subscribe to the opinion, that the truth should reject the aid of human auxiliaries, and that the welfare of the church should not be considered in the business of legislation. We conceive that rulers are responsible for the influence with which the Almighty has invested them, and that it is their duty to provide for the spiritual instruction of the people whom they govern. We are convinced that religion is the best safeguard of the state, and that if its interests are disregarded by our senators, the Most High will confound their counsels, and make their devices of none effect. We desire that the Protestant Church should prosper within these realms, and we only wish that the external fabric may be stripped of those remnants of a darker age which have hitherto contributed to mar its beauty and to impair its excellence. Were our national establishment constructed upon the principles of genuine Presbyterianism, we are satisfied that it would be more likely to be enthroned in the affections of the Protestants of the empire. We feel assured, that through the blessing of its heavenly King, it would, ere long, form a grand, and united, and holy commonwealth, which neither the rancour of infidelity nor the intrigues of Popery could shake. And if, in the days that are past, our fathers taught Britons the nature and the value of civil liberty-if the persecuted saints of Scotland dared to struggle for their freedom when England bowed to the yoke of tyranny and if, when Rome was about to embrace us in her iron grasp, Presbyterian Holland came to our relief, and sent forward to our shores a brave and a triumphant asserter of our privileges-may we not hope that our Protestant brethren will be at length induced to adopt the free spirit of our religious institutions, and that they will make an effort to save the tottering establishment of Ireland, by ingrafting its sound doctrines upon the healthy stock of eur Presbyterian constitution.

I am, &c. &c.,

249

THE DISTRIBUTION OF TOKENS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN,

SIR, A FEW weeks ago I was present at public worship in Fisherwick-place, when a method of distributing tokens of admission to the Lord's Table was adopted, which appears to me so much better than what is common, that I take this opportunity of suggesting it to your numerous readers. Before the close of the service, the Minister stated, that he and the Session disliked the ordinary method of distributing tokensthat he had inquired into the original practice of the Church of Scotland-that he had found it like all the laws of the Scotch Church, wise and simple-and that therefore he would, with the consent of the people, adopt it in future. For this purpose he requested, that when the benediction was pronounced and the congregation retired, the communicants would remain. These accordingly did remain, to the number of between five and six hundred persons, and those who had sat in the gallery came down to the lower part of the house. After the benediction, Mr. Morgan came down and stood before the pulpit, and the Elders by him. He read a part of the 116th Psalm: "I'll of salvation take the cup," &c., which the people sung. He offered a short prayer, constituting the Session. He then briefly explained what was meant by giving and receiving tokens, showing wherein Presbyterianism differed from Episcopacy and Independency, in admitting to the Lord's Table. Presbyterianism, he stated, simply recognised two things as necessary in the candidate-soundness in the faith and blamelessness of life. On these only did the Scriptures allow the church to legislate. After this brief explanation, he called upon the communicants to come forward and receive their tokens, the act of doing so being a declaration that they professed the doctrines of the Presbyterian Church, as laid down in her standards, and that nothing was known in their lives which required the legislative interference of the rulers of the church. Those who sat on the right hand and left hand aisles of the house then rose, and each received his token as he passed at the table before the pulpit, (each lifted his token off the plate in presence of all the Elders,) and the stream of people passed down the centre aisle, and went out at the door. Those parts of the house being emptied, those who sat in the pews off the centre aisle rose, received

their tokens in like manner, and passing on in the opposite direction, went out at the doors of the side aisles. The whole time occupied was about half an hour. The solemnity was the most simple, orderly, and impressive-a comment on the text, "let all things be done decently and in order." I have described it, because I think it ought to be universally adopted. It would prevent the confusion, not to say the indecorum, of giving tokens at the doors, when it is almost impossible to tell who receives them. It would prevent tokens being given by one member of the Session without the knowledge of the others, which is highly improper. It enables the rulers of the church to know all the communicants, and the communicants to know one another. When the communicants alone sung the praises of God, it was very affecting. The thought occurred to me, there ought sometimes to be meetings of the communicants by themselves, for prayer and praise. The impression on the people appears to have been very favourable. Each felt it a solemn act to go forward and, on the conditions explained, receive his token. All with whom I have conversed seemed delighted with the plan. One said he felt it was a foretaste of the communion itself. Let your readers, especially Ministers and Elders, think whether they should not adopt it. A MEMBER OF FISHERWICK-PLACE.

TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES.

SOME time ago, a copy of the following resolution was enclosed to us by the Secretary of the Belfast Temperance Society, "That letters be written to the Editors of the Orthodox Presbyterian, the Christian Freeman, and the Covenanter, requesting them to publish in their next Numbers the Retrospect of Temperance Societies, lately issued here." Although it trespasses to some extent on our pages, and although many of our readers may have seen this document already, yet, considering the importance of the cause and the interesting statements contained in the paper, we cannot refuse compliance with the request. Even those of our readers who are not members of the Temperance Society must allow that the document is one of great importance, and deserves to be universally read. We were anxious to abridge it, yet we could find only two short passages which the argument would allow to be omitted.

"The temperance societies of the old world originated in Belfast, August, 1829.

"The only condition of membership is subscription to their fundamental principle We resolve to refrain from distilled spirits, and to promote temperance."

"The extent of intemperance and its effects, in the United Kingdom, especially in Scotland and Ireland, at the rise of temperance societies, were so atrocious and horrible as almost to exceed belief.

66 Upwards of twenty-seven millions five hundred thousand gallons of full proof spirits, were consumed in the United Kingdom, in 1829, though not nearly one-half the amount was consumed in 1819, ten years before. Some idea of this enormous number of gallons may be formed, from the fact, that it would require about two years to reckon it, counting sixty each minute, during twelve hours each day.

“Making a small addition to this quantity for private distillation, and the reduction of strength by retailers, the astounding fact appears, that the people of the United Kingdom paid, for spirits, in the year in which temperance societies commenced, nineteen millions of pounds sterling. Of this, poor beggared Ireland paid above six millions, which, if laid down in penny pieces, would extend round the world; or which would give three guineas apiece to every family in the kingdom. The quantity consumed in Scotland, in proportion to her population, was more than double that of Ireland.

"In Glasgow, the number of shops for the sale of ardent spirits was equal to that of all the shops for the sale of human food; in Irish towns, nothing was more common, than from eighteen to thirty spirit shops in proportion to one baker's shop; and in London, Manchester, Leeds, &c., different shops had customers entering at the rate of ten or twelve per minute.

"The highest authorities have given as their deliberate judgment, that three-fourths of the beggary, four-fifths of the crime brought before courts of justice, one-half the madness of lunatic asylums, arise from the consumption of distilled spirits. The Surgeon-General of Ireland has testified, that in Dublin, nearly one-fourth of all deaths, in persons above twenty years of age, are caused prematurely by distilled spirits; and medical men, in different parts of the United Kingdom, have attributed to the same cause one-half of their practice.

"Particular cases completely confirm these general statements. A young schoolmaster, in a civilized district of Ulster, stated at a temperance meeting, that he held in his hand a list of twenty-two persons, in his immediate neighbourhood, with whom he had been acquainted, and all of whom perished miserably from the use of spirituous liquors. A magistrate of county Antrim declares, that in his own recollection, fortyeight individuals have, within two miles of his own residence, been cut off prematurely, by the use of spirituous liquors; and in a village of county Down, in the whole side of a long street, there is not a single house, which, within a few years past, has not furnished one or more victims to the destructive influence of distilled spirits.

"Notwithstanding the ruinous effects of spirituous liquor in peopling the land with beggars, madmen, and murderers, filling gaols and church yards, and destroying immortal souls; so besotted had the community become, that to spirituous liquor were attributed, all manner of imaginary excellencies; and wherever men or women, young or old, met, whether

at market or social party, at wake or funeral; whether for amusement or for religion, there spirituous liquor was too, as refreshment or as medicine, in friendship or hospitality.

"Throughout the country, in almost every house which the minister of the gospel visited, he was pressed to drink; so that it was not unusual for spirits, from a dozen of bottles, to be urged upon him in a single forenoon; while, as a matter of course, the place of worship had its private bottle, for the accommodation of the rulers; and close at hand stood the public house, for the accommodation of the people.

"Amid such scenes, no wonder that moral feeling, on the subject of drunkenness, was dead-and dead as the rottenness of the grave it was, throughout whole districts of country. The cases were many in Ulsteralas! that there should be any remaining, in which an intemperate minister continued for life unmolested, the spiritual instructor of a large congregation.

"The public mind was horribly perverted; and while the plunderer of a hen-roost was justly devoted to infamy, the drunkard was called by soft names, took his seat with complacency at many a sacramental table; or entered the pulpit on the Sabbath to reason of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.

*

*

*

"Such truths as the following, established by incontrovertible evidence, have received from temperance societies the most satisfactory illustration, and a circulation wide as the habitable world.

"I. For persons in health distilled spirits are useless. They do not assist digestion in the healthy, they give no strength, and to those exposed to the extremes of cold, and heat, and fatigue, they are injurious.

"II. Distilled spirits, even in what is called their moderate use, are injurious-laying the foundation of disease, exciting and aggravating disease, and cutting short life. In their own nature and character they are poisonous.

"III. In proportion to the consumption of distilled spirits in any country, is the amount of beggary and misery, of crime and madness, and disease, and premature death. Introduce distilled spirits into a country, and you introduce a curse-banish them, and generations unborn will rise up and bless you.

"IV. The respectability attached to the use of spirituous liquors is derived from the temperate; the fictitious excellencies attributed to them, are supported by the temperate; without them the trade in spirituous liquors could not live, or could only live in infamy, and by the various spirit-drinking customs which the temperate maintain and make respectable, the drunkards of successive generations are trained.

"V. Union of the temperate in abstaining from distilled spirits and promoting temperance, is a safeguard to themselves against drunkenness, and many other ills; and affords to the drunkard strong encouragement for reformation.

"Upwards of three hundred of the most distinguished medical men, now living in the British empire, have published their conviction, that distilled spirits are not to be regarded as nutritive; that they are a chief cause of disease and misery; and that no cause would be calculated so much to improve the health of the community as the ENTIRE DISUSE of distilled spirits.

"The highest medical authorities in America have declared, that distilled spirits, in their most moderate use, injure the human constitution, '