If we had only been so fortunate as to have had such an explicit statement as this in our four gospels, or in one of them, what a world of contention would have been avoided, what a world of Christian persecution of Christians would have been avoided, and what unity and harmony there would have been upon a great Christian ordinance upon which Christians are now unhappily divided. Aside from this statement and the revelations that God has given in these days, there is nothing that definitely instructs the world on the subject of how baptism shall be administered. Jesus came to the disciples after his resurrection and said to them, "Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Of course, for some two or three hundred years we have the custom of the Saints as an interpretation of the manner of baptism, and that is, they were immersed; but since Jesus had not specified the manner in which the ordinance was to be administered, men began to wonder after awhile if baptism could not be performed in some other way than immersion, and so they adopted the method of sprinkling, or of pouring the water on the person. And from that departure from the true gospel grew up the varied methods of baptism as we have them today. The Greeks still immerse, and they immerse three times--once in the name of the Father, once in the name of the Son, and once in the name of the Holy Spirit. We have an American sect who hit upon what I suppose they consider a happy thought, and that is, that baptism must not only be thrice performed, but that the candidate must be pushed face downward into the water; for, say they, would you have people going into the kingdom backwards? Of the Protestant sects, some sprinkle and some pour water on the candidate; and one prominent minister, the late Henry Ward Beecher, reduced the ordinance to the mere act of moistening the hand and placing it upon the brow of the candidate, and called that baptism! The great Catholic Church, backed by its "tradition" and its scholarship, insists that sprinkling is a proper method of baptism. And so the world is divided on this great ordinance, which all confess is the visible sign of entrance into the fold of Christ--part of our birth into the kingdom of God. What parable, what dozen parables, could be so precious in their importance to the Christian world as this explicit statement of how the ordinance of baptism shall be administered, if they would but accept it!