Men's minds, therefore, should be ready to receive something suggestive of birth and resurrection, in the ceremony authorized by the Son of God as the means of admission into his Kingdom. This suggestion is fully realized in the true form of the baptismal ordinance, namely, immersion--going down into the water and coming up out of the water, in the similitude of burial and resurrection, of birth into a higher life. The Proper Form.--That immersion was the form of the ordinance introduced by John the Baptist, submitted to by the Savior, and perpetuated by his Apostles, is a plain and reasonable inference from the teachings of the New Testament. Jesus, when about to be baptized, must have gone down into the water; for after baptism, he "went up straightway out of the water." [1] When Philip baptized the Eunuch, "they went down both into the water." [2] John baptized "in Aenon, near to Salim, because there was much water there" [3]--another proof presumptive of immersion, the only mode requiring "much water" for its performance. If this had not been the proper form, Paul would not have compared baptism to burial and resurrection; [4] nor would he have recognized as baptism the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea. [5] Note also his words to the Corinthians relative to vicarious baptism and in support of resurrection, a doctrine that some of them denied: "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?" [6] In other words, why use the symbol of the resurrection, if there be no resurrection--if the symbol does not symbolize? Additional Evidence.--In addition to what the Bible tells, we have the statements of archaeologists and historians, to the effect that baptism, in the first ages of Christianity, was a dipping or submersion in water. This, in fact, as philologists testify, is the meaning of the Greek word from which the English word "baptism" is derived. Ancient baptisteries and other monumental remains in Asia, Africa and Europe, show that immersion was the act of baptism. The Christian churches of the Orient--Greek, Russian, Armenian, Nestorian, Coptic and others, have always practiced immersion and allow nothing else for baptism. The Western churches preserved this form for thirteen centuries, and then gradually introduced pouring or sprinkling--ceremonies in no way symbolical of birth and resurrection, and therefore not in harmony with the divine purpose for which baptism was instituted. Clinic Baptism.--Baptisms by pouring or sprinkling were exceptional in the early ages of the Christian Church. They were called clinic baptisms, because administered as a rule to the sick, who could not be taken from their beds to be immersed; but they were rare, and were regarded only as quasi-baptisms. [7]