When Plymouth Church was organized, the wise heads predicted a failure for it; but it has grown and prospered, until it is now the most compact and the best organized congregation in America.  It is dependent upon no synod or other religious body, but manages its affairs entirely as it pleases.  The control is vested in a board of trustees, of which Mr. Beecher is ex-officio a member.  He has no superiority in this board unless called by its members to preside over its meetings.  His influence is of course all-powerful; but as the trustees are shrewd business men, they sometimes carry out their own views in preference to his.  The church is supported by the sale of its pews.  This yields it an annual income of between forty and fifty thousand dollars.  The pastor receives a handsome salary—­said to be the largest in the United States—­and the rest goes into the treasury of the church.  As the period of the annual sale of pews approaches, Mr. Beecher makes it his practice to preach a sermon in which he reviews the questions of the day, and as far as possible marks out his course with regard to them during the ensuing year.  This he does in order that every one purchasing a seat in Plymouth Church may know just what is in store for him from the pulpit.  The surplus revenue, after the pastor’s salary and the current expenses are paid, has until recently been devoted to extinguishing the debt upon the church.  That burden now being off the shoulders of the congregation, the money is applied to missionary work in Brooklyn.  “Two missions have been largely supported by the funds derived from Plymouth Church, and the time and personal labor of its members.  A mechanics’ reading-room is connected with one of these.  No church in the country furnishes a larger body of lay teachers, exhorters, and missionaries in every department of human and Christian labor.”

Plymouth Church is located in Orange Street, between Hicks and Henry Streets, in Brooklyn, and not far from the Fulton Ferry.  Many strangers, whose expectations are based upon the fame of the pastor, are disappointed in the plain and simple exterior of red brick, as they come prepared to see a magnificent Gothic temple.  The interior, however, rarely fails to please all comers.  It is plain and simple, but elegant and comfortable.  It is a vast hall, around the four sides of which sweeps an immense gallery.  The interior is painted white, with a tinge of pink, and the carpets and cushions of the seats are of a rich, warm red.  The rows of seats in the body of the church are semicircular, and those in the gallery rise as in an amphitheater, from the front to the wall.  At the far end of the church is a raised platform containing merely a chair and a table.  The table is a pretty ornament, and is the “Plymouth Pulpit.”  It is made of wood brought from the Garden of Gethsemane.  In the gallery behind the pulpit is the great organ—­one of the largest and finest in the Union.  The church will seat over twenty-five hundred people, but in order to do this, chairs are placed in the aisles.  These chairs are sold as well as the pews.