Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/101

Rh grace had been shut off, not merely for three years and six months, but for three centuries and a half. May it soon burst in blessings over all the land!

I stepped over last evening to a chapel opposite my hotel, where one of these congregations was holding service in connection with the Week of Prayer. It was after nine, and the regular meeting had closed. But there stood a group of twenty or so in the upper corner, "going it," like a corner after a revival meeting, in these same songs of Zion. Their leader appeared to be a young brother of twenty (the regular pastor was not present), and they all put in with all their heart and voice, a few sitting about on the benches enjoying the exercise. It was so perfectly Methodistic that I wished to go forward and tell them it seemed just like home. But a slight difficulty, somewhat like that which troubled Zacharias on one occasion, and which would last about as long if I staid here, prevented my making myself known and helping on the melody. I might have sung, however, for the tune I had heard the Sunday before, and the words I could pronounce, if not translate. The favorite hymn, which both congregations sing with great gusto, has this for its chorus:

 No os detengais, no os detengais, Nunca, nunca, nunca; Christo por salvanos dio Su sangre cuando El murió."

The way they bring out the "Nunca, nunca, nunca," is a lesson to many a languid and fashionable quartette and choir, a feebleness that has replaced and half destroyed our hymnal vitality. A half-dozen, who sing only a trifle better than the congregation, take away its office. Let these Mexican Christians lead them back into the divine way. They allowed parts to be sung by two or three