Sixty years with Plymouth Church

by Stephen Morrell Griswold

great deal of the power of church life, as well as of personal life, centres about personal items. Without seeking to arrange them chronologically or even to associate them topically, I wish to gather up in this chapter some of the incidents that do not well belong in the preceding chapters. Some of them it is easy to locate, others have lost their setting, as the years have gone by, and stand out with an individuality that is their own. It is no reflection on Mr. Beecher's successors, noble and true men, that he figures so prominently in them. The memory of those early days when, as a country lad, I came to Brooklyn, naturally centres around the man who from my boyhood, through early manhood and into middle age had a mighty influence upon my life.

One event I recall, in the very first year of my new life. In itself it was no more significant or important than many others, but it meant much to me, opening up as it did a broader vision of world-wide interest, and particularly of the close connection between things called secular and religious. The slavery question had a profound religious bearing, and touched the very core of Plymouth Church life, yet even that does not stand out more vividly in my memory than the scene when Louis Kossuth landed at the Battery from an American man-of-war, and rode up Broadway escorted by a hundred or more prominent citizens. We boys knew little about him, but none the less eagerly we hurried along, barely escaping the horses' feet, and none the less lustily we joined in the shout. Later, through Mr. Beecher's references to him and his work, and by seeing him in Plymouth Church, we came to know that the fight for liberty was the same, whether in the South or in Europe, and whether it was for black men that we knew or for Hungarians of whom we knew nothing, scarcely even the name. Another lesson that we learned was that the whole world is kin, and that even far-off lands cannot suffer oppression and wrong without other lands suffering with them. So Plymouth pulpit became a platform for the presentation of every form of appeal to the best Christian consciousness of the church and through the church of the nation.

Another scene, after I had grown to manhood, illustrates the same chivalry that was bound to assert the claims of any person or any class. Mr. Beecher was always an advocate of women's rights. He could never see why women should be debarred from so many of the privileges, or duties, of social life. During the first Lincoln campaign there appeared upon the lecture platform a woman who brought a woman's plea for the cause of liberty and human rights. No one who ever heard Anna Dickinson speak could forget her, or failed to be moved by her eloquence. Of course Mr. Beecher was her friend, and welcomed her assistance in the contest that was growing more and more severe. She drew great crowds whenever she spoke.

I was then president of the Central Republican Club, and we engaged Miss Dickinson to speak in the Academy of Music, where we were then holding meetings. Some days before the meeting was to take place the secretary of the board of directors of the Academy called at my office with a notice that the directors could not allow Miss Dickinson to speak in that building.

I did not know what to do. The meeting had been extensively advertised. I finally decided to go and see Mr. Beecher. As I recited the facts to him I could see the expression of indignation and the colour come to his face. He thought a moment and said, "Wait until next Sunday morning."

The next Sunday the church was packed. When Mr. Beecher gave the notices and came to Miss Dickinson's lecture, he called the board of directors to account for this action in refusing to allow a woman to speak in the Academy of Music. One of the directors, who was present, being ignorant of the situation, took it up and denied the action of the directors. Then said Mr. Beecher, "I take back all that I have said." I was there in the west gallery, and at once decided not to allow a misrepresentation like that to pass, and, mounted on the backs of two pews, I recited to the audience all of the facts and the official notice which I had from the directors, that the Academy could not be used for this woman to speak in.

Interior of Plymouth Church

When I had finished, the congregation broke into great applause. Mr. Beecher then went on with his remarks, scoring the directors of the Academy, and created such a sentiment in the community that the directors rescinded their action, and the great mass meeting, with Miss Dickinson as speaker, took place.