yet is avowedly based on a platform that ignores Christ and
Christianity as supreme and essential to true allegiance to the real
God of the universe. Its worship, therefore, taken as a system, is in
rivalry to and in derogation of Christ and Christianity.

And, as a matter of fact, this and similar systems are by many
regarded as a substitute for the church, or as superior to it.
Moreover, devotion to them absorbs time and interest due to the
church, and paralyzes Christians by association with worldly men, and
by the malignant power of the spirit of the world.

This system, and those who imitate its hierarchal and centralizing
organization, also give power to those hierarchal principles and
systems against which Congregationalism has ever protested as
corrupting and enslaving the church.

The system also cultivates a love of swelling titles, and of gaudy
decorations and display in dress, that are hostile to the genius of
our Constitution, and to true republican and Christian dignity and
simplicity.

From this system other organizations have borrowed much, and some do
not essentially differ from it in practical working.

Other organizations, however, for the ends of temperance reform, have
adopted modes of organization, display in dress, and secret signs for
the purposes of recognition and defense. The ends and proceedings of
these temperance societies are so well known that it is often denied
that they are secret societies; yet they do, avowedly for purposes of
defense, resort to secrecy, and have imitated modes of dress and