Mrs Fish told her daughter that perhaps Miss Hopgood
might be a Dissenter, and that although Dissenters were to be pitied,
and even to be condemned, many of them were undoubtedly among the
redeemed, as for example, that man of God, Dr Doddridge, whose Family
Expositor was read systematically at home, as Selina knew. Then
there were Matthew Henry, whose commentary her father preferred to
any other, and the venerable saint, the Reverend William Jay of Bath,
whom she was proud to call her friend. Miss Fish, therefore, made
further inquiries gently and delicately, but she found to her horror
that Madge had neither been sprinkled nor immersed! Perhaps she was
a Jewess or a heathen! This was a happy thought, for then she might
be converted. Selina knew what interest her mother took in missions
to heathens and Jews; and if Madge, by the humble instrumentality of
a child, could be brought to the foot of the Cross, what would her
mother and father say? What would they not say? Fancy taking Madge
to Clapham in a nice white dress--it should be white, thought Selina-
-and presenting her as a saved lamb!
The very next night she began, -
'I suppose your father is a foreigner?'
'No, he is an Englishman.'
'But if he is an Englishman you must have been baptised, or
sprinkled, or immersed, and your father and mother must belong to
church or chapel. I know there are thousands of wicked people who
belong to neither, but they are drunkards and liars and robbers, and
even they have their children christened.
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