It is not surprising that the orthodox denominations regarded the writer of these statements as a dangerous man and the “Christians” as rank heretics. The orthodox, and especially the Presbyterians, would have been sensitive about such statements at any time; but just at this time they were in a more than usually suspicious mood, for the first year of the _Christian Messenger_ (1826) was the very year in which the Unitarian, Dr. Horace Holley, had been dismissed from the presidency of Transylvania University, and Kentucky was still ringing with the conflict between the orthodox and the “liberals.” So it was inevitable that the charge of “Unitarianism” should be hurled at Stone and his party. In the eyes of his most bitter critics, Stone was also a “Crypto-Arian” and a “Crypto-Socinian.” Controversial pamphlets flew back and forth. As one reads them now, Stone seems to hold his own in theological scholarship and English style, and they cast no cloud upon his devotion to Christ or upon his zeal for the union of Christ’s followers in one family of faith and the salvation of sinners by the power of the gospel. Stone was anti-Calvinist, anti-Trinitarian, anticreed, but he was _not_ a Unitarian. Likenesses and Differences Studying Campbell’s _Christian Baptist_ and _Millennial Harbinger_ and Stone’s _Christian Messenger_ for the period shortly before the union of the two movements, one finds the evidence of some important likenesses and of certain differences, which were soon adjusted without much trouble. The likenesses were these: 1. Both groups consciously and explicitly aimed to promote the union of Christians. 2. Both rejected creeds and theologies as tests of fellowship, insisted on liberty of opinion on all matters of doctrine that were not considered as unmistakably revealed, and held that simple faith in Christ was sufficient. 3. They agreed that Christ died for all and that all could believe on him and be saved. 4. They agreed that saving faith, at least in its minimum essentials, was nothing else than an act of the mind in accepting rational evidence of the truth, and that even fallen and sinful man was capable of that act without special assistance from the Holy Spirit. This idea was prominent in Campbell’s thought, and it was fundamental in Scott’s method, which gave the Reformers their evangelistic drive. Stone had expressed the same idea earlier but he did not make much use of it, and the evangelism of the Christians does not seem to have been greatly affected by it. 5. The practice of believers’ baptism by immersion and the conception of baptism for the remission of sins were common to both, subject to some limitations to be mentioned presently.