As its doctrinal basis the Mission Synod adopted the "Declaration of Faith" of the Franckean Synod as containing all fundamental doctrines of the Word of God, all that is truly evangelical in the Augsburg Confession. This radical attitude was criticized by the _Observer_, not, however, as false, but as too open, unguarded, and unwise. (_L. u. W._ 1866, 199f.) At Fort Wayne, 1866, the General Synod advised the Franckean Synod "to dissolve the distant Mission Synod of the West, and direct the ministers now composing it to apply for admission to those synods within whose bounds they may reside"; its radical confessional attitude, however, was not criticized. (35.) As late as 1899 A.S. Hardy wrote concerning the Franckean Synod: "Both her 'Declaration of Faith' and practise [revivalism] discloses naught but a firm Lutheran position, though of Pietistic type." (_Luth. Cycl._, 480.) Self-evidently, the admission of the Franckean Synod was generally regarded as a further victory of the liberal element of the General Synod over the conservatives. 70. York Amendment.--After the General Synod, at York, had passed the resolution to receive the Franckean Synod, 28 delegates entered a protest against this action as being in violation of the constitution, and the delegates of the Pennsylvania Synod declared their withdrawal. Yet the admission of the Franckean Synod was not reconsidered. But in order to satisfy the conservatives, and to obviate further disintegration, the victorious liberals, realizing the seriousness of the crisis, consented to amend the constitution and to adopt the Pittsburgh resolution of 1856 on the alleged errors in the Augustana. Accordingly, Art. III, Sec. 3, adopted 1835, was amended as follows: "All regularly constituted Lutheran synods not now in connection with the General Synod, receiving and holding, with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of our fathers, the Word of God, as contained in the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as the only infallible rule of faith and practise, and the Augsburg Confession as a correct exhibition of the fundamental doctrines of the Divine Word and of the faith of our Church, founded upon that Word, may at any time become associated with the General Synod by complying with the requisitions of this constitution and sending delegates to its convention according to the ratio specified in Article II." (_Proceedings_ 1864, 39.) This amendment, constitutionally adopted 1869 in Washington, D. C., remained the confessional formula till 1913, when, at Atchison, Kans., it was supplanted by the present doctrinal basis. Inasmuch as it canceled both the former limitation to the twenty-one doctrinal articles and the phrase "in a manner substantially correct," the York Amendment was an improvement on the General Synod's basis. Yet the formula was left ambiguous, because the question was not decided whether all of the articles of the Augsburg Confession were to be regarded as fundamental