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,
