Although the New York convention voted that $100,000 ought to be raised in 1866, because the needs of the denomination demanded it, yet only $60,000 were secured. The reaction that followed the close of the war had set in, the financial prosperity of the country had begun to lessen, and the enthusiasm that had made the first great effort of the denomination so eminently successful did not continue. A chief cause for the waning interest in the denomination itself was the agitation, in regard to the theological position of the Unitarian body that began almost immediately after the New York convention. The older Unitarians held to the Bible and the teachings of Jesus as the great sources of spiritual truth as strongly as did the orthodox, and they differed from them only as to the purport of the message conveyed. This may be seen in a creed offered to the New York convention, by a prominent layman,[4] almost immediately after it was opened on the first morning. In this proposed creed it was asserted that Unitarians believe "in one Lord, Jesus Christ; the Son of God and his specially appointed messenger, and representative to our race; gifted with supernatural power, approved of God by miracles and signs and wonders which God did by him, and thus by divine authority commanding the devout and reverential faith of all who claim the Christian name." Although this creed was not adopted by the convention, it expressed the belief of a majority of Unitarians. To the same purport was the word spoken by Dr. Bellows, when he said: "Unitarians of the school to which I belong accept Jesus Christ with all their hearts as the Sent of God, the divinely inspired Son of the Father, who by his miraculously proven office and his sinless life and character was fitted to be, and was made revealer of the universal and permanent religion of the human race."[5] These quotations indicate that the more conservative Unitarians had not changed their position since 1853, when they made official statement of their acceptance of Christianity as authenticated by miracles and the supernatural. In fact, they held essentially to the attitude taken when they left the older Congregational body.