water
baptism."

"Paul here speaks of a spiritual baptism."

"Why do you say that?" asked Dorothy.

The fire of questions seemed to stun Sterling somewhat. He had never had
these passages pressed upon him in this fashion, but all his life he had
had an open track for his Presbyterian tenets. He continued his
explanation of the passage:

"Paul is here writing to people about their conversion and he is trying
to show them that if they have been truly converted they must forsake
sin. He says here in the verse: 'We who died to sin, how shall we
longer live therein?' You see he speaks of dying to sin, and that brings
him to the idea of a burial. He wants to show them that when they were
converted--if they were really converted--that their conversion was a
baptism of the Spirit; that just as Christ died, was buried and rose to
a new life, so the converted soul through the work (or the baptism) of
the Spirit on him died to his old life and rose to a new life, and
therefore such an one must not sin. The passage therefore reads:
'Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we
also must walk in newness of life.'"

"Well, now, let me see," said the father. "You say the writer compares
the conversion of a soul to a baptism of the Spirit?"

"Yes, he speaks of it as a spiritual experience; not a mere outward
reformation, but an inward spiritual experience, and when he says buried
with him by baptism he means a baptism of the Spirit."

"Why does he call it a baptism?" asked Dorothy.

"That's the point exactly," said the father. "Sterling says the writer
is not talking about a water baptism. Well, I don't see why it may not
be a water baptism. It says nothing about a spiritual baptism. But
anyhow let it be a spiritual baptism; the important point in this
argument is that he calls it a baptism, and note carefully he calls the
baptism a burial. No matter whether it is a water or a spiritual baptism
that he is talking about, he shows what his idea of a baptism was. It
was like a person being buried and being raised again."

"I think, Mr. Sterling," said Dorothy, "that the verse shows that the
important thing about baptism is the way it is performed; that it is not
water that makes the baptism; that it may be water, or it may be the
Spirit, or possibly it may be something else; but that the important
thing is the way it is performed. In