A large part of the day was spent by Dorothy at the public library ransacking the encyclopedias searching for something about the Baptists.
To her surprise she found a great deal. She was amazed as she read of the part that the Baptists had played in history. Knowing that the people at her home would be interested, she made copious notes during her reading.
She hurried through her lunch that day and informed her mother that she was getting some very important information about the Baptists, and that by dinner time she hoped to have it in shape to lay it before the family.
The mother thought that of course she was unearthing unfavorable information about the Baptists that would show Dorothy that she could never identify herself with them.
That evening Mr. Page, when he reached home, was greeted with the words from Dorothy: "Oh, father, I have made a discovery!"
"Is it a gold mine under the front porch?"
"It is a discovery about these Baptist people. But wait until Mr. Walton and Mr. Sterling come and I will tell you."
Soon after dinner the two visitors were gathered in the parlor and ready.
"Dorothy announces a big discovery," said Mr. Page. "Let us have it, daughter."
"I don"t know that any others will be interested in it, but it greatly surprised and interested me. I have learned that these Baptists have had a remarkable history."
"Remarkable for what, daughter? For obscurity?"
"No. They have played an ill.u.s.trious part in this world"s history."
The father"s face darkened. The thought of his daughter falling in love with the Baptists struck him in an unpleasant point of his anatomy. The little Baptist chapel with its plain-looking people and pastor put the denomination in a sorry light before the public.
"Father, I have been in the library hunting for facts about the Baptists. I have read their doctrines and they surely seem to believe exactly what the Bible teaches, and their history is a n.o.ble and inspiring one."
"What did you find out about these Baptists? Where did they come from?"
"That is the interesting part. Do you know they are next to the largest denomination in the world except the Catholics?"
"What is that, daughter? You evidently got into some fairy tales in the library. Why, the Methodists are as large as all the other denominations put together, and as for the Baptists, they are but a drop in the bucket. Look at them in this town, and I guess the bunch here is a pretty good sample of them everywhere."
"Oh, father, either those books in the library are wrong or else you and lots of other folks are terribly mistaken. The Baptists and the Methodists are the two largest denominations in the world, except the Catholics."
The father wore an incredulous and bewildered look.
"There may possibly be a lot of Baptists scattered over the earth,"
admitted Sterling, "but you must have quality as well as quant.i.ty, and quality is what the Baptists have not."
"You are prodigiously mistaken," replied Dorothy in a vehement manner.
"I could hardly believe it myself as I read it; but it is a fact that the Baptists hold a high place in history. One writer says that the Baptists are in the front ranks in the matter of education. Two writers say that the great Foreign Mission movement of the present and the past century was started by the Baptists of England. Another book says they have led in founding and perfecting Sunday schools."
"England?" said the father. "I didn"t know that any Baptists had ever found their way across the seas to England."
"Why, father, England owes much of her present greatness to the Baptists. In the Puritan movement that saved England from Catholicism and kept her Protestant the Baptists are said to have played a large part."
"When did they come into existence?"
"They claim that they have always been in existence since the days of the apostles."
"Well, well, that is a clincher sure."
"Father, it does look as if the truths which the Baptists hold are the truths which Christ taught and which the first Christians practiced; and if so, then the first churches were in that sense Baptist churches."
"All of the other churches knocked out at the first blow," said the father with a laugh, "and Christianity starting off with only Baptist churches."
"This history which I read also said that all through the centuries since Christ there seem to have been bands of Christian people believing substantially what the Baptists of today believe. This was not proved with absolute certainty, but all the evidence points that way.
The great Roman church came into power and ruled the religious world, but there were always bands of Christians protesting against Catholicism and standing up for those truths and practices which they believed the Bible taught. Baptist historians say that these persecuted churches held very largely what the Baptists of today believe."
"Exactly," said Sterling. "You say that the Baptist historians claim that these Christian sects who in every century protested against Catholicism and stood up for Christianity were Baptists. Of course Baptist historians claim that these Christians were Baptists. Suppose, however, you had read Presbyterian histories; who knows but that you would have read that there were in every century Presbyterian churches?"
"But how could this be? I read in two or three places that the Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians and many of the other denominations were the fruit of the Reformation, and came after the sixteenth century."
"Daughter, you seem to have these histories at your finger ends."
"I do not know very much about them, but I have read everything in the library that would throw light upon the matters that we have been discussing, and I have made full notes from my reading."
"Your statements sound strange, Miss Dorothy," said Mr. Sterling, "for the Baptists evidently were one of those numerous sects that sprang out of and were a part of the Protestant Reformation."
"Two or three of the books that I examined said that the Baptists existed before the Reformation and helped to bring about the Reformation, and that they did much to shape the Reformation both in Holland and in England and in other places."
"Miss Dorothy," said Mr. Sterling, "the idea seems preposterous to me that the Baptists existed before the Reformation."
"Here is a statement that I read in "Mosheim"s History of Antiquity", in which he says "the origin of the Baptists is lost in the depths of antiquity"."
"Does Mosheim say that?" asked Mr. Sterling. "Why, he was a noted writer."
"I found that three or four hundred years ago the Baptists were called Anabaptists, and that they gradually dropped the first part of their name."
"What does the word Anabaptist mean?"
"It means a rebaptizer. It seems that they insisted when a person who had been baptized in infancy was converted in later life that he should be baptized on profession of faith. They claimed that his infant baptism was not Bible baptism, and so the people called them rebaptizers or Anabaptists. And here is one statement that I read: "It is said that two of the presidents of Harvard College were Anabaptists"."
"What is that!" exclaimed the father, almost bouncing out of his chair.
"Two of Harvard"s presidents Baptists? Where did you find that statement?"
"On page 338 of Gregory"s "Puritanism in the Old World and the New"."
"And you say the Baptists and the Anabaptists are the same?"
"Yes, indeed. I find that the names are used interchangeably in the histories, and gradually the shorter name took the place of the longer."
"Two presidents of Harvard? Well! Well! If that Gregory knows what he is talking about, then that is a stunner. I would never have thought it.
But go ahead and give us some more."
"Here is something about the Baptist soldiers in Oliver Cromwell"s army: "The men who made up the new army of Ironsides, which won the victories of Naseby and Dunbar, the men who smiled only as they went into battle and never counted the odds against them, were not Presbyterians, * * * *
they were Independents, the Baptists forming the largest element, men who believed in self-government in the church as well as in the state"."
"Where do you find that?" asked Sterling with an interested expression.