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 Geneva and Boston. During the period since 1885 the influence of Emerson has become predominant, modified by the more scientific preaching of Minot J. Savage, who has found his guides in Darwin and Spencer.

Beyond its own borders the body has obtained recognition through the public work of such men as Henry Whitney Bellows and Edward Everett Hale, the remarkable influence of James Freeman Clarke and the popular power of Robert Collyer. The number of Unitarian churches in the United States in 1909 was 461, with 541 ministers. The church membership, really nominal, may be estimated at 100,000. The periodicals are The Christian Register, weekly, Boston; Unity, weekly, Chicago; The Unitarian, monthly, New York; Old and New, monthly, Des Moines; Pacific Unitarian, San Francisco.

See Joseph Henry Allen, Our Liberal Movement in Theology (Boston, 1882), and Sequel to our Liberal Movement (Boston, 1897); John White Chadwick, Old and New Unitarian Belief (Boston, 1894), and specially William Ellery Channing (1903); Unitarianism: its Origin and History, a course of Sixteen Lectures (Boston, 1895); George Willis Cooke, Unitarianism in America: a History of its Origin and Development (Boston, 1902); and Unitarian Year Book (Boston).

 UNITED BRETHREN IN CHRIST, an American religious sect which originated in the last part of the 18th century under the leadership of Philip William Otterbein (1726–1813), pastor of the Second Reformed Church in Baltimore, and Martin Boehm (1725–1812), a Pennsylvanian Mennonite of Swiss descent. Otterbein and Boehm licensed some of their followers to preach and did a great work, especially through class-meetings of a Wesleyan type; in 1789 they held a formal conference at Baltimore, and in 1800, at a conference near Frederick City, Maryland, the Church was organized under its present name, and Otterbein and Boehm were chosen its first bishops or superintendents. The ecclesiastical polity of the Church is Wesleyan and its theology is Arminian: there is no hard-and-fast rule about baptism. Bishops are elected for four years. The first delegated general conference met at Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, in 1815, and adopted a confession of faith, rules of order and a book of discipline, which were revised in 1885–1889, when women were first admitted to ordination, and when the Conservatives, protesting against the new constitution, withdrew and formed the body now commonly known as the United Brethren in Christ “of the Old Constitution.”

The Liberal branch had 3732 organizations in 1906 with a total membership of 274,649. This body carries on missions in West Africa (since 1855), japan, China, the Philippines and Porto Rico. It has a publishing house (1834) and Bonebrake Theological Seminary (1871) at Dayton, Ohio; and supports Otterbein University (1847) at Westerville, O.; Westfield College (1865) at Westfield, Illinois; Leander Clark College (1857) at Toledo, Iowa; York College (1890) at York, Nebraska; Philomath College (1867) at Philomath, Oregon; Lebanon Valley College (1867) at Annville, Pa.; Campbell College (1864) at Holton, Kansas, and Central University (1907) at Indianapolis, Indiana.

The “Old Constitution” body had 572 organizations in 1906 with a total membership of 21,401. It has a publishing house at Huntington, Indiana.

See D. Berger, History of the Church of the United Brethren (1897), and his sketch (1894) in vol xii. of the “American Church History Series”; E. L. Shuey, Handbook of the United Brethren in Christ (1893); W. J. Shuey, Year-Book of the United Brethren in Christ (from 1867); and A. W. Drury, Life of Philip William Otterbein (1884).

 UNITED FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, a religious organization, representing the union made in 1900 between the Free Church of Scotland (except a dissentient section who separated off and retained the name of Free Church) and the United Presbyterian Church. (See and .)

The first moderator was (q.v.). The Free Church brought into the union 1077 congregations, the United Presbyterians 599; the revenue of the former amounted to £706,546, of the latter to £361,745 The missionaries of both churches

joined the union, and the United Church was then equipped with missions in various parts of India, in Manchuria., in Africa. (Lovedale, Livingstonia, &c.), in Melanesia and in the West Indies. The formula which was adopted allowed for development of doctrine, the candidate stating that he believes “in the doctrine of this Church, set forth in the Confession of Faith,” the Church being thus set above the confession. The Church has three divinity halls, at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, served by seventeen professors and five lecturers.

The minority of the Free Church who had refused to join the union lost no time in testing the legality of the act of the majority in entering it. Their summons, dated the 14th of December 1900, claimed that in uniting with the United Presbyterian Church, which did not hold the principles of the Free Church, the majority had forfeited the right to the property of the Free Church, which must be judged to belong to the minority who remained faithful to the principles of the Free Church and were that Church. In the Scottish courts the case was decided in favour of the union by Lord Low on the 9th of August 1901, and by the second division of the Court of Session on the 4th of July 1902, it being held in both trials that the old Free Church had a right within limits to change its views and to do by its Assembly what had been done. The proceedings before the House of Lords on appeal were protracted by the death of one of the judges, which involved the necessity of a second hearing, and it was not till the 1st of August 1904 that the verdict was pronounced. By a majority of five to two the House of Lords reversed the decision of the Court of Session, allowed the appeal, and found the minority entitled to the funds and property of the Free Church. It was held that the majority of an independent church, adopting new standards of doctrine or ceasing to hold essential or fundamental doctrines of the church, forfeit the right to the property, which remains with the minority holding the church’s original doctrine: also that the establishment principle was a fundamental doctrine of the Free Church, and that by entering a union on terms leaving that doctrine an open question, the majority had violated the conditions on which the property of the Free Church was held. On the plea that by the Declaratory Act of 1892 the Free Church had abandoned its doctrinal position, argument was heard, but the House of Lords did not decide.

Few legal decisions have occasioned so great consternation or such serious practical difficulties. At first sight it deprived the Free Church section of the United Church of all its material goods—churches, manses, colleges and missions, even of the provision for the old age of the clergy. It appeared to divert large amounts of church property from the uses for which it had been provided, and to hand it over to a body with which the United Church was deeply out of sympathy and which could have little prospect of making effective use of it. A conference held in September between representatives of the United Free and of the (now distinct) Free Church, in order to come to some working arrangement in view of the decision, found that no basis for such an agreement could be arrived at. Nothing remained but to invoke the intervention of parliament to put an end to an impossible situation. A convocation of ministers and elders of the United Free Church, held on the 15th of December, decided that the union should go on, and resolved to “take every lawful means of appealing to the nation and to parliament to rescue the funds and buildings of the Church for the sacred purposes for which they had been provided.” The Free Church could not refuse to consent to this, and in December a commission was appointed, consisting of Lord Elgin, Lord Kinnear and Sir Ralph Anstruther, to inquire into matters connected with the two churches, while the question of interim possession was referred to Sir John Cheyne, as commissioner, for inquiry and action. The commission sat in public, and after hearing evidence on both sides, issued their report in April 1905. They reported that the state of feeling on one side and on the other had made their work difficult. They had concluded however that the Free Church