“I believe, Brother, and I’ve been taught, that possibly a man might be saved if he’d just been baptized by sprinkling or pouring, but only if he were ignorant of the truth. Of course immersion is the only Scriptural way—if we’re really going to be like Christ, we must be buried with him in baptism.”
“That’s fine, Brother Gantry. Praise God! Now, Brother Fislinger, do you believe in the final perseverance of the saints?”
Eddie’s eager but cracked voice explaining—on—on—somniferous as the locusts in the blazing fields across the Kayooska River.
As there is no hierarchy in the Baptist Church, but only a free association of like-minded local churches, so are there no canonical forms of procedure, but only customs. The ceremony of ordination is not a definite rite; it may vary as the local associations will, and ordination is conferred not by any bishop but by the general approval of the churches in an association.
The questions were followed by the “charge to the candidates,” a tremendous discourse by the great Dr. Ingle, in which he commended study, light meals, and helping the sick by going and reading texts to them. Every one joined then in a tremendous basket-lunch on long plank tables by the cool river . . . banana layer cake, doughnuts, fried chicken, chocolate layer cake, scalloped potatoes, hermit cookies, cocoanut layer cake, pickled tomato preserves, on plates which skidded about the table, with coffee poured into saucerless cups from a vast tin pot, inevitably scalding at least one child, who howled. There were hearty shouts of “Pass the lemon pie, Sister Skiff,” and “That was a fine discourse of Brother Ingle’s,” and “Oh, dear, I dropped my spoon and an ant got on it—well, I’ll just wipe it on my apron—that was fine the way Brother Gantry explained how the Baptist Church has existed ever since Bible days.” . . . Boys bathing, shrieking, splashing one another. . . . Boys getting into the poison ivy. . . . Boys becoming so infected with the poison ivy that they would turn spotty and begin to swell within seven hours. . . . Dr. Ingle enthusiastically telling the other clergy of his trip to the Holy Land. . . . Elmer lying about his fondness for the faculty of his theological seminary.
Reassembled after lunch, Brother Tusker, minister of the largest congregation in the association, gave the “charge to the churches.” This was always the juicest and most scandalous and delightful part of the ordination ceremony. In it the clergy had a chance to get back at the parishioners who, as large contributors, as guaranteed saints, had all year been nagging them.
Here were these fine young men going into the ministry, said Brother Tusker. Well, it was up to them to help. Brother Gantry and Brother Fislinger were leaping with the joy of sacrifice and learning. Then let the churches give ’em a chance, and not make ’em spend all the time hot-footing it around, as some older preachers had to do, raising their own salaries! Let folks quit criticizing; let ’em appreciate godly lives and the quickening word once in a while, instead of ham-ham-hammering their preachers all day long!
And certain of the parties who criticized the preachers’ wives for idleness—funny the way some of them seemed to have so much time to gad around and notice things and spread scandal! T’wa’n’t only the menfolks that the Savior was thinking of when he talked about them that were without sin being the only folks that were qualified to heave any rocks!
The other preachers leaned back in their chairs and tried to look casual, and hoped that Brother Tusker was going to bear down even a lee-tle heavier on that matter of raising salaries.
In his sermon and the concluding ordination prayer Brother Knoblaugh (of Barkinsville) summed up, for the benefit of Elmer Gantry, Eddie Fislinger, and God, the history of the Baptists, the importance of missions, and the perils of not reading the Bible before breakfast daily.