LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE ARMENIAN SERVICE IN LONDON.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.")
Slis,—I attended on Friday last the Armenian service for Holy Communion which is being held fortnightly at St. John's, Westminster. I cannot help feeling that Canon Wilberforce, by opening his church in this hospitable way to our persecuted fellow Christians, has done a gracious as well as a bold thing. It is very strange to see an Eastern liturgy offered in an English church, and to hear the strange, weird music—if "music" is the proper word—to which many of the responses are sung. The pathetic faces of the one hundred and fifty Armenian refugees, their absorbed and patient devotion, the entirely un-English way in which they express it, all added an interest to the service which I can never forget. My object in writing is to recommend any of your readers who are interested in the history and vitality of Christian faith and Christian worship to go and see for themselves this very ancient form. It is so helpful to find all the main features of the service exactly like those on which our own service and the Roman Mass are formed; while the ceremonial of the presentation of the bread and wine, the greater entrance, and the great prolongation of the words and prayers by which the consecration is accomplished, illustrate sides of teaching which Western Christians have neglected or forgotten, and suggest the lines on which all real efforts at re- union must move. No doubt the Armenians, owing to their taint of Entychianism, have much to learn from us ; much which when truly grasped will make them a greater and a stronger people; but I came away from my two hours' worship feeling that we too had much to learn from them.—I am,
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