"Oh, Mr. Sterling," said Dorothy with some impatience, "I can't understand such a remark. What do you mean by the word important? If Christ was immersed and commanded it of his followers; if the early Christians were all immersed, and immersion, as Paul indicates, was selected as an outward picture of the spiritual baptism that takes place in conversion, then how can you say it is not important?" "The fact is, Miss Dorothy, I have never made an exhaustive study of the matter of baptism. I never thought Christ laid any stress upon form, but rather upon the condition of the heart." "If it is simply a matter of the heart, why baptize at all? Maybe the whole matter is unimportant," said Dorothy. "Would your church like to give up baptism altogether?" "By no means." "Would your church accept any kind of baptism except sprinkling or pouring?" "No, I am sure it would not." The matter had reached a puzzling stage for Sterling. The question stared him in the face as to whether he had been Scripturally baptized. In infancy he had been sprinkled, but he had to confess to himself that the Bible teaching seemed to lean towards immersion. In fact, in the recent investigation and discussions he had hardly been able to see anything else but immersion. He did not return to his office that afternoon, but spent the time at his home searching through the Bible. The discussions at the Page's had filled his mind with passages about immersion, but upon later reflection he felt sure that the trend of Scripture pointed strongly to sprinkling and pouring, and with this thought in mind he turned to his Bible study. CHAPTER VI. ONE POINT GAINED. In their discussion on the next morning Dorothy remarked: "Mr. Sterling, let me tell you what I did. I looked up the passages that had the word 'baptize' in them and in each case I put the word 'sprinkle' in the place of the word 'baptize' and it surely made curious reading." "Good for you, daughter," said Mr. Page. "That was an ingenious procedure. Let us have the passages to see how they sound. It ought to be a perfectly fair method, because if baptize means to sprinkle then you ought to be able everywhere to put the word 'sprinkle' for the word 'baptize' and it would read all right. That's a fine idea, and now for the passages." Dorothy began with the account of Christ's baptism: "'Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John to be sprinkled of him'." "That sounds all right," said Sterling. "Here is the next one," said Dorothy: "'I have a sprinkling to be sprinkled with and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!' Just imagine Christ speaking of his sufferings in that way, Mr. Sterling. His sufferings were not a sprinkling. But here is another: 'And John also was sprinkling at Aenon near Salem because there was much water there.' "Again: 'John truly sprinkled with water, but ye shall be sprinkled with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.'"