_Now_ it is easy enough to express such sentiments: it is popular; it is in the line of public sentiment. _Then_ it was a very different matter, and the living up to them still more difficult. Recalling the early history of Plymouth Church, he said: “It was formed in the midst of the development of the greatest work of the modern century—the emancipation of the slaves in America, by which the industry of the Continent was also emancipated, and by which the Church and religion itself were saved from a worse than Babylonian captivity. “When I came here you could get no great Missionary Society, Bible Society, or Tract Society to say one solitary word for the slave. Such were the interests of the mercantile classes of the South that it was extremely difficult to exert there any anti-slavery influence. As the merchants largely held the funds, as the great societies needed support, and as churches were built by respectable men whose prosperity depended mainly upon the peace and order of the South, the position that this church took was a bold and unpopular one. Those who did not live then can have no conception of what it was to form a church that should stand right out in the intense light of the time, and declare for universal liberty and for the right of the slave to the Bible, and to full religious freedom. This church grew up right against a flinty way of bitterness and opposition.” Such was the beginning, and such the times! Although he began preaching in Plymouth Church, October 10, 1847, Mr. Beecher was not formally installed until the 11th of November following. On that day an ecclesiastical council was convened “by letters from the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, in the State of New York, at their lecture-room, ... for the purpose of installing (if the way should be found clear) the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher as their pastor,” etc. “After an extended and thorough examination of the pastor-elect respecting his views of the doctrine of natural and revealed religion, his experience of renewing and sanctifying grace, and his object in entering on the work of the Christian ministry, the council unanimously pronounced the examination sustained and voted to proceed to installation.” The invocation and reading of the Scriptures was by the Rev. Dr. Humphrey, of Pittsfield, Mass.; the sermon by Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher, of the Salem Church of Boston, an older brother of the new pastor; the installing prayer by Rev. Dr. Hewitt, of the Second Congregational Church of Bridgeport; the charge to the pastor by Rev. Dr. Lansing, of the Second Congregational Church of New York; the fellowship of the churches by Rev. R. S. Storrs, Jr., of the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn; address to the people by Rev. J. P. Thompson, of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, and the concluding prayer by Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of the North Church of Hartford.