ertainly, my daughter. Christ himself must be pained when he sees
his people so anxious about external forms rather than about matters of
heart, of life."

"That greatly bewilders me, Doctor. It has been intimated several times
that these matters about immersion and infant baptism and church
government are minor matters, that there are other doctrines that are of
greater moment; but let me ask, are we to disregard and treat these as
we please? Must we not try to obey these commands as they were
originally commanded and practiced? Besides, Doctor, it seems to me that
this beautiful ordinance with its impressive teachings was given great
prominence by Christ. His last great command to the apostles had baptism
in it, and when people were converted under the preaching of the
apostles the first thing they always did was to be baptized, as if
baptism was one of the things that had to be done and done at once.
Christ was himself baptized and he commands us to be. I don't see how
you could wish it to be plainer than that. I cannot understand how a
person can say that one command of Christ is not as important to be
obeyed as another. When you talk that way about a command, does it not
sound as if it did not make much difference whether we obeyed the
command at all?"

"Well, my daughter," said the Doctor, "I glory in your zeal and courage
and I bid you follow your convictions; but you must remember one thing,
and that is that you will probably never find a church all of whose
members believe exactly alike. Suppose you find some in the Baptist
church that believe something that you do not believe. How can you
conscientiously stay in with them?"

"I do not think it is a question as to what every individual member
believes, but what are the doctrines by which that particular
denomination is known? There are certain truths which the Baptists
believe, and when you say you are a Baptist people know just what you
believe. As I understand it, there are certain truths which all
Christians believe, and on those points we are all one; and although we
may not be in the same organization, yet I think we are like soldiers,
all fighting in the army of our King."

"Yes, my daughter," said the Doctor, "we all belong to what is called
the church universal."

"But," continued Dorothy, "there are other matters about which there are
differences, and this makes the army break up into different regiments;
but we all still have the same Commander.