"That's it exactly," said Sterling. "The translators, in order not to offend the different denominations, agreed not to translate the word at all, but simply to put the Greek word 'baptizo' in the English Bible and let each one translate it for himself as he thought proper."
"Can't we find out what that Greek word 'baptizo' means?" asked Dorothy.
"Certainly, here is the Greek scholar," said Mr. Page turning to his son. "Tell us, Roland, what did the Greeks understand by that word 'baptizo' when they used it?"
"I must get my Greek lexicon for that." And upstairs he hurried and soon returned with Liddell and Scott's Greek and English Lexicon. He turned to the word "baptizo" and read its meaning as follows: "To dip repeatedly, to dip under."
"What is that?" exclaimed the father, almost bouncing out of his chair, "'to dip under'?"
"Here it is on page 130."
"It seems to me," said the father, "that would settle it. If the Greek word that Christ used meant to dip under, what right has anyone to say that baptism is to be done by sprinkling?"
"What do you do with a passage like this in 1 Cor. 10:2?" said Mr. Sterling—"'were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.' They were all baptized, but do you see any immersion in that? It refers, you know, to the time when the Israelites passed through the sea dry shod with a cloud over them. They were baptized, but they were surely not immersed, for they would have been drowned."
"I did not know of such an event," said Dorothy. "What do you mean by saying that they went through the sea dry shod?"
"God banked up the waters on both sides and let them walk through untouched by the water."