eing buried by baptism. We found that baptism
was a picture of something that had already taken place in the person's
heart and life--that he had been buried to his old life and risen to a
new life. It is not baptism, therefore, that helps to make the change in
a person, but it simply pictures the change that has already taken
place."

"What is the use of a person being baptized?" asked Mr. Garland, "if he
can be saved without being baptized?"

"Mr. Garland, I trust that I have already been saved by believing in
Christ. I want to be baptized, however, not to help me to be saved, for
if I am not saved now I certainly do not think my going down into the
water will make me any more saved. I simply want to be baptized because
Christ was baptized and because he commands all who believe in him to be
baptized, and because all those who claimed to believe in him in the
days of the apostles were baptized. I reckon I will find from the Bible
that there are a great many other things besides baptism that I must do,
but that does not mean that the doing of all these things is a part of
my conversion or salvation."

"I guess you take up these duties because you are already a Christian
and already saved. If you were not already a Christian I guess you would
not feel like doing them," said the father.

"I do not exactly agree to that," remarked Mr. Garland, "and yet I do
not think we are very far apart. There are some people of our
denomination who go to an extreme and declare that the water does wash
away sins, and they seem to put more stress on the baptism than on the
believing. My doctrine is that every believer must be baptized, and that
unless he does become baptized he has no right to consider himself
saved."

"But that is different," said Dorothy. "Of course, if a person refuses
to be baptized, although he believes that Christ commands it, why, such
a person has no right to claim to be converted. I can't imagine a
converted person flatly refusing to do what he believes Christ commands.
I cannot understand, Mr. Garland, just what your doctrine about baptism
is."

"We have another doctrine which I am sure you will like," said Mr.
Garland.

"What is that?" asked Dorothy, who was eager to learn everything
possible about the denomination.

"We believe in what is called open communion rather than in what is
called close communion."

"I don't understand what you mean."

"I mean this. The Lord gave two ordinances to the c