Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/45

 "I see, I see. Well, that's splendid. Now of course you believe in the premillennial coming—I mean the real, authentic, genuwine, immediate, bodily, premillennial coming of Jesus Christ?"

"Oh, yes, sure."

"And the virgin birth?"

"Oh, you bet."

"That's splendid! Of course there are doctors who question whether the virgin birth is quite in accordance with their experience of obstetrics, but I tell those fellows, 'Look here! How do I know it's true? Because it says so in the Bible, and if it weren't true, do you suppose it would say so in the Bible?' That certainly shuts them up! They have precious little to say after that!"

By this time a really beautiful, bounteous fellowship was flowing between Eddie and the doctor, and they were looking with pity on the embarrassed faces of the two heretics left out in the cold. Dr. Lefferts tickled his beard and crooned:

"And of course, Brother Fislinger, you believe in infant damnation."

Eddie explained, "No; that's not a Baptist doctrine."

"You—you—" The good doctor choked, tugged at his collar, panted, and wailed:

"It's not a Baptist doctrine? You don't believe in infant damnation?"

"W-why, no—"

"Then God help the Baptist church and the Baptist doctrine! God help us all, in these unregenerate days, that we should be contaminated by such infidelity!" Eddie sweat, while the doctor patted his plump hands and agonized: "Look you here, my brother! It's very simple. Are we not saved by being washed in the blood of the Lamb, and by that alone, by his blessed sacrifice alone?"

"W-why, yes, but—"

"Then either we are washed white, and saved, or else we are not washed, and we are not saved! That's the simple truth, and all weakenings and explanations and hemming and hawing about this clear and beautiful truth are simply of the devil, brother! And at what moment does a human being, in all his inevitable sinfulness, become subject to baptism and salvation? At two months? At nine years? At sixteen? At