e or erroneous schemes of doctrine, but as
against distinctly antichristian heresies.

There is instruction to be gotten from studying, in comparison, the
course of these opinions in the established churches of Great Britain
and among the unestablished churches of America. Under the enforced
comprehensiveness or tolerance of a national church, it is easier for
strange doctrines to spread within the pale. Under the American plan of
the organization of Christianity by voluntary mutual association
according to elective affinity, with freedom to receive or exclude, the
flock within the fold may perhaps be kept safer from contamination; as
when the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1792, and again in 1794,
decided that Universalists be not admitted to the sealing ordinances of
the gospel;[228:1] but by this course the excluded opinion is compelled
to intrench itself both for defense and for attack in a sectarian
organization. It is a practically interesting question, the answer to
which is by no means self-evident, whether Universalist opinions would
have been less prevalent to-day in England and Scotland if they had been
excluded from the national churches and erected into a sect with its
partisan pulpits, presses, and propagandists; or whether they would have
more diffused in America if, instead of being dealt with by process of
excommunication or deposition, they had been dealt with simply by
argument. This is one of the many questions which history raises, but
which (happily for him) it does not fall within the function of the
historian to answer.

* * * * *

To this period is to be referred the origin of some of the minor
American sects.

The "United Brethren in Christ" grew into a distinct organization about
the year 1800. It arose incidentally to the Methodist evangelism, in an
effort on the part of Philip William Otterbein, of the German Reformed
Church, and Martin Boehm, of the Mennonites, to provide for the
shepherdless German-speaking people by an adaptation of the Wesleyan
methods. Presently, in the natural progress of language, the English
work outgrew the German. It is now doing an extensive and useful work by
pulpit and press, chiefly in Pennsylvania and the States of that
latitude. The reasons for its continued existence separate from the
Methodist Church, which it closely resembles both in doctrine and in
polity, are more apparent to those within the organization than to
su