"Certainly. Don't you, Doctor?"
"I see you are putting me on the witness stand," he said with a smile. "I answer that I assuredly do believe in such individual liberty; but it seems to me that the Baptists are inconsistent. They demand individual liberty and yet they cry out against us Presbyterians because we interpret the Scriptures in a way different from them. You say, Miss Page, you cannot join the Presbyterians because of their beliefs, but I should not think that that ought to concern you. If you hold that everyone must interpret the Bible for himself, then that is what the Presbyterians are doing. In doing that they carry out the Baptist doctrine of individual accountability to God."
Sterling was delighted. It was just as he had expected. He saw in a flash that if the Baptists were true to their doctrine of religious liberty they could not demand that he change his faith, but must accord him a perfect right to his belief.
"Excuse me, Doctor," said Dorothy, "I do not think you understood me. I do not blame the Presbyterians for drawing their own conclusions about the Bible and believing just what they think the Bible teaches rather than what somebody else thinks it teaches. I grant them this right, but it does not follow that I must therefore join their church. I say let the Presbyterians follow what they consider to be the teachings of the Bible; but let me do the same and let me not feel that I must join their church."
"No, my young friend, I would not say you must join the Presbyterian church; but may I ask why you should find it impossible to join that splendid body of Christian people? If everybody must follow his own convictions of Bible teaching, would you say you cannot fellowship those who do not interpret the Bible as you do?"
"Doctor, I do not say I could not fellowship the Presbyterians, or anybody that may understand his Bible differently from me. I can respect them and believe them to be better Christians than I am. But I don't think I ought to join their church unless I believe their doctrines."
"Well, my daughter, you will never find a church with every member believing just as you believe."
"What does a denomination mean, anyhow, Doctor? Does it not mean a body of people believing a certain set of doctrines?"
"Yes."
"It seems to me to be somewhat after this fashion. I guess I have no right with my small knowledge about these things to be theorizing, and yet is it not this way? Here in the world we find a multitude of Christians. As they read the Bible some understand it one way and others understand it another way, and still others another way, and those therefore who understand it one way get together in one great company and those understanding it another way get together in another great company and so on, and these large groups are the different denominations, and this simply means that people believing alike naturally come together and fall into line under one name."