andered away by themselves, and left us to
enjoy the opportunity for prayer, which we supposed they also sought in
withdrawing from us.

As they returned, the father had the little boy on his two hands, and,
approaching me, he looked up to the cascade, and said, "'See, here is
water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?'"

I was at no loss to understand the quotation and the request.

"Would you like to have the little one baptized here?" said I.

"We should," they both exclaimed. "We are going into a destitute place
at the West, and there is no church, you tell us, within several miles
of where we expect to live. It is very uncertain about our being able to
procure baptism for the child there; and where could we enjoy the
ordinance more, or make it more impressive upon our hearts, than here,
so long as we have no house of God, which we remember, however, from
'the hill Mizar'?"

I told them that the experience of Philip and the eunuch, in the desert,
was, just as likely as not, the same as ours. "See, here is water." The
probability of its being a road-side spring, in a rock, or out of the
earth, was greater than of its being a pool in the desert, large enough
to immerse a man in it, leaving out of view the inconveniences of being
bathed along the way. We have both gone "down out of the chariot," said
I--(you would have smiled to see our great, strong, muddied wain)--and
we have done what the literal Greek says they did, "went down _to_ the
water;" and when we start, we shall "come up _from_ the water." But let
us read 'the place of the Scripture' which the eunuch was reading when
Philip joined him.

Susan took from her bag the blue velvet-covered Bible, which you gave
her, unclasped it, and turned to the fifty-second chapter of Isaiah, at
my request, and began to read. O, how soft and sweet was the sound of a
female voice, repeating words of inspiration in that beautiful, solitary
spot! The Scriptures had not been divided into chapters and verses for
the eunuch, as for us, but we noticed that the last verse of the chapter
preceding "the place of the Scripture which he read," not divided from
it in his copy of Isaiah, was, "So shall he sprinkle many nations;"
which, we thought, proved that the eunuch had had the idea of baptism
suggested to him by those words; and quite as conclusively proving it,
as "buried with him in baptism" proves immersion.

However, being agreed on all these points, we made no long discour