other words, it must be like a
burial and a rising again. It looks to me as if Paul is showing what a
wonderful experience a person's conversion is."

"Exactly," said the father, "and I suppose the writer could not express
that spiritual change in conversion better than to call it a baptism by
the Spirit, and he showed mighty clearly his notion about baptism; to
him it was a burial and a rising again.'

"I think there is something more wonderful still about that passage,"
said Dorothy. "I think you can see two baptisms in the verse, the water
baptism and the Spirit baptism. Paul draws a picture of the conversion
of a soul. It is a change worked in the soul by the Spirit, and as the
Spirit works on the soul the soul dies to his old life and rises to a
new life. But that is just like what takes place when the person is
baptized in water. He is buried out of sight in the water and then rises
again, and the water baptism is an exact picture of the spiritual
baptism. Surely Paul must have had the two baptisms in mind when he
wrote this."

"It looks mightily that way," said Mr. Page.

"Another thing," said Dorothy, all aglow with her interpretation of the
passage, "doesn't this show why Christ commanded baptism? You see, he
knew that every true Christian must pass through this spiritual
experience at conversion--the baptism of the Spirit--and he decided to
give his people an outward ceremony that would be a sign, or picture, of
the inward spiritual change that they must have, and so he commanded
immersion, as if he would say: 'Here is a picture of what I command of
everyone--this burial in the water and rising again; it is the picture
of that spiritual change that must occur in everyone that would be my
follower'. He commands two things, a spiritual burial and rising and a
material burial and rising; two baptisms, one of the Spirit to come
first and a baptism of the water to come second as a sign of the first
baptism."

"If that is true, Friend Sterling," said the father, "then it would seem
a pretty serious thing to change the form of the baptism. If the founder
of Christianity commanded these two baptisms, one a picture of the
other, then it looks to me mighty risky to tamper with either of them.
Now, if you put sprinkling in the place of immersion you destroy the
whole meaning in the work of conversion. The two don't go together at
all. You don't have a burial by sprinkling a few drops of dirt on a
person. It is not