Much of the body of this world--the physical frame of a spiritual creation--is water, even parts of it that seem solid. Science so affirms, and who can gainsay it? Walt Whitman, that eccentric poetic genius, speaks of "the slumbering and liquid trees." Thales, the founder of Greek philosophy, started out with the proposition: "All things are water." He ascribed to water the powers of creation, supposing that he had found in it the primal element, or great first cause. He omitted the real creative principle--the Spirit of God, which in the beginning "moved upon the face of the waters," or as Milton says, "dove-like sat brooding on the vast abyss." Thales being a physicist, took no account of the spiritual. Geology asserts that the earth was once submerged in water. The scriptures also declare it, and without reference to the deluge. "Let the dry land appear!"--the very words suggest baptism, birth, creation--the emergence of a primitive planet from the womb of the waters. Water, symbolically if not literally, represents the temporal part of creation, including the body or mortal part of man. Is not baptism, therefore, in its two-fold character and significance, suggestive of the soul's passing out from this watery world, into the spirit world, and thence, by resurrection, into eternal glory? It is only a suggestion, but it seems to emphasize, for me, the reason why the doorway to the Church and Kingdom of God is a double doorway, a dual birth, a baptism of Water and of the Spirit? Priesthood and Church Government. CHAPTER I. Divine Authority. "Priest" Defined.--The English word "Priest" is generally derived from the New Testament term "presbyter" (Elder), which means "to preside." Aristotle's definition of "Priest" is, "presiding over things relating to the gods." Similar to this is Paul's understanding of the term, as expressed in Heb. 5:1: "Every high priest taken from among men is constituted on the behalf of men, with respect to their concerns with God, that he may present both gifts and sacrifices for sins." In Arabic, the word denotes to prophesy, to foretell, as a soothsayer, also to act as a mediator or middle person in any business. In the earliest families of the race of Shem, the offices of priest and prophet were united, so that the word originally meant both. The Hebrew idiom kept one part of the idea, and the Arabic another. The primary meaning of the Hebrew word is regarded to be the rendering of honorable and dignified service, like that of ministers of state to their sovereign. Meaning of "Priesthood."--"Priesthood" is the office or character of a priest. The term also denotes the execution of that office, and signifies a class of priests, or the order of men set apart for sacred offices--priests collectively. So much for human wisdom, and what it has gleaned upon this subject from the literary fields of the past.