"Yes, but you notice that just a little while afterwards that very night the jailer was baptized. You see the baptism had to come. In fact, baptism always came immediately after believing. It was a necessary part, and the work was not complete until the baptism had taken place." "But does that prove that the baptism was a part of the man's conversion or salvation?" asked Sterling. "Suppose the person had fallen dead just after he had believed and before any baptism was performed on him, would he not have been saved? If so, I think it proves that he was saved simply by believing, and that baptism is simply a matter of obedience." "By the way, Mr. Sterling," said Dorothy, "you remember that passage in Romans where it speaks of being buried by baptism. We found that baptism was a picture of something that had already taken place in the person's heart and life--that he had been buried to his old life and risen to a new life. It is not baptism, therefore, that helps to make the change in a person, but it simply pictures the change that has already taken place." "What is the use of a person being baptized?" asked Mr. Garland, "if he can be saved without being baptized?" "Mr. Garland, I trust that I have already been saved by believing in Christ. I want to be baptized, however, not to help me to be saved, for if I am not saved now I certainly do not think my going down into the water will make me any more saved. I simply want to be baptized because Christ was baptized and because he commands all who believe in him to be baptized, and because all those who claimed to believe in him in the days of the apostles were baptized. I reckon I will find from the Bible that there are a great many other things besides baptism that I must do, but that does not mean that the doing of all these things is a part of my conversion or salvation." "I guess you take up these duties because you are already a Christian and already saved. If you were not already a Christian I guess you would not feel like doing them," said the father. "I do not exactly agree to that," remarked Mr. Garland, "and yet I do not think we are very far apart. There are some people of our denomination who go to an extreme and declare that the water does wash away sins, and they seem to put more stress on the baptism than on the believing. My doctrine is that every believer must be baptized, and that unless he does become baptized he has no right to consider himself saved." "But that is different," said Dorothy. "Of course, if a person refuses to be baptized, although he believes that Christ commands it, why, such a person has no right to claim to be converted. I can't imagine a converted person flatly refusing to do what he believes Christ commands. I cannot understand, Mr. Garland, just what your doctrine about baptism is." "We have another doctrine which I am sure you will like," said Mr. Garland.