the conservatives "the credentials of the [Melanchthon Synod] delegates were then presented and their names entered upon the roll of Synod." (12.) Confirming their doctrinal position, the Melanchthon Synod, in 1860, by formal resolution, approved of a sermon delivered by B. Kurtz in which he denounced baptismal regeneration as "a part of papistical superstition" and the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine as "consubstantiation," and "just as untenable and absurd as transubstantiation." (_L. u. W._ 1860, 384.) Considering the Constitution of the General Synod together with the fact that the Platform synods had not been molested, the admission of the Melanchthon Synod, advocated by Krauth, cannot be construed as inconsistent. It must, however, be regarded as an indirect approval, on the part of the General Synod, of the Platform theology. Dr. Mann remarked, "he doubted not that there was much good in the constitution of the Melanchthon Synod; but he would not eat poisoned bread, though there was much good flour in it." (_L. u. W._ 1859, 196.) 68. Synod's Position Explained.--In 1859 the General Synod resolved that S. W. Harkey publish, in German as well as in English, the sermon delivered by him as President of Synod at the opening of the convention. (_Proceedings_, 48.) Harkey was an opponent of the Platform on the order of Brown and Conrad. In 1852, in his inaugural address as professor of theology at the Illinois State University in Springfield, he had declared that we must take a firm foothold in the Augsburg Confession as a whole without binding the consciences of men to its unessential individual determinations; and that the doctrine of the symbols on the Sacraments belongs to the points concerning which they had agreed to differ. (_Lutheraner_ 9, 99.) Reaffirming this position in the sermon, endorsed by the General Synod in 1859, Harkey said: "We want love as much as orthodoxy, yes, a thousand times more than what some men call orthodoxy." (6.) "The General Synod cannot and does not require perfect unity or uniformity in all points of doctrine." (10.) "The General Synod adopted it [Augustana] as to fundamentals, and to these she requires unqualified subscription." (12.) "Objections have been urged against the expression 'fundamental doctrines,' as meaning one thing in the mouth of one man and a different thing in that of another--that to some everything is fundamental and to others only a few points. Now I cannot reply to this at length, at present, but have only to say in few words that there are fundamental doctrines in Christianity, and everybody not spoiled by his theory or philosophy knows what they are [the doctrines held in common by all evangelical denominations]. Indeed, I feel like sternly rebuking the infidelity which lies concealed beneath this objection, as if Christians had not been able to determine, in eighteen