"I give you another household," said the Doctor. "It is in Acts 16:33. It is in the story of Paul and Silas' experience in prison and the conversion of the jailer at midnight. It reads: 'He took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes and was baptized, he and all his straightway.' Now, my fair debater, I suppose you will declare in most solemn tones that there were no infants in the jailer's family. May I ask for your verdict on that point?"
"Look here," said Dorothy, who was examining the passage: "It says plainly that all of them 'did believe'."
"Stop, daughter," said the father. "You are joking about that."
"Listen to the next verse," she said: "'And when he had brought them into his house he set meat before them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house."
"Take down your flag, gentlemen," exclaimed the father impulsively. "Your guns are silenced. The jailer believed in God with 'all his house'. Well, I guess that means that all his house believed with him, and they must have been very sprightly infants and quite overgrown to have joined their father in that believing."
"It says they all rejoiced also," said Dorothy. "And look at the verse preceding: 'And they spake the Word of the Lord to all that were in the house.' That came before they were all baptized. They 'spake the Word to all'. Notice the 'all', to all that were in the house. I guess that 'all' that were in the house must have been old enough to understand his preaching if he spoke the Word to all of them. Doctor," she asked, "do you think you can find an infant in that attentive, believing, rejoicing household?"
"Read us about another household baptism," as she noted that the Doctor seemed to be closing the Bible.
"This completes the list of household baptisms. I think they are sufficient."
"But, Doctor, not one of these households are said to have had children in them, and if they did have children the children must have been old enough to believe, because it is stated in the case of every one of them that those that were baptized believed or received the word that was spoken. They were all old enough to hear, to understand and to believe the Word."
"From all the passages which I have heard in these discussions," said the father, "one thing seems to stand out very plainly about baptism, and that is that in the Bible times faith had to come before baptism."