Sixty years with Plymouth Church

by Stephen Morrell Griswold

Since then, not only the Academy of Music, but other public buildings throughout the country have been open for women to speak in, upon any subject.

Stories of Mr. Beecher's sayings might be gathered by the thousand, indeed they have been, and published in a book for the use of ministers, teachers, and public speakers. Fortunately or unfortunately the reporter was not quite so ubiquitous then, especially in the earlier days, as now, but still there was a sufficient amount of newspaper enterprise, and I often wish I had kept a record of the incidents and trenchant remarks that were gathered up. A good many, however, never got into the papers. Whether or not the following did I cannot say. Certainly I did not get them from the press.

One day the evening papers announced that a terrible accident had happened to Mrs. Beecher, that she had been thrown out of her carriage in lower Fulton Street, been dashed against the steps of the Long Island Bank, and so seriously injured that she was not expected to live, and some said that she had been killed. That evening at the prayer meeting no one expected to see Mr. Beecher. He came as usual and the people crowded around him asking about Mrs. Beecher, as she had been reported killed. He seemed quite disturbed by the persistent inquiries of those around him. In a half impatient manner he said, "It would have been serious with any other woman."

The same cool, imperturbable bearing so often manifest in his experiences in England came out again and again during the stirring scenes in this country. When the Civil War broke out and the riots in New York took place for several days the city was almost in the hands of the mob. It was given out that Plymouth Church was to be attacked the next Sunday evening. Crowds of rough-looking men came over the ferry and mixed with the congregation. John Folk, superintendent of the police force of Brooklyn, with forty of his men was in the lecture room and back of the organ to protect Mr. Beecher, in case of an attempt to reach him, amid the intense excitement of the audience. Mr. Beecher came upon the platform calm and cool and proceeded with the services as usual. During the sermon a stone crashed through the upper windows from the outside. Mr. Beecher stopped, looked up to the windows, and then to the great congregation, and said "Miscreant," and calmly went on with his sermon.

He was always glad when he could be, so to speak, off duty, and be free to do whatever occurred to him to do, whether anybody else would ever have thought of it or not. One Sunday evening when his pulpit was occupied by some other pastor he was seen sitting in the third gallery. When asked why he was up there, he replied "that he wanted to see how the preacher looked from that point of view."

The boys on the Heights all knew Mr. Beecher and liked to meet him because he always had a word with them. In coming to church one day he met a group of boys. They hailed him in this fashion: "There goes Mr. Beecher, he is a screecher." When he reached the church it seemed to please him to tell the story to the congregation.

Whenever Mr. Beecher crossed the ocean he was very sea-sick, and after landing he would say that those whom God abhorred He sent to sea. This was probably the reason why at the last moment he decided not to to take the trip in the Quaker City, referred to in a previous chapter. The expedition would never have been organised but for Mr. Beecher, and yet it had to go without him.

While in a very real sense Mr. Beecher was a true cosmopolitan, and a genuine citizen of the United States, he was specially fond of New England, was grateful that that section was his birthplace, and always glad when one opportunity or another called him there to lecture or preach. The New England people fully reciprocated the feeling and in turn Mr. Beecher used to declare that "New England was the brain of the nation." Little wonder that so many New England boys found their way to Plymouth Church.

In a similar way he was very fond of Brooklyn as the city of homes. He was interested in New York, with its bustle and rush, as the "work shop," but Brooklyn was the "boarding house," and many a semi-homeless boarder found a warm welcome in Plymouth Church. Perhaps it was these people that he had in mind when Plymouth Church could not hold half the people who desired to attend the services, and he appealed to the pewholders to stay away evenings and give their pews to strangers, inaugurating thus a custom which has continued to the present time.

While preaching upon the greatness of God's work as compared with the works of man, he said man can tunnel mountains, build ships to cross the sea, span the world with the telegraph, cross the continent with the iron horse, build cathedrals and capitols, machines to fly in the air, and explore the depths of the sea, but with all of man's greatness and skill, "he cannot make a fly."