Thus, starting with the “divers baptisms” of the epistle to the Hebrews, we have identified them with the seal of the Sinai covenant and the water of separation. We have traced the ordinance in the historical books, the Psalms and the prophets; have found it, in the time of the son of Sirach, familiarly known as baptism, and have recognized it in the New Testament itself, referred to by the same name, by that Hebrew of the Hebrews, the apostle Paul. We may add that the same apostle again refers to imitations of this ordinance in his dissuasive against “doctrines of baptisms.” (Heb. vi, 2.) Here, he alludes to those Pharisaic rites which under the same name were condemned by the Lord Jesus, who reproved them as “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men,” concerning their baptizings. (Mark, vii, 7, 8.) SECTION XL.—_Judith’s Baptisms._ Returning to the Apocrypha, the next example of baptism occurs in the book of Judith. The book dates from the period of the Maccabean kings of Judah, between one and two hundred years before Christ; is a historical fiction, and is designed to present, in the person of Judith, an ideal type of female piety, courage, and virtue, as conceived by the Jews of that age. According to the story, “Nabuchodonosor, the king of Nineveh,” being incensed against the Jews, had doomed them to destruction. He therefore sent Holofernes, with a large army to execute his vengeance. This army being re-enforced by the Ammonites and the sons of Esau, the mighty host, enters on the siege of Bethulia, a frontier city of Judah. Surrounding the city and filling the whole country, they seize “the water and the fountain of waters,” upon which Bethulia depended for its supply. Soon, “all the vessels of water failed all the inhabitants of Bethulia, and the cisterns were emptied, so that they had not water, to drink their fill, one day; for they gave them drink by measure.”—Judith vii, 12-21.