Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/102

96 voices at San Francisco, and the whole congregation joined in the chorus. It was an inspiration and a lesson to our degenerate worshipers.

No one will fail to recognize the spirituality and spirituality of these outbursts of grace in their long-oppressed souls. It is of the Lord, and, like all His doings, is directly and vitally antagonistic to the prevailing superstition. That prays to the Virgin; this to Jesus. That never allows the Bible to be read or heard of; this makes the reading of the Word of God a prolonged portion of the service. That suppresses the singing of the people; this powerfully employs that service of Christ. That has the prayers muttered in an unknown tongue; this repeats them jointly with the congregation in their own language. That has no sermon in this country, or very rarely; this puts the pulpit and its teachings as a part of every service.

I should judge that regular training, visiting, and educating were needed, that the work requires the culture, system, and force of a regular Church order; but I hope no forms or forces will ever repel, but only increase, the ardor and joy which inspired the hearts of these worshipers on that glad morning of the New-year.

The afternoon was spent in an English service, the second in that language ever held in this city. Rev. Dr. Cooper, of Chicago, conducted it. It was in a private house. He is an able and experienced divine, and his word that day was sweet unto the taste of the little company gathered in that upper room, a handful of seed on the top of this mountain-land, the fruit whereof shall yet shake like Lebanon.

A suggestion was made at that service that the Week of Prayer be observed in this city. It was a novelty, surely, that this Week of Prayer should be kept in this lately most hostile town, where five years ago one could have hardly kept erect when the procession of the Holy Ghost passed through the streets without endangering his head.

But a change has come. The Presbyterian missionary, Rev. Mr. Phillips, opened his parlors, and an Episcopalian, a Methodist, a