t do you mean, Mr.
Sterling, exactly by their close communion?"

"I mean that they think they are better than anybody else, and that
nobody but Baptists have any right to partake of the Lord's Supper. They
are an ignorant, bigoted set and think that nobody can be saved who is
not put under the water."

"Well, the Disciples believe that, don't they, Mr. Garland?"

"Ah, but not in the way the Baptists believe it," spoke up Sterling.
"Miss Dorothy, there is a little Baptist mission here in the eastern
part of town. I will take you over there that you may take a look at
their base of operations, and I think a sight of it will set at rest any
further inquiries as to the Baptists."

The members of the little Baptist mission to which Sterling referred
worshiped in a plain, unsightly frame chapel. The city had raised the
street that ran in front of the building so that the lot on which the
chapel stood was left several feet below the level of the pavement and
could be reached only by a rough board stairway from the street to the
door of the building. Here a Baptist minister had been ministering to a
small and struggling flock in connection with two other churches out in
the county. The members were poor and many of them unlearned, and the
pastor with such a poor building equipment found his task a difficult
one.

"Daughter, I think you want to keep away from that Baptist crowd," said
Mr. Page. "They are very small fry and I would hate to see you tied up
with such folks."

"I have no intention of joining them, and yet I am much bewildered over
this matter of church membership. What must I do? I cannot unite with
any of these denominations that I have heard about without doing wrong
to my conscience."

"Miss Dorothy, you do not have to endorse all the beliefs that every
member of your church holds," said Sterling. "Where will you find such a
church? Each person must interpret the Bible for himself and be
accountable to God only. If a church is composed of Christian people,
why is not that the essential thing, and why can you not join with them?
You will have to live in Heaven with them, and why can you not live with
them here?"

"I am living with them here. I mingle freely with them, but when
Christians divide themselves up and group themselves according to their
interpretations of Bible teaching, then I must join myself with those
who interpret the Bible as I do."

"But suppose you cannot find any church group or den