by all the ships and forts. The flag on Sumter was dipped as we passed
by; all went well until we rounded Cape Hatteras and were bearing into
Fortress Monroe. Passing a pilot boat, the captain shouted, "What's the
news?" The reply came back over the water, "The President is dead." We
could not and did not believe it. Soon after, passing another pilot
boat, to a similar question the answer came, "Mr. Lincoln has been
assassinated." Then we realised the truth. With saddened hearts we
sailed up to Fortress Monroe, which was already draped in black. Here
our party separated, some coming direct to New York, the rest going to
Washington to take part in the ceremonies attending the funeral of Mr.
Lincoln.
I have spoken more fully of the Sumter excursion because it was an
important national event, and because it was so closely identified with
Plymouth Church and Brooklyn. If it had not been for Mr. Beecher there
would have been no _Oceanus_ voyage.
[Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER'S STATUE, BROOKLYN, N. Y.]
_QUAKER CITY EXCURSION_
The plan of the _Quaker City_ Excursion, made famous by Mark Twain,
originated in Plymouth Church, when Mr. Beecher contemplated writing a
Life of Christ. He expressed a desire to visit the sacred places of
Palestine, where our Lord lived and where He was crucified, and wanted
several members of Plymouth Church to go with him. A committee was
formed to arrange for the journey, composed of Captain C. Duncan, John
T. Howard and Rufus R. Graves. A very beautiful and substantial
side-wheel steamship, the _Quaker City_, was chartered for the journey,
and the number of passengers was limited to one hundred and fifty. The
price of the passage for each person was fixed at twelve hundred and
fifty dollars. Mr. Beecher engaged passage, but at the last moment
decided not to go.
The Secretary of State furnished us with letters commending us to the
attention of the foreign governments which we might visit, and on the
eighth day of June we sailed out of New York harbour. Our first stopping
place was at the Azores, then we went to Gibraltar and Marseilles, where
time was given to the passengers to visit Paris and London; next to
Genoa, from which port we made visits to Milan, Venice and Lake Como.
The next stopping place was Leghorn, where we turned aside to Florence
and Pisa and visited Garibaldi, who was then at his home. From Leghorn
our course took us to Naples, giving time to see Rome, Vesuvius and
Pompeii; then on through the Straits of Messina, across the Ionian Sea,
through the Grecian Archipelago to Athens, Greece; through the
Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmora to Constantinople. After one week's
stay in that Oriental city, the route lay through the Bosphorus, across
the Black Sea to Sebastopol. After visiting the famous battlefields of
the Crimea, we sailed to Odessa, in the northwest corner of the Black
Sea, ours being the first American steamship which ever entered that
harbour. While staying there a telegram was received from the Emperor of
Russia inviting us to visit him at his palace, Livadia, at Yalta. Yalta
is a very beautiful place on the slope of a mountain, overlooking the
Black Sea, about two hundred miles east of Odessa, and is the summer
home of the imperial family of Russia. The Grand Duke Michael's palace,
Orianda, the Grand Duke Vladimir's, Worondow, and their grounds join
those of the Emperor. The invitation was accepted. Mrs. Griswold's story
of the visit as given in the "Pilgrimage" is as follows:
"On the way from Odessa to Yalta, several meetings were held by the
gentlemen in the saloon for the purpose of preparing an address to
be presented to the Czar; at the same time the ladies were gathered
in groups conversing about the coming event.
"This morning we dropped anchor at Yalta. The Governor-general
conveyed to us a message from the Emperor 'that we were welcome,
and he would be pleased to receive us the next day at twelve
o'clock.' Word also came that carriages and horses would be in
readiness to convey the party to the palace, which is about two
miles from the landing place.
"All was astir on board preparing for the great occasion. The
porters are overtaxed in getting out the stored-away trunks for the
passengers, as the most _recherché_ wardrobes must be selected. The
ladies' purchases through Europe are now brought into requisition.
Paris dresses, laces, coiffures, and jewelry are to be worn for
the first time. At ten and a half o'clock we saw the spacious
rowboats belonging to the Emperor nearing our ship. How gaily they
were decked out with scarlet cloth and fringe hanging over the
sides almost touching the water; each boat was rowed by twelve men
dressed in white caps and uniform. They approached the vessel's
side with extreme caution, owing to the heavy sea, which was
rolling in. As the boat would rise upon a wave and sink away, one
person stepped in after another until it was filled, when another
boat would take its place. In this way all were safely landed. We
left the boat by crimson-carpeted steps leading up from the water
into a picturesque canopied landing. The ladies occupied the
carriages and the gentlemen rode on horseback. We formed quite a
procession, numbering over sixty persons.
"The gates were thrown open to admit us to the palace grounds. A
company of mounted Cossacks were drawn up on each side of the gate,
and we passed through in military order, escorted by the Grand Duke
Michael, brother of the Emperor, who had met us on the way.
"At precisely twelve o'clock we formed in front of the palace. The
smoothly cut lawn around us was like a velvet carpet, with a
profusion of surrounding flowers. Immediately the Emperor and the
Empress appeared, accompanied by their daughter Marie, and one of
their sons, the Grand Duke Serge, followed by a retinue of
distinguished persons.
"The American Consul who had come with us from Odessa stepped
forward and read a short address to his Imperial Highness Alexander
II, Czar of Russia, which had been prepared and signed by the
passengers. The Emperor replied to it by saying 'that he thanked us
for the address and was very much pleased to meet us, especially as
such friendly relations exist between Russia and the United
States.' The Empress further replied by saying 'that Americans were
favourites in Russia,' and she hoped her people were the same with
the Americans.
"The Emperor is tall and well-proportioned, with a mild yet firm
expression. The impression of the beholders is that he is one born
to command. He wore a white cap and a white linen suit, the coat
confined with a belt around the waist and ornamented with gilt
buttons and elaborate epaulets.
"The Empress is of medium height, fair complexion, and although
delicate looking she appears young for one of her age. A bright,
welcoming smile lit up her face. Her dress was white foulard silk,
dotted with blue and richly trimmed with blue satin. She wore a
small sleeveless jacket, a broad blue sash, and around her neck was
a tie made of swiss muslin and valenciennes lace. On her head was a
straw hat trimmed with blue velvet and black lace. Her hands were
covered with flesh-covered kid gloves, and she carried a light drab
parasol lined with blue silk.
"The Grand Duchess was attired in a dress of similar material to
that of her mother, only this was more tastefully arranged with
blue silk and fringe, a belt of the same material as the dress,
fastened by a large rosette, and a straw hat also trimmed with blue
silk.
"The Grand Duke Serge is quite young, and a well-appearing youth.
He was dressed in a scarlet blouse and white pants.
"Individual introductions followed. Several of the ladies,
including myself, had an opportunity of conversing with the
Empress. All of the Imperial family speak English very well.
"We were escorted through the buildings by the Emperor and Empress,
entering a door which was on either side a bower of flowers.
Almost all the apartments were thrown open. The floors were inlaid
and polished, and the furniture was curious and costly. The Emperor
took special pains to show us the chapel, where he and his family
worshipped. It was very handsome, and connected with the main
building.
"Every effort was made by the Imperial family to welcome us, and
really the Pilgrims seemed to act as much at home as though they
were accustomed to calling on Emperors every day.
"I could not realise that we were being entertained by a ruler of
more than eighty million people, and whose word was the supreme law
of the most powerful nation on the globe.
"At eight o'clock in the evening the anchor was lifted and we
sailed by the Czar's palace, which was brilliantly lighted, and
amid the booming of cannon, and the shooting of rockets, and a blue
light illuminating our ship we bade farewell to a scene which I
shall treasure as one of the brightest remembrances of my life."
From Yalta the steamer sailed across the Black Sea, through the
Bosphorus, down the coast of Asia Minor, to the Gulf of Smyrna,
anchoring in the harbour of Smyrna. A delay was made to give time to
visit the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus. Passing the coast of the
Isle of Cyprus the next landing place was Beirut, where several days
were spent, affording the pilgrims opportunity to visit the Mountains
of Lebanon, the ruins of Baalbec, and the city of Damascus. From Beirut
we sailed down the coast of Palestine, passing Tyre and Sidon. The
steamer anchored off the harbour of Jaffa. Three weeks were given to
visit Jerusalem, Bethany, the River Jordan, the Dead Sea, Jericho, and
other places in the Holy Land. At Jerusalem one of the Plymouth Church
passengers, Mr. Moses Beach, purchased an olive tree at the foot of the
Mount of Olives near the Garden of Gethsemane, had it cut down and
transported to Jaffa, where it was placed on board the _Quaker City_,
brought home, and through the generosity of Mr. Beach was made into
furniture which now stands in Plymouth pulpit. The next landing place
was Alexandria, Egypt, giving an opportunity to visit Cairo and the
Pyramids. From Alexandria the voyage was continued homeward, stopping at
Malta, Gibraltar and Bermuda.
It was a great journey, as it afforded a majestic and sublime panorama
of the different nations, kindreds, and tongues of the world, and may
well take its place among other great events of Plymouth Church.
_PERSONALIA_
A 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.
[Illustration: 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.
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."
In a vivid description of a thunder storm illustrating some part of his
sermon he closed with a most beautiful piece of word painting in
describing the passing away of the clouds after the storm, picturing the
sun shining upon the edges of the clouds making a pathway as he said for
"Angels to walk to and fro when they came down from Heaven."
Intensely practical as he was in his conception of religion, Mr.
Beecher had a very profound sense of the future life, and there was
always a sub-stratum of that thought in his preaching. In a sermon on
the Darwinian theory he said, "I do not care where I came from; it is
where I am going to that I am interested in."
In a sermon on Heaven, he said that everyone had a right to make their
own Heaven. The one that inspired in them the greatest hope and most
beautiful thoughts and gave them the greatest happiness was their
Heaven. Speaking of the end of life, he said that when he died he would
like to pass out of life suddenly, like a cannon ball shot out of a
cannon.
_FUTURE PLYMOUTH_
What will become of Plymouth Church when Mr. Beecher passes away? was a
question often asked in the early days. The answer to that has already
been given. It was a severe test to which the church was put, but it
stood it nobly. Again when Dr. Abbott was pastor the same question was
asked. Ten years of successful life is the sufficient answer to that.
Now again the question comes up under the pastoral care of Dr. Hillis.
My answer to this last question as to the others is, that the life of
Plymouth Church does not depend upon any one man, however great he may
be. It would be difficult to find three men more different, each from
the other, than the three who have filled Plymouth pulpit. Yet after all
the general type of the church life has not changed, nor has its
attitude toward the surrounding city and the wider national life taken
on a different character. The emphasis now, as always, is on Christian
living, in the assurance that out of that living will come Christian
thinking. Each in his own way, but each with the same purpose and the
same result, has preached the gospel of life. The form of that life has
varied, but the variation has been occasioned by the need of adaptation
to the general type of church life, as illustrated on every hand.
Plymouth has simply shown its ability to meet new conditions in itself.
So also with regard to the broader relation to public life. It is now,
as it always has been, the natural and the expected thing that every
great cause, for righteousness and peace, should send its advocates to
Brooklyn and that they should have a welcome in Plymouth pulpit. A
significant illustration of this occurred but recently at the opening of
the great Peace Congress. The two churches that were identified with it
more than any others were Plymouth and Broadway Tabernacle. Probably no
pastor in the country is more widely known for his practical interest in
public affairs than is Dr. Hillis, and wherever he goes from the
Atlantic to the Pacific he is welcomed both for himself and as the
pastor of Plymouth Church. The simple fact is it is the same old
Plymouth. It has grown up with the country, has had its share in the
making of the country, whether in the strife of war or in the urgency
for peace, and has made for itself a name that will stand, like Faneuil
Hall in Boston, or Independence Hall in Philadelphia, for all time to
come.