"Oh, Doctor," she said, almost impatiently, "why do you say a show of logic? Can both of these positions be true? If the child's nature entitles it to baptism, then all children are entitled to baptism; but if it is the faith of some parent or some god-parent that entitles the child to baptism, then it is only a certain class of infants that can be baptized and the baptism is put on the basis of the faith of another."
"That sounds a little strange to me," said the father. "I did not know that one person could be religious for another. I thought that every tub had to stand on its own bottom in religion. This thing of one person believing for another person so that the other person, especially a little infant, is entitled to baptism—well, that sounds very new and strange. How can the parent make the child fit for baptism? Do you mean to tell me that if I had a little infant and I should believe in Christianity that that would be a reason why not only I should be baptized, but my little infant also?"
"Is it thought, Doctor," asked Dorothy, "that the baptism does the infant any good?"
"Oh, no," said the Doctor, "the baptism has no power in itself."
"I think the baptism does the infant a wrong," said Dorothy. "Baptism is a religious ceremony which everyone ought to obey of his own will and accord. In the Bible it comes after believing and is a sign of what has taken place in the person's heart. Now, when you baptize an infant you force on him a religious ceremony. Suppose he grows up and is converted and desires to obey Christ in baptism and then learns that baptism was forced on him in infancy. Instead of believing and then being baptized he is first baptized and then many years afterwards he believes."
"And suppose, Doctor," said the father, "he never believes; then what have you got? You have a person walking around baptized who ought never to have been baptized, though he is not to be blamed for it. If the baptism does no good, why do you baptize him? Why not follow the regular course and get him first to believe and then to be baptized?"
"I have an idea," said the brother, "that infant baptism started with parents with dying infants who they thought would be lost if they were not baptized."
"Oh, never," said the Doctor.
"Well, I remember in a house where I was boarding while at college that a mother thought her little infant was about to die and she sent off immediately for the preacher to baptize her child, for she said she was afraid it would be lost if it died without baptism. Now, if that mother had that idea about baptism, why may not many others have the same idea about baptism?"
"Since I come to think of it," admitted the Doctor, "I myself have had quite a number of excited mothers to ask me to baptize their sick infants because they were afraid for them to die without baptism; but they are the exceptions and of course their fears were entirely groundless. This is a Catholic doctrine. The Catholics teach, that baptism saves the infant, but we teach no such doctrine."