If Manda now let them pour water on her in a new baptism, then her husband would suffer from this; even though they were husband and wife they would have to go to different churches on Sunday. This would hurt both Algot and herself. She would be doing something wrong; she would not be obeying God’s will.
Kristina’s honest advice to her neighbor was this: She must wait with her baptism until Algot no longer objected.
Manda had listened eagerly and when she left she said she would deeply ponder the advice given her. She understood that Kristina herself had peace and joy in her soul, and only such a person could help another human being.
Some time later the news spread that Algot and Manda Svensson had baptized their son in the Lutheran faith. They had made a bargain: The wife let the husband baptize their child in the old faith, the husband let the wife be baptized in the new.
— 3—
The settlers were living through a time of spiritual confusion. The hundred religions that were preached in North America caused Kristina great wonderment. She could not understand what separated the churches and the sects from one another. There were sects and offsprings of sects. Ulrika had said there were eight different kinds of Baptists alone in America. And there was the Institution of the Lutherans, the Immersion of the Baptists, and the Fulfillment Teaching of the Methodists. All kinds of teachings were preached, faith teachings, salvation teachings, eternity teachings, grace teachings. Who could keep them all in his head and explain them all? When Kristina read in Hemlandet about Congregationalists, Wesleyans, Unitarians, Episcopalians, it sounded to her like so many tribes of wild heathens.
And in this country Messiahs arose anew every year. Last year alone fourteen persons each insisted they were the returning Christ who had come to America. Several of them were put in insane asylums. There was indeed a confusion in faith and baptism: I would rather see a mother throw her child into the fire than. .
The Lutherans baptized in a font, the Baptists in the river — but could it really make a great deal of difference?
River or font? Christening water should be clear, pure, and unsullied, because it must blot out sins, but could it make any difference if it came from a well or a river?
One Sunday last spring Kristina had been invited to Stillwater to see the great baptismal festival of Ulrika’s brethren. The Baptists had their place of immersion some distance outside town in the St. Croix River. That Sunday there were eighteen converts to be received into the congregation and enjoy the rebirth of a baptismal bath. Kristina was permitted to view the consecration from the shore.
A great many people were gathered and those who were to be baptized were standing apart near a huge boulder on the shore, separated from those who already were members of the congregation. They were all dressed in wide, white shirts that covered their bodies from neck to heel; converts’ clothes were white as angels’ wings. Men and women were dressed alike, but bearded faces and short hair indicated who the men were. In the group of the converts Kristina noticed women older than herself, and one old man with a gray beard covering his shirt front, perhaps seventy years, yet here he was to be reborn like a child in the river water.
It was a warm Sunday with the water calm under the tall trees at the edge of the river; it was almost like a lake. In a rowboat, half pulled up on the shore, stood Ulrika’s husband, the congregations minister, Pastor Henry O. Jackson. His head was bare and he wore a black coat which hung to his knees. He had preached in barns and sawmills, in cabins and sheds — today the rowboat was his pulpit.
The pastor began to sing a hymn and the people on shore joined in. Ulrika had sung this song for Kristina and she recognized some of the words:
Down to the sacred wave
The Lord of Life was led;
And he who came our souls to save
In Jordan bowed his head.
He taught the solemn way;
He fixed the Holy rite;
He bade his ransomed ones obey,
And keep the path of Light.
The human voices rose powerfully under the clear sky; there was an eagerness and life in the Baptists’ singing that Kristina had never heard in a Lutheran church. The hymn about the Lord of Life echoed against the cliffs, rose heavenward, away from this fleeting world. It rose on the comforting assurance of another world that had no end. The congregation was filled with joy that eighteen people were to be reborn through baptism, their souls to enter the Kingdom of God.
Then the pastor in the boat began to speak to the white-garbed group on the shore.
Suddenly it seemed to Kristina that she had seen this before; her ears had heard this voice, her eyes had seen this gathering: a man in a boat, preaching to people in white garments on a shore! There had been men in long beards listening to the Word, standing quite still, as still as the cliff on which their feet rested. And on the riverbank rose high, brown hills. A wilderness land; she recognized it all! Where had she experienced this? Was it the memory of a picture that came to her mind? Only in one book could she have seen such a picture. Or was it an impression of something she had read in this book that changed into a vision: “The people of the land were baptized by him in the river, and they confessed their sins.”
A man spoke from a boat to the people on the shore. But it was another river, another shore, another time. The river’s name was Jordan, and it had happened many years ago.
Who was the man there in the boat? Who was it that spoke? He used English but she understood all he said, for it wasn’t the words she heard, it was the voice that uttered the words. She recognized it so well, the voice that once had welcomed them on the shores of this very river. The man in that boat had met them when they arrived, had brought them to his house and given them food. He had sheltered her and her children when they were without house and home. Will no one help us? they had asked. This man had answered them. Who was he? Who was the man in the boat on the river Jordan preaching love and mercy to the people on shore?
Was it Christ himself she beheld?
Kristina put her hand to her head, feeling dizzy. Was she dreaming? Was she forgetting that she was among sectarians? That she was viewing the great Baptist festival? For a moment she had forgotten that these people were said to teach a false religion; she had felt uplifted in her soul by their singing of a joyous hymn. Yet had the pastor of her own church been here today he would have shed tears of sorrow over these lost souls who were gathered here.
Now she saw the man in the black frock coat leave the boat and wade out into the river. He waded fully clothed, his long coattails dragging in the water behind him. He walked resolutely forward, now the water reached to his knees but he walked on. When the water reached to his waist he stopped and turned toward the shore and said something. He was calling a name.
Pastor Henry O. Jackson had commenced to distribute the sacrament of baptism to the white group on the shore; he called the first by name.
The oldest among them was to go first. The old man with the gray beard heard his name and waded slowly toward the pastor. He moved clumsily, awkwardly, he was not accustomed to walking in water; he stumbled, almost fell over some stones in the river bottom. The water splashed around his legs, his white garments were getting soaked.
But out there in the river stood the black-coated man who stretched his hand toward the man in the white shirt. Pastor Jackson received the old one, took a sturdy hold of his neck with his left hand and laid his right against the man’s chest. For a few moments both stood still. Then the pastors hands became active: He pressed the old one’s head and chest under water. The white-garbed one had vanished; the pastor stood alone in the river.