Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/272

 such vitalising tunes, and such vitalising, beautiful words, that I feel as if people ought to sing them with heart and soul. Our long, heavy Swedish psalms, full of self-observation and repetition, are not met with here; neither have I here met with those monotonous feeble, poor tunes, which destroy all life in the soul, and which made me every time a hymn was begun, glance with a certain fear at its length; for if it were very long, I never reached the end of it without being weary and sleepy, though I might have begun with fervency of feeling. And was it different with others? I have often looked around me during the singing in Swedish churches, and have seen many a dull, sleepy eye; many a half-opened mouth which did not utter a word, and had forgotten to close itself,—in short, a sort of idiotic expression which told me that the soul was away, and whilst I thus looked at others, I found it was the same with myself. The prayers it seems to me are better with us than with the congregations here; but still they might be improved even with us. In the episcopal churches of this country the prayers are according to the printed form in the book, and it frequently happens that the soul has no part in these. It is a mere prating with the lips. In the Unitarian churches the preacher prays for the congregation and in its name, prays an infinitely long prayer, which has the inconvenience of saying altogether too much, of using too many words, and yet of not saying that which any single individual ought to say. How often have I thought during these long prayers, how much more perfect it would be if the minister merely said, “Lord help us!” or “Lord let thy countenance shine upon us!” Better than all would it be as Jean Paul proposed, that the minister should merely say, “Let us pray!” And then that some beautiful soul-touching