The sacrament of baptism would seem to be one which comes naturally to the Eastern peoples: it has been in use for ages among the Hindus of India, and it was apparently in general vogue in Palestine in Christ's time. It would appear [p.71] to have been not so familiar to the Western world, for the evangelist Mark has to explain to his Gentile reader how it was the custom of the Pharisees to baptize pots and vessels, and even beds. Apparently, even in that day the symbol of purification had come to have a magical significance. The washing or purification as a symbol of initiation is common to many religions, and it was a natural pictorial language for the prophet John the Baptist to employ, to express the change of life that was to follow the repentance which he preached. Christ's disciples had, many of them, first been followers of John, and would readily continue to use this sign in their ministry. But though Baptism was to the early Church the natural expression of entrance into the new life of Christianity (as we see in the case of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch), yet it is hard to imagine that if it were held to possess in itself the importance which in later time was attached to it, the Apostle Paul would actually rejoice in the fact that he had hardly baptized any converts at all himself. [16] <#_edn16> Already, however, the ceremony had a meaning deeper than the simple act of purification severing the old life from the new, which was probably that of the first baptisms of the disciples during the lifetime of Christ. We gather from Paul's words that in baptism the believer made real to himself, and to those about him, his [p.72] going down with Christ into the waters of death and his rising again with him into a new life, by the power of the resurrection. Some inherent virtue was soon thought to attach to the outward act itself, or else one can scarcely explain the origin of that strange custom of baptism for the dead, alluded to in the same epistle. [17] <#_edn17>