Illustrations from the Scriptures might be multiplied, showing this origin of the form of baptism. Isaiah says of the blessings to be bestowed on Israel in the latter days, that the times of desolation shall continue “until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.”—Isa. xxxii, 15. In another place he cries, “Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the Lord have created it.”—Isa. xlv, 8. Hosea says of him: “His going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.”—Hosea vi, 3. And again, “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.”—Ib. x, 12. The whole conception thus unfolded is assailed and repudiated by writers who assume that physical phenomena can not be used to set forth spiritual realities. Dr. Carson insists that “Baptism can not be either pouring or dipping, for the sake of representing the manner of the conveyance of the Holy Spirit, for there is no such likeness. Pouring of the Spirit is a phrase which is itself a figure, and not a reality to be represented by a figure.”[12] The learned doctor has confounded himself with his own subtlety. On the day of Pentecost, there was a blessed “reality” of some kind experienced by the apostles and converts. There is no absurdity, such as he imagines, in the supposition that the pouring or sprinkling of water may be an appropriate physical representation and symbol of that spiritual reality, and that words descriptive of that symbol may be appropriate for the verbal designation of the thing signified. If the assertion of Dr. Carson is to be accepted, it is fatal not to baptism only but to the other sacrament also. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.”—John vi, 53. Shall we be told that this language of our Savior “is itself a figure, and not a reality to be represented by a figure.” Then, we may not eat the bread and drink the wine, to represent this very thing, the feeding of the soul, by faith, on Christ. To do so is absurd if Dr. Carson’s position is sound. It is true that a figure of speech _of_ a figure of speech, would be nonsense. But it is equally true that it is the beauty of a metaphor,—the figure in question,—to be susceptible of physical representation. Nor is there any absurdity in the supposition that a spiritual act may be represented by two co-ordinate figures,—the one a figure of physical action, and the other a figure of speech, descriptive of that action. Footnote 12: Carson on Baptism, p. 167.