ing James' Version of the Bible it might have saved you
all this argument."

"You must remember, Mr. Sterling," said Dorothy, "that I did not bring
this passage up to prove immersion, but you brought it up to prove
pouring. You spoke very positively about it, but I think you found that
if it represented the coming down of water it was like a cloudburst more
than anything else."

Sterling was compelled to admit to himself that the Pentecostal baptism
was more a picture of immersion than of pouring. He turned the
conversation now into another line.

"Even granting," he said, "that immersion is the baptism practiced in
New Testament times, it has never seemed to me to be such a prodigiously
important matter."

"Oh, Mr. Sterling," said Dorothy with some impatience, "I can't
understand such a remark. What do you mean by the word important? If
Christ was immersed and commanded it of his followers; if the early
Christians were all immersed, and immersion, as Paul indicates, was
selected as an outward picture of the spiritual baptism that takes place
in conversion, then how can you say it is not important?"

"The fact is, Miss Dorothy, I have never made an exhaustive study of the
matter of baptism. I never thought Christ laid any stress upon form, but
rather upon the condition of the heart."

"If it is simply a matter of the heart, why baptize at all? Maybe the
whole matter is unimportant," said Dorothy. "Would your church like to
give up baptism altogether?"

"By no means."

"Would your church accept any kind of baptism except sprinkling or
pouring?"

"No, I am sure it would not."

The matter had reached a puzzling stage for Sterling. The question
stared him in the face as to whether he had been Scripturally baptized.
In infancy he had been sprinkled, but he had to confess to himself that
the Bible teaching seemed to lean towards immersion. In fact, in the
recent investigation and discussions he had hardly been able to see
anything else but immersion.

He did not return to his office that afternoon, but spent the time at
his home searching through the Bible. The discussions at the Page's had
filled his mind with passages about immersion, but upon later reflection
he felt sure that the trend of Scripture pointed strongly to sprinkling
and pouring, and with this thought in mind he turned to his Bible
study.

CHAPTER VI.

ONE POINT GAINED.

In their discussion on the next morning Dorothy remarked: "Mr.