opposed his going to so small a field; but he carried out the advice which he gave years afterward to theological students: "Don't hang round idle, waiting for a good offer. Enter the first field God opens for you. If he needs you in a larger one, he will open the gate for you to enter."
Young Beecher, having waited nearly seven years to claim his bride,—he was now but twenty-four,—wrote to Miss Bullard that he would be ready for the marriage Aug. 3. Arriving at her home on the evening of July 29, he picked over and stoned with her the raisins for the wedding-cake, beat the eggs, and in every way helped on the joyful event. At the hour chosen for the ceremony, a heavy thunder-storm came on. The bride determined to wait; and an hour after the appointed time, under a brilliant rainbow, they were married, and started for their missionary labors in the West.
They boarded for a short time, and then decided to go to housekeeping. Mrs. Beecher, during the absence of her husband at a synodical meeting, found two rooms over a stable, at a rental of forty dollars per year. She went to Cincinnati by boat, to the home of the Beechers, and received, to help in furnishing these rooms, a bedstead, a stove, some sheets and pillow-cases, and a piece of carpet. Through the sale of her cloak for thirty dollars, she obtained a husk mattress, a table, wash-tubs, and groceries.