hey surely seem to believe
exactly what the Bible teaches, and their history is a noble and
inspiring one."

"What did you find out about these Baptists? Where did they come from?"

"That is the interesting part. Do you know they are next to the largest
denomination in the world except the Catholics?"

"What is that, daughter? You evidently got into some fairy tales in the
library. Why, the Methodists are as large as all the other denominations
put together, and as for the Baptists, they are but a drop in the
bucket. Look at them in this town, and I guess the bunch here is a
pretty good sample of them everywhere."

"Oh, father, either those books in the library are wrong or else you and
lots of other folks are terribly mistaken. The Baptists and the
Methodists are the two largest denominations in the world, except the
Catholics."

The father wore an incredulous and bewildered look.

"There may possibly be a lot of Baptists scattered over the earth,"
admitted Sterling, "but you must have quality as well as quantity, and
quality is what the Baptists have not."

"You are prodigiously mistaken," replied Dorothy in a vehement manner.
"I could hardly believe it myself as I read it; but it is a fact that
the Baptists hold a high place in history. One writer says that the
Baptists are in the front ranks in the matter of education. Two writers
say that the great Foreign Mission movement of the present and the past
century was started by the Baptists of England. Another book says they
have led in founding and perfecting Sunday schools."

"England?" said the father. "I didn't know that any Baptists had ever
found their way across the seas to England."

"Why, father, England owes much of her present greatness to the
Baptists. In the Puritan movement that saved England from Catholicism
and kept her Protestant the Baptists are said to have played a large
part."

"When did they come into existence?"

"They claim that they have always been in existence since the days of
the apostles."

"Well, well, that is a clincher sure."

"Father, it does look as if the truths which the Baptists hold are the
truths which Christ taught and which the first Christians practiced; and
if so, then the first churches were in that sense Baptist churches."

"All of the other churches knocked out at the first blow," said the
father with a laugh, "and Christianity starting off with only Baptist
churches."

"This history which I read also sa