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DEAR BRO. RUSSELL:—I was very much pleased with article in last number on “Baptism.” It is in harmony with my thoughts on the subject. I have thought for two years or more, that those who thought, only of water baptism, when thinking of being baptized into Christ, were taking the shadow and leaving out the substance; just as they do, who ask to be provided with daily bread, and mean, mainly, natural bread.

The real baptism is of vital importance; and it seems to me that when one has reached that point, he will give expression to it, by water baptism in a proper way, just as surely as it is true that out of the “abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

By some of the friends, our ideas of being dead with Christ, are considered a little extreme, and so they may think in regard to these on baptism, but the former lead to the latter.

Your brother,

B. W. KEITH.

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— October, 1880 —