[Illustration: Mr. Beecher and his Father at the time of Call to Brooklyn.] Again in February Mr. Cutler wrote, this time asking pointedly if Mr. Beecher would accept a call to Brooklyn, stating that the property formerly owned by the First Presbyterian Church—Rev. Dr. Cox—had been purchased by Henry C. Bowen, Seth B. Hunt, and David Hale; that it would be vacant in May, and that they proposed to organize in it a new church on the Congregational plan; that if he would come they would give him a salary of $1,500 per annum, and, if necessary, make it $2,000. Mr. Cutler held out many alluring inducements, but without apparent effect. Mr. Beecher would not even entertain the proposition. In the meantime Mr. Cutler shrewdly reasoned that if he would come East, even for a short time, it might be possible to make him change his mind. It was so arranged that Mr. Beecher received an invitation from the American Home Missionary Society to deliver an address, under its auspices, at what was then called the “May Anniversaries” held in New York. He accepted this invitation, intending, as he said since, “to urge young men to go West, to show what a good field the West was, and to cast some fiery arrows at men that had worked there and got tired, and slunk away, and come back. I remember that I was particularly glowing on this subject; but I came East not knowing what I did. It was a trap. Brother Cutler (who has gone to heaven), it seems, had a little plan at that very time, and I was running into a noose, though I did not suspect it. The result of that visit was the formation of this church [Plymouth]. Mr. David Hale, of the _Journal of Commerce_—whose son Richard is still one of our members, though he is not with us—with two or three others, desired at once to extend me an invitation to become the pastor of this church. But the church did not exist. It was like asking a young man to become the husband of an unborn girl. There was no church to be my bride. I refused to receive a call to an empty house. They therefore made haste to form a church; and I think it was early in June of the same year that some twenty-five persons covenanted together over this very ground for the church as it then stood. The main building fronted on one street, and the lecture-room on the other. Here they agreed to become a church of Christ; and then they extended to me a call to be its pastor. The call was not publicly known until the October following; but still the mischief was done.” On Sunday evening, June 13, 1847, Plymouth Church was formally organized with a membership of twenty-one, Rev. R. S. Storrs, of the Church of the Pilgrims, preaching the sermon.