Suggestive Symbolism.--The significance of baptism is suggested by the very career of that Divine Being whose descent from heaven to earth, and whose ascent from earth into heaven, is the sum and substance of the Gospel story. His experience from the time he left his celestial throne, to the time he returned thither, was it not a descending below, and a rising above, all things? Did he not lay down his life and take it up again, as the Father had done before him? Is it not just possible that baptism was instituted to symbolize this mighty birth, this mortal burial, with its immortal resurrection? When the Gods sat in council to consider the creation and redemption of this planet, what was their great thought and the theme of their deliberations? Was it not a going down and a coming back--not only on their part, for creative and redemptive purposes, but also on the part of their offspring, for purposes of experience and progression? What wonder, then, if in the gospel plan, whereby the spirits of men and women might accomplish this foreordained descent into, and ascent out of, the world, there should be an ordinance symbolical of the vast vicissitude? Moreover, in the symbolism of the scriptures this world is represented by water. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Here, at the very dawn of creation, are the two principles or elements--spirit and water--with which baptisms are performed--one creative, the other creatable; one representing heaven, the other, earth. Note the reference in Daniel (7) to beasts, representing earthly governments, coming up from the sea. Note the Savior's parable, likening the kingdom of heaven to a net cast into the sea; the sea symbolizing the world, the fishes, the souls drawn out of the world. Note also Revelation (13) where a beast representing anti-Christ, rises out of the sea: and (17) where a woman, the Mother of Harlots, representing a great city reigning over the kings of the earth, is described as "sitting upon many waters"--the waters signifying "peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues."