Congregational, and a Presbyterian minister joined with a few laymen and sisters in offering daily prayer, according to the programme set forth by the Evangelical Alliance. It was good to be there day by day, to hear the songs of Zion in a strange land, to feel that we stood at the fountain-head of this river of life which is breaking; forth here at the touch of God for the cleansing of this nation.
The Congregational minister is Rev. Mr. Parks, sent out by the British and Foreign Bible Society to scatter that divine seed over this barren soil. He is a sower going forth to sow. He finds all sorts of soils. One colporteur in a three months' tour could not sell a single Bible. He contrived to give away a few hundreds. Another was beaten and driven out of Puebla, the second city of the country. Others find soil less rocky and less hardened by the wayside treading of centuries of Bible hatred, and some good soil is discovered, as these new movements show, which is yielding fruit already—some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred fold.
Among those that attended these little meetings was Mr. Petherick, a devoted Wesleyan, and Colonel Rhett, a Confederate officer, in command for a time of the defenses of Richmond, who, though he perhaps can not yet see that slavery is a sin, being a South Carolinian (which people, like their kin in Massachusetts, never change), still is willing to let that system "go," and is devoting himself with a praiseworthy zeal to general Christian activity.
This Gospel Week will not be forgotten in the history of the Church in Mexico. It has shown to every foe of our Christ that the charge they may make against the division of Protestant Christianity is not true. Most of its leading bodies have here harmoniously sung and spoken and prayed. They are a unit in aim and endeavor, in spirit and in life. They are less separated than the orders of the Romish Church; Jesuit and Carmelite, Benedictine and Franciscan, being more hostile to each other than any of our American Churches. This Union Week foretells the Union Year and Union Age of the Church in these United States of Mexico. May it be more and more one in faith, in work, in reward, here and over all the world!
