TEN REASONS FOR BEING A PRESBYTERIAN.

“The great thing in the Church is CHRIST, the blood of Christ, the Spirit of Christ, the presence of Christ among us. The great thing is Christ, but there is also advantage in a certain government of the Church of Christ. I am a Presbyterian, not only of situation, but of conviction and choice. Our Presbyterian way is the good middle way between Episcopacy on the one side, and Congregationalism on the other. We combine the two great principles that must be maintained in the Church—Order and Liberty; the order of government, and the liberty of the people.”—Merle d’ Aubigne.

SEVENTH REASON.

7. I AM A PRESBYTERIAN—because the Sacraments are in our Church administered agreeably to the Word of God. We baptize  adults on profession of their faith in Christ, and we baptize the infants of such as are members of the visible Church.—(Acts xvi. 33; Gen. xvii. 7, with Colossians ii. 11, 12; 1 Cor. vii. 14.)

In the dispensation of the Lord’s supper we do not kneel before an altar, but we sit at the Lord’s table, receiving the sacramental bread and wine in the customary posture of men who celebrate a feast, as Christ and his disciples set the example. We have no altar in our Churches, because the sacrament of the supper is not a sacrifice, but an ordinance commemorative of the one sacrifice of Christ. The admission of members to the Lord’s supper is after examination and warning and instruction as to the nature and objects of the ordinance.—(1 Cor. xi. 26–28.)

EIGHTH REASON.

8. I AM A PRESBYTERIAN—because I love and pray for unity; not uniformity at the expense of truth, but unity based on truth and charity. Our Presbyterian Church has its congregations knit together in mutual dependence and sympathy, as one body in the unity of the Spirit, having one Lord and Head, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. And all are united under one superintendence and government, holding the same standards, and maintaining the same principles, the strong helping and bearing the burden of the weak, the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, with one mind striving together for the faith of the Gospel. We thus enjoy a visible, as well as a spiritual unity, according to the scriptural idea of the Church, the body of Christ.—(Ephesians iv. 8–16.)