Expositional Lectures

The Trinity

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 3-12

Genre: Speech

Track: 073

Dictation Name: RR118A1

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

First John 5 verses 1-8, in particular verses 5-8. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. (2) By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. (3) For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. (4) For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. (5) Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (6) This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. (7) For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. (8) And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

Our subject today is the doctrine of the Trinity. The scripture lesson we have read is a controversial passage, and verse 7 and the first half of verse 8 are missing in virtually every modern translation. Not only are modern translations often given to dubious readings and renderings, but they often omit particular verses. Verses 7 and 8 are commonly omitted. They are however a part of the Received text, and I believe the vindication given of that text which is the text of the King James is translated, has been very ably defended this Received text, in a book by Dr. Edmund Hills, ‘The King James Version Defended’, and I commend it to anyone who is interested in the text and its translations.

Life is a seamless garment. And if we at any point interfere with the processes and the light of this world, it has repercussions far beyond. If we interfere with our body at one point it affects the whole body. Because life is a seamless garment, it is damaged at every point if it is damaged at one. In the sphere of economics, certainly this is true. The comment made by Edmund Opus in his ‘Problems of Church and Society’, I think is indicative of the interrelationships in the economic world. And I quote “Communism is all of a piece. Adopt its metaphysics and in a technological age we get the planned from the top down society. Start on the social level by putting any collectivist principle into operation, and it breeds more of the same until eventually the society becomes fully collectivized. The many part of society are delicately interrelated. Start by fixing the price of a quart of milk, and the glass industry will be told what it must charge for bottles. The wages of delivery men must be regulated, the diary industry controlled and so until the logical end result in time is the totally regimented economy or socialism.” End quote. This interrelationship appears, as I’ve already indicated, in our health. If an infections results in our hand and is not checked, it affects the whole body. And indeed in the checking of it, the whole of our body marshals the forces of the blood to deal with it, because the whole body feels the effect of the slightest infection. If the waters are polluted in an area, this affect also everything in that area. The life of the people, the agriculture of the area, all things are affected. Life, this universe, all things therein, are part of a seamless garment.

A garment that is of a piece. But more basically, all these things are part of a unity and of a whole, whose foundation is in the Triune God. And there is no possibility of maintaining anything apart from this foundation. The doctrine of the Trinity is that basic foundation for all of faith, for the whole universe. John, in writing this epistle tells the believers that this is the victory that overcometh the world even our faith. And this faith, he says, is summed up briefly, in the incarnation of the Son of God and the fact that behind the Incarnation, behind the Word, behind the universe, stands the Triune God. Of whom the Incarnate Son is the second person of the Trinity. As we analyze the doctrine of the Trinity, it is first of all, important and basic. To recognize that it is impossible for the modern man to comprehend God. If man could understand God, it would mean that he had a mind equal to the mind of God. The mind of God is so great, so vast, so far beyond anything that we can comprehend, that we cannot begin to understand God unless we realize He is incomprehensible. Now, when we assert that God is incomprehensible, we do no say He is irrational. We can understand His works. We can understand His Word, and know God, but we cannot know Him exhaustively. And we cannot comprehend Him, even though we can know Him truly, as far as our mind is able to grasp. Because God has no hidden recesses in His mind, no unconscious, and because He is not schizophrenic, He is perfectly unified, all knowledge of God is consistent with everything else in God, and thus, though our knowledge of God is a very limited thing, it is true knowledge, it is dependable knowledge, because God is true to Himself.

But we cannot begin to know God until we first of all recognize that He is incomprehensible. Beyond the capacity of the mind of man to grasp. When we analyze the world around us, one of the things that is first of all apparent is that to grasp the nature of the material universe in itself, is a very difficult thing. And so much of modern physics is mathematically expressed because it is difficult to describe it verbally. Mathematically concepts alone can handle such vast concepts and reaches. Similarly, we deal everyday with things that we do not understand. Electricity is something that science cannot explain, or understand. It uses the electricity, it knows how to deal with it, how to harness it, how to describe it, and we do not thereby say I will not use electricity, simply because I do not know what it is. The doctrines of our faith, supremely the doctrine of the Trinity, we can know, although we can never totally comprehend. Moses, long ago in Exodus 3:1-6, says he was confronted by God, asked God to define Himself. Moses was a deeply troubled man spiritually at the time, and God’s ways seemed so difficult for him, and so when God commanded him to go and lead his people out of bondage, he asked God, what is Thy name? in other words, God, define yourself for me, so that I can understand you. And God refuse to define Himself, because He was beyond definition. And He said instead, I am that I am. Or, it can be translated, He who is, Jehovah. God refused to define Himself because He is the principle of all definition. All things are defined by Him, and in relationship to Him, because God is ultimate.

He is absolute and self-existing, and the source of all things. As Dr. Cornelius Van Til has said, God does not have a law, He is law. There is no law over God, no law in terms of which God moves because God is law. There is no righteousness whereby God can be judged, because God is righteousness. He Himself is the source of all definition of all meaning, and therefore God cannot be judged by any standard, since He is the source of all standards. We cannot, therefore, apply the terms, responsibility and irresponsibility, to God. God is not responsible to or under anyone, and He has no law beyond Himself to be irresponsible to. Men are responsible to or irresponsible in relationship to God. But God is ultimate. Beyond definition, because He is the source of all definition. And so His answer to Moses and His answer to us is, I cannot be defined. I am Jehovah, He who is, I am that I am. But then He went on to say to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am the God who is known, even though I cannot be defined. Who is truly know by His revelation, I am the God who revealed Himself to Abraham and to Isaac and Jacob, and therefore you can know Me in terms of My revelation, and therefore we can know Him in terms of His revelation, the Word of God. The Scriptures. We can know Him in terms of Jesus Christ, God Incarnate.

And we can know Him in terms of Himself, the Triune God. This is the cornerstone of our faith. The Trinity. No faith can survive its {?}. No church can live long apart from this doctrine. And no church, no matter how much it preaches other important and necessary doctrines, will long prosper, it may blossom for a while, but it will fade if it under stresses or neglects the doctrine of the Trinity. And churches that lose this faith do not reproduce themselves. A second generation Unitarian, according to the Unitarians themselves, is a great rarity. They are rarely to be found. The Unitarian Church, in every generation, has get former Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, who are on their way from their churches to total unbelief. And the Unitarian Church is the halfway house into total atheists. But now that virtually every church in the country and around the world has become anti-Trinitarian, although it formally professes it, these churches too have sealed their fate. In the early centuries, when the Church became, as a whole, with only minor sections, Arian, it seemed for a while as if Arianism would be the church of the future. Only a handful of men, notably one Athanasius, stood for the Trinitarian faith and fought against these people. And Athanasius himself was hounded and spent his life as a refugee, fleeing from place to place and living several years in numerous hiding outs, in the desert. But the Arian church which dominated all of Europe for a time, faded and disappeared, and the Trinitarian faith triumphed.

And the Athenacian Creed came to be the creed that expressed orthodoxy, and the Athenacian Creed declares in part, ‘but this is the catholic faith, that we worship one God in trinity, and trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor diving the substance, for the person of the Father is one, of the Son, another, of the Holy Spirit, another. But the divinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is one, and the glory equal, the majesty equal, such as is the Father, such also is the Son, and such the Holy Spirit. The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, the Holy Spirit is uncreated. The Father is infinite, the Son is infinite, the Holy Ghost is infinite. The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, the Holy Ghost is eternal. And yet there are not three eternal beings but one eternal being. As also there are not three uncreated beings nor three infinite beings, but one uncreated and one infinite being.’ this Athenacian faith triumphed and the greatest council of the Church and the greatest doctrinal expression gave voice to it, the formula of the Council of Chalcedon. The Arian churches and all the other churches that have doubted the Trinitarian faith are gone. And those of our day that doubt it will in due time disappear. This is the faith that Scripture defines, and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. Now what is involved in believing this? John then proceeds to declare, that Jesus, the Son of God, who came here as the incarnation of the Triune God, as the voice of the Trinity, He came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and blood. What does this mean? By water.

This signifies baptism. Jesus came and was baptized by John the Baptist. And John, for a moment, hesitated to do so, because he knew who Jesus was, he had declared, openly to the people, behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world. He has come, the Appointed One, He of whom all the prophets and the law spake. The one who is Messiah, the one who is the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the mighty God. Of the increase of whose government there is no end. And why should He be baptized? And Jesus said, suffer it to be so, for it behooveth us so to fulfill all righteousness. He was baptized into His work, He put on all righteousness, that is, He set about as very man of very man to fulfill the law unto perfection. To keep the law perfectly as man’s representative. So that God the Son came and was baptized, affirmed the reality of the Incarnation, declared that as very man of very man He intended to keep the law perfectly. So that when we are members of His body God’ sees in us that perfection of law keeping, in the person of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. But not by water only but water and blood. His Incarnation was fully real unto death. His coming was by blood also. He was very man of very man, and He experienced the agony of death as our representative. So that there is no experience that is alien to us, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory’s of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Indeed He was very God, but at one and the same time, without confusion, He was very man. And He experienced the fullness of humanity unto death. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is true. Thus there is a third witness on Earth, the Holy Ghost. Testifying to Christ in the hearts of His believers. And in the true Church.

But when we speak about the Incarnation, we are to realize that the being of God was not exhausted in the Incarnation. That all the while God the Son was truly incarnate and dwelt among us, He was also God the Son on the throne of glory. That the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost were at one and the same time reigning in heaven. That the Incarnation was real, a perfect unity but without confusion. For if we confuse the two, then we have not incarnation, but pantheism. And the Church is the body of Christ, that is of His manhood. And when we become members of Jesus Christ, members of His body, we are not taken into a mystical union with His deity, we are not made gods, we are made members of His perfect humanity. He came as the second Adam, as the fountainhead of the new humanity. And just as the first Adam from whom we were born and from whom we inherited our fallen nature was very man of very man, completely human, and we were born into humanity, into creaturely-ness, in Adam, so in Jesus Christ we are born again, not as gods, because we do not become gods, we do not become divine, when we become members of Jesus Christ, but we are born again into the perfect humanity of the second, or last, Adam. This doctrine then is basic. There must be no confusion. And the Incarnation does not exhaust the deity of God. God was always in heaven, the triune God. Even as the God the Son was truly incarnate on earth. The triune God is always absolute, sovereign, above and beyond creation. And there can be no confusion of God and man because this is the essence of all paganism. And when there is any confusion then they make men gods. And gods men. As Greek religion and philosophy did, as Roman religion and philosophy did, as all paganism has done.

And hence from the beginning in the Church, there were attempts to confuse the two natures in Christ, so that they could make men gods by salvation. And many a person summed up this heretical type of thinking by saying, God became man so that man might become God. Which is the epitome of heresy. And this is the thinking that results when ever you have a confusion of the two natures in Christ. One scholar recently said, in effect, when he began with this premise, the only logical conclusion and the conclusion which he drew, was this. Salvation is deification. But this is alien to Scripture. Salvation is restoration into perfect manhood. So that Christ keeps the law perfectly for us, and saves us from the penalty of sin and death, and in the sight of God we are, as believers, perfect. When God looks at us He does not see our sins and our frailties, from the moment of our salvation He sees only the perfect manhood of Jesus Christ. And this is the meaning of the parable of the wedding feast. The guests went in, not in their garments, but in the garments provided by the king. So they all appeared in the perfect garment of Christ’s righteousness. Now Christ sees us with all our uncompleted sanctification, He knows that we are not perfectly holy, and as members of His perfect humanity, He deals with us even as our body deals with a sick finger, to heal its infection. To cleanse us by His Holy Spirit, of all our sins and shortcomings. But God sees us in the perfection of Jesus Christ.

Thus, though the Son and the Spirit have their eminence, their nearness to man, God in Himself, Father, Son and Spirit, remains eternally above and separate from man. But this is not all. We could go on indeed for several days to discuss the implications of the doctrine of the Trinity, but one more for now.

The basic problem of mans history, the basic problem of all philosophy, a problem that I have been writing about for three years or so now, and am nearing the completion of the study, is the problem of the one and the many. What is basic, what is ultimate, what is most important in life and in the universe? Is it the one or the many? The unity of things, or the individuality of things, the particularities? Is it the group, or is it the individual? Is it the state or is it the citizens? How you answer this question is important. And the answer that the philosophy gives, it becomes determinative of the whole life of that age. And all philosophy has wrestled with this problem, from the beginnings, from Parmenides of Elea, for example, to the present. And what men have done with their answers has determined their societies. When Plato said the oneness, the unity is the important thing, then he created, logically, a Communist society. Plato’s Republic, the blueprint for total Communism. Because the individual was no longer important. It was the oneness, the unity of things, the collective whole, that was important, rather than the particulars. The cynics said we cannot agree with this. We say the individual, the particular, the many-ness of things is important. Therefore we deny, in the name of anarchism, any state. We deny any law, because the individual can have no law over him. And so you had the total moral anarchism of the cynics.

And age after age, the world has swerved from one extreme to another, from collectivism to anarchism, and back and forth. And men have tried to find an answer that would make liberty possible. That would make the world understandable, but apart from the Trinitarian heritage, the only liberty men have had has been an accident, as they swerved, swerved from the one to the many, from collectivism to anarchism. In our modern era, Hegel, by emphasizing the unity of the things, gave rise to Marxism, to Fabianism, socialism, to Dewey’s great society, and progressivism, to all these beliefs around us which say the collective whole is all, it is the most important. And you cannot find a single philosophy today emphasizing collectivism that does not have behind it this belief, that the oneness of things is the truth of things. And therefore the churches that have such a faith, which is Unitarianism, are going to say, the oneness of things, unity, is everything. Whereas anarchism has denied that there is any law outside of the individual. And therefore away with the state, away with morality, away with law, away with the group. What is the answer? What is the most basic, man or society? The Church or the members? The persons in the marriage, or the marriage itself? The members of a family or the family as a unit? If you answer one way or another, you are in trouble. The only answer that exists is that provided by the doctrine of the Trinity.

Because the doctrine of the Trinity says that God is three persons yet one God. And so there is an equal ultimacy in the Trinity, of the one and the many. The important thing about God is not that He is one, or that He is three persons, but that He is three in one. The three-ness of God and the oneness of God are equally ultimate, and this means therefore that you cannot emphasize the one or the other, the one or the many, unity or particularity, but both equally. And therefore we say, the Church is important, and the members are important. Marriage as an institution is important, but the man and the woman are important, the family is important and so are the members. Society as an organized whole is important, but the citizens as individuals are also important, you cannot subordinate the one to the other. Because there is no subordination in the Trinity, and there is an equal ultimacy of the one and the many. This is the reason why, the only time in history that you have had any real liberty, any real progress and forward movement, has been in those eras that have been truly Trinitarian. That have been established and grounded and built upon this, the faith. Which Scripture says alone giveth the victory which overcometh the world. This then, according to the Word of God, is the ground. Whosoever is born of God overcometh the world. And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. And this can be defined briefly, that this is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is true. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.

And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree in one. This is the foundation. And it’s the foundations we’ve destroyed. But hope is there for man. This alone is the victory that overcometh the world. Let us pray.

We give thanks unto Thee our God that Thou hast called us, and grounded us upon this our most holy faith, our Trinitarian faith. In the Holy Trinity in heaven, in the triple witness upon earth, in the indwelling Spirit which witnesses to these things. Strengthen us therefore our Father in this most holy faith, unto the end that we may triumph, that we may be victorious. And the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and to His Christ. In Jesus name, Amen.

Now, before we have questions, very briefly, in answer to a request, I’ll give a report on {?} trip this last week. {?} Monday morning {?} Jackson Mississippi, {?} there until Wednesday {?} with two hours delay because of very, very ugly weather to {?} returning yesterday. {?} very ugly weather, in fact, not only ugly weather {?} trouble, after the plane landed {?} bout fifteen minutes out they had serious trouble {?}. But {?} dumping their gasoline so they would be light {?} land. And you could look out and {?} couldn’t see it because it was vaporizing. {?} gasoline {?} poured out. And they landed and finally we got on another plane, {?} but it was quite an eventful trip apart from that. It was my first trip to Mississippi, and I was {?}. Institute of the Reformed Theological Seminary. {?} Seminary established in the South. ….{?}… It’s an excellent seminary, it will open this fall. but the fact {?}. And they {?} a couple of hundred ministers and another hundred {?} laymen {?} from various Southern states.

{?} Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi of course, Arkansas, {?}, Texas, and one or two other places. {?} conference. {?} these men and the response was tremendous. And the messages were all taped and {?} reproduced there at the seminary, {?} circulated through the {?}. I was very interested in talking to the men there, one man who delighted me quite a bit was a man {?} me, and I thought well, he’s a very trim and vigorous {?} seventy, perhaps. {?} muscular as a wrestler and as fit as they come. He was a Baptist preacher from Arkansas, and he told me how pleased he was that {?} was the first time he’d felt good since his birthday in December. And he’d been feeling pretty miserable and my talk had really perked him up. And I wanted to know what was the problem about his birthday, and he said, well, he had to give into his wife, his wife sometimes had contrary ways, and she told him any man who was over 85 had no business going horseback riding everyday. But he told me, he said he knew all that country, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and had lived his life in that area. And he said, we’ve got to raise up another generation of men, ‘cause we don’t have them now. And he said, if half of what is going on now had taken place forty years ago, he said, men would have taken to their guns throughout that whole mountain country. And he said, not any longer. And he said, they’re all living at the hog trough, feeding on it. And he said, one way or another, he said, it started in the thirties, they began getting handouts, and he said, that’s what they’re living on. And they think they’re smart. They cease to become men.

And they cease to stand for anything. He said, it’s hard to get hickory wood in this country, but, he said, the woods are full of it. And all through the mountains these men have got all kinds of hickory standing on their land, and they won’t cut it, because it’s a lot easier to say you don’t have an income and get some kind of government check. I was interested too, to see what the situation was like in Mississippi, and I began to understand why there is such an all out assault on Mississippi, because it is the stronghold of the South. The old life, it flourishes there more than anywhere else, it is the most Christian area in the country. And, incidentally, while the standard of living may be lower dollar wise, it isn’t any lower reality wise. For colored or for white. Because wages are lower there, there isn’t the same inflation. Phone calls are a nickel, not a dime. So that even phone calls are effective. And the dollar goes a lot further in most of the South and especially in Mississippi. But it is a very Christian area. The Southern Presbyterian Church today has become very largely modernist and social gospel. There was, for example, in Southern Louisiana, as far as the people I asked knew, just one Presbyterian church that was still faithful to the gospel. The {?} Presbyterian church in New Orleans, quite a large and a strong one, and I spoke there Friday night, their current teacher Lee{?}. And in Mississippi the orthodox men have recaptured the Synod of the Presbyterian church in Mississippi. In the Central Mississippi Presbytery, they are all orthodox men. Without any exception. And these men of course have been influential in establishing this new seminary, which is independent, they’re going to train their own men. And recapture the churches that they don’t have a hold of, and branch out into the surrounding states. But of course they face the all out assault of the Federal Government on their way of life. In the county in which Jackson is located, it is forty percent Negro, but much of the delta country, the counties are ninety percent Negro. Ninety percent. And the reality of life in the South is that they have more integration than anywhere else.

They’re far more integrated. And there will be Negro homes side by side with white homes, and very often, you will see, as in New Orleans and in many of the cities throughout the South, this street will have the homes of prominent citizens and in the street in back of them, will live Negroes who will work for these white families, and the white families have helped them buy their homes, which are often very fine homes. Not as well cared for, but very good homes. The situation in Mississippi is that you have the Federal Government trying to turn the vote over to the Negroes, or the control, by this voting rights bill. And there’s no getting around it, these people are very backward, these Negroes. By no means capable of exercising citizenship. One minister who lived in the delta country, an old man about eighty I believe, and had been a minister there all his life, was describing his work and he said, all his life there he has been trying to train the Negro clergy. He’s held classes for them regularly every week through the years. Because, he said, they are often men who can barely read or write, and he’s had classes for the laymen too. And he said that the primitive superstition and paganism behind their thinking is very strong, he said, for example, an elementary thing like stating that fornication is a sin, is hard to get across to them. And he said when he tries to tell the bible classes that he has among the Negro laymen that this is wrong, they say, but our preacher says it’s just a connection and there’s nothing wrong with it. If the girl isn’t married there is nothing wrong with it. And that’s their outlook on life. And they don’t want to break with that. Unfortunately, lately he’s had to give up the work because the KKK has threatened his life, he insisted on continuing but his church session told him, you’re getting a little too old, your wife is becoming crippled and will be bedridden very soon, and if something happens to you, we will take care of your wife, but we feel that your energies are not up to all that you’re doing and we think it’s best for you to quit.

And the men in Mississippi felt very hostile, all those I talked to, the clergy, to the KKK and they said, we’re facing the fact of terroristic groups on both sides. The KKK on one hand, and on the other hand, the Negro terroristic groups which are bent on destroying things. And when I told some of them that the Scott-Allen{?} Report had indicated that there was a strong possibility that Communist funds were being fed into the KKK to create disturbances and give a bad picture to the South, they were ready to believe it. But there are these two organizations that cause a great deal of trouble on both sides.

However, they are still definitely in control in Mississippi. And the attempt to break it is from the federal level and it is a powerful all out attack. It is through the voting rights bill and attempts to buy out all wealthy people there by government contracts so that they will say, well, the Supreme Court has spoken, this is the law of the land, and they’re beginning to hear this from men with government contracts. This is the situation briefly, in Mississippi. In New Orleans and Southern Louisiana, of course the situation is out of hand. And people are increasingly living as prisoners in their own homes. They go to bed with a gun by their nightstand. And all of them are heavily armed. And I thought it was significant there, there are only two kinds of conservatives. Those who are Christian, they can face it. And then a very limited number who are not Christian, and who have seen what’s coming, what is around them and are really nutty. They’ve gone off their rocker. Because of the horror of the whole thing. And the liberals of course are just running away from reality and are almost hysterical about preaching race relations.

In flipping TV on in the hotel room late at night and whenever I had a little while in the afternoons, I was amazed at the amount of integrationism that was coming over TV into Orleans. And the interracial type of thing that was being proclaimed from the pulpit this Sunday according to Saturday mornings paper. This is race relation Sunday, by the way. And they’re almost saying we’re going to save ourselves by believing in this with all the passion of our being. But their problem there is a desperate one, because, consider this. In cities here you have this long time integration as far as living together, helping one another, but having strictly segregated social lives. So that on this street there will be magnificent white homes and the back street, often good or modest homes owned by Negroes, the next street will be a very fine residential one, wealthy families, and right in back of them Negro homes. Thus everybody is surrounded, unless they fled to some of the suburbs, which are new and there they’re not to far away either, very close, they are surrounded by Negroes. There was no problem ten and twenty years ago, but now they surrounded by them, women will not drive at night, it isn’t safe for them to be out alone in their car, nor to drive during the daytime through certain streets. And what about the countryside? Well, one prominent family there, in whose home I was repeatedly, does have a country place about an hour and a half or so away from New Orleans, this is as good a place as you can get in that country. Eighty acres, well wooded with a stream, and a modest but very comfortable home on the property. But there are Negroes throughout the area. Then they have there too, the free jacks. I said, what are the free jacks? And they said, well, we don’t know how far back they go, perhaps well into the French period, and into the Spanish period possibly, when a lot of criminals and others fled from New Orleans and they went up into the woods and settled there. And they intermarried with any stray Indians that they found in the area and any runaway Negroes, and they produced a type that is racially different, it’s not white and it’s not Negro. And you can spot a free jack when you see him. And he said what they’ve done is to stay off to themselves and they have intermarried extensively, they are a people as close to being animalistic as can be, and he said, many, many of them are so low in intelligence that they can’t speak properly, they just mouth words rather vaguely, and mumble.

And in that particular area, only two free jacks are industrious enough to be passably good citizens. So that in the countryside you keep dogs all the time to guard yourself and are armed as well. There’s no place to go, the city or country. And this is why the conservatives there are either Christians or they’ve gone off their rocker, and you can spot them very quickly, there’s a such a discernable nuttiness about them. They cannot face reality without faith, and so they take flight of their senses or go into liberalism. This briefly is the picture there. I had very good audiences everywhere, I was especially pleased at one because I thought when I spoke at {?} College, the student body in New Orleans, that I had really been a dud. Because this was a last minute thing and appointment, and I prepared hastily some notes on something I had my notes here at home on, a chapter I’m writing on the return of slavery. I thought, well this is really ultra, ultra Christian and conservative but maybe it’ll jolt them into seeing the issues, it’ll be such a {?}. And they just sat there and looked at me blankly. And when it was over, I couldn’t get any questions out of them and two or three of the faculty raised some polite questions, and then finally, in the last minute two students raised questions about incidental points. And not a student said a word as they left, and I thought this was really a complete washout. And, peculiarly, next morning the students began pouring into the office steadily, stating that they wondered if I could come back again and talk to them, that they’d spent the night thinking about it and worrying about it, and they decided at first that I was off my rocker, that anybody who’d gone that far and is conservative had to be crazy. And then they had decided I was absolutely right, and there was no other way about it. So they kept coming into the office wanting to ask questions about it, so it turned out quite well, though I felt very uncomfortable when the hour was over, to find them so, just staring at me, kind of wide-eyed and wondering who I was and what I was. But it did finally register and so I was quite pleased about that, I was really jolted when I left the college. Well, our time is up, but…