“Gee, honest, you hadn’t ought to kill cockroaches with a Bible!” mourned Eddie Fislinger. “Now here’s the Bible, good and straight, for close communion, Harry. It says in First Corinthians, 11:27 and 29: ‘Whoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.’ And how can there be a worthy Christian unless he’s been baptized by immersion?”
“I do wonder sometimes,” mused Frank Shallard, “if we aren’t rather impious, we Baptists, to set ourselves up as the keepers of the gates of God, deciding just who is righteous, who is worthy to commune.”
“But there’s nothing else we can do,” explained Eddie. “The Baptist Church, being the only pure Scriptural church, is the one real church of God, and we’re not setting ourselves up—we’re just following God’s ordinances.”
Horace Carp had also been reveling in the popular Mizpah sport of looking up Biblical texts to prove a preconceived opinion. “I don’t find anything here about Baptists,” he said.
“Nor about your doggoned old Episcopalians, either—darn’ snobs!—and the preachers wearing nightshirts!” from Eddie.
“You bet your life you find something—it talks about bishops, and that means Episcopal bishops—the papes and the Methodists are uncanonical bishops,” rejoiced Horace. “I’ll bet you two dollars and sixty-seven cents I wind up as an Episcopal bishop, and, believe me, I’ll be high-church as hell—all the candles I can get on the altar.”
Harry Zenz was speculating, “I suppose it’s unscientific to believe that because I happen to be a Baptist practitioner myself and see what word-splitting, text-twisting, applause-hungry, job-hunting, medieval-minded second-raters even the biggest Baptist leaders are, therefore the Baptist Church is the worst of the lot. I don’t suppose it’s really any worse than the Presbyterian or the Congregational or Disciples or Lutheran or any other. But— Say, you, Fislinger, ever occur to you how dangerous it is, this Bible-worship? You and I might have to quit preaching and go to work. You tell the muttonheads that the Bible contains absolutely everything necessary for salvation, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then what’s the use of having any preachers? Any church? Let people stay home and read the Bible!”
“Well—well—it says—”