principal topic of discussion. A tentative constitution, drafted by Shober and a committee of the Pennsylvania Synod, was approved with 42 against 8 votes and published over the signatures of its officers,-- the so-called _Planentwurf_, which, in a somewhat modified form, was adopted 1820 at Hagerstown as the Constitution (_Grundverfassung_) of the General Synod. At the first regular convention of the new body, held at Frederick (Fredericktown, Friedrichstadt), Md., in October, 1821, twenty delegates were present, representing the synods of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Maryland-Virginia. It was a beginning fraught with discouragements. Owing to religious indifference, the rationalistic New York Ministerium had immediately permitted its connection to lapse, till resumed in 1837. The Tennessee Synod violently condemned the new body as hierarchical, and because its constitution did not so much as mention the Bible and the Augsburg Confession. The Ohio Synod, which, in 1819, after a discussion of the _Planentwurf_, had approved of the formation of a General Synod, now stood aloof, because a number of her ministers denounced its Constitution, not for confessional reasons, but because of its alleged hierarchical features. (Graebner, _Geschichte_ 1, 701.) In 1823 the Pennsylvania Synod declared her withdrawal on account of the union planned with the Reformed, and because some of her congregations, fearing infringements of their liberties, protested against the connection. It was due chiefly to the exertions of S. S. Schmucker, then but twenty-five years of age, that the second regular convention, 1823, in Frederick, was held, the newly organized West Pennsylvania Synod forming the third body required by the constitution.