IBL13: Law in the New Testament

Woman Taken in Adultery

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 2

Track: 130

Dictation Name: RR130BT130

Date: 1960s-1970s

Our scripture is John 8:1-11, the woman taken in adultery. John 8:1-11. Next week we shall take up that incident with the Pharisees recorded in Mark 7:1-23 and Matthew 15:1-20. Our scripture today, John 8:1-11.

“1Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

6 This they said, tempting him that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?

11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”

This incident is one of the most important in all the gospels in understanding the conflict between our Lord and the religious leaders of His day. At two fundamental points, the Pharisees and other religious leaders were at war with Jesus.

First of all, the Pharisees did not believe in conversion, in regeneration, in rebirth. This is why, when one of the leading Pharisees, Nicodemus, came to Jesus, this was the point that was debated and discussed. Nicodemus was a more respectful man. He was an earnest inquirer; so there was not in him, the hostility that there was in others. In fact, he became a convert. But you recall, he ridiculed the idea of rebirth and he reduced it to nonsense by saying, is a man of my age, is a man who is old in years going to be reborn through his mother? Try to reduce it to absurdity. But at this first fundamental point, the Pharisees denied our Lord’s teaching. Not rebirth, no. Not regeneration. For them, salvation was man’s work, by man’s free will. Man chose between good and evil and worked out his own salvation. They denied therefore, the doctrine of predestination. Man’s free will was everything. Man saved himself. This aspect they kept more concealed, more hidden. This is why we come face-to-face with this aspect of Phariseeism in their writings and in the discussion of Nicodemus with our Lord. This was too obviously Humanistic, too obviously an abandonment of God and of God’s role in salvation.

The second point was the point at which they again and again challenged Jesus publically, and Jesus again and again publically denounced them. They denied the Law of God for the traditions of men. This was our Lord’s declaration. We shall deal with it in greater detail next week. And our Lord’s answer again and again was, as they challenged Him, trying to prove that He also didn’t really believe in all that old-fashioned stuff that was given by Moses, was to affirm the law.

Our Lord again and again exposed the Pharisees as teachers of the law who were denying the law in favor of the traditions of men. He was teaching, we are told, in the temple, in the House of God and all the people came unto Him and He sat down and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto Him a woman taken in adultery and when they had set her in the midst, they said unto Him, ‘master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act… now Moses and the law commanded us that such should be stoned. What sayest thou?’

Now, the death penalty for adultery had passed away a long time before that. In Biblical Law, the family is the basic institution. Adultery, therefore, is treason against society, against the basic institution of society. But this was so far in the past as far as the Pharisees were concerned that for Jesus to invoke this, the death penalty now, they thought, would make Him ridiculous in the sight of the people. After all, adultery was very popular in those days. And the majority of the people were not going to favor somebody who was going to say they deserved to die. And so it would have been a very, very serious thing, they felt, for Jesus to come out flat-footedly and say He affirmed the Law of Moses. But to say, well, now I’m not in favor of the death penalty for this and that reason today would have been to give them a weapon to say, well, then you’re really in our camp! You claim we’re the ones who’ve abandoned the law, but you’ve abandoned it also. This they said tempting Him that they might have to accuse him.

Now notice one thing more. They brought the woman. In other words, they had caught a couple in the very act of adultery. That’s their statement—taken in adultery, in the very act. Now why didn’t they bring the man as well? After all, they were very selective. They had a case of adultery, but they brought just the woman. Again, the whole thing was designed to be emotionally prejudicial to our Lord, on two counts. First, the adultery of a woman was in that time considered more serious by the scribes and Pharisees than that of a man. In other words, they were giving man leeway that they were not giving to a woman. This was contrary to the law because the law regards the sins of men more seriously than the sins of women. On the other hand, while the adultery of the woman was considered more serious, a death penalty against a woman was practically unheard of in those days. So the idea was to make it more difficult for Him not to condemn a woman and more difficult for Him to invoke the death penalty against a woman. In brief, they were trying to stack the decks against our Lord as much as possible. This they said, tempting Him that they might have to accuse him.

But Jesus stooped down and with his finger, wrote on the ground. Again, two verses later, and again stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this point, a great deal of fanciful preaching has been done. And many men have let their imagination run wild. What was He writing on the ground? What was the point of all the writing on the ground, or the tracing on the ground? (It can be rendered either way.) This is not a matter for imagination; it is a matter where scripture must be allowed to interpret scripture. And the matter has been known, and the answer is to be found in the Old Testament in Numbers 5. What is the significance?

It can be best summarized by a quotation by Dean Bergen of the Church of England of some generations ago, one of the greatest champions of the infallible Word that we have ever had in the history of the Church. The sad fact that Dean Bergen is rarely mentioned today except in {?}, but he is one of the greatest scholars and one of the greatest champions of the infallible Word and the true faith that England ever produced. There’s one man who carries on the kind of textual scholarship that Dean Bergen did, Dr. Edwin Hills. Some of you have read his King James Version Defended and others of his works. But Dean Bergen said of this matter, “the scribes and Pharisees bring a woman to our savior on a charge of adultery. The sin prevailed to such an extent among the Jews that the divine enactments of one so accused had long since fallen into practical oblivion. On the present occasion, our Lord was observed to revive His own ancient ordinance after hitherto unheard of action. The trial by the bitter water or water of conviction (see Numbers 5:11-31) was a species of ordeal intended for the vindication of innocence and the conviction of guilt; but according to the belief that tests proved inefficacious unless the husband himself was innocent of the crime whereof he accused his wife. Let the provisions of the law contained in Numbers 5:16-24 be now considered. The accused woman, having been brought near and set before the Lord, the priest took holy water in an earthen vessel and put of the dust of the floor of the tabernacle (or the temple), into the water. Then with the bitter water that causeth a curse in his hand, he charged the woman by an oath. Next, he wrote the curses in a book and blotted them out with the bitter water, causing the woman to drink the bitter water that causeth a curse, whereupon if she were guilty she fell under a terrible penalty, her body testifying visibly to her sin. If she were innocent, nothing followed. And now, who sees not that the Holy One dealt with the hypocritical assailments as if they had been the accused parties? Into the presence of incarnate Jehovah verily they had been brought. And perhaps when He stooped down and wrote upon the ground it was a bitter sentence (that is one of the curses) against the adulterer and adulteress which He wrote. We have but to assume some connection between the curse which He thus traced in the dust in the floor of the tabernacle or temple and the words which He uttered with His lips, and He may with truth be declared to have taken of the dust and put it on the water and caused them to drink of the bitter water which causeth the curse. For when by His Holy Spirit, our great High Priest in His human flesh addressed these adulterers, what did He but present them with the Living Water—Himself, in an earthen vessel. Did He not further charge them with an oath of cursing, saying if ye have not gone aside to uncleanness, be free from the bitter water, but if ye be defiled are being presented with which alternative? Did they not, self-convicted, go out one by one? And what else was this but their own acquittal of the sinful woman for whose condemnation they had shown themselves so impatient? Surely it was the water of conviction as it is six times called which they had been compelled to drink, whereupon convicted by their own conscience as St. John relates, they had pronounced the other's acquittal. Finally, note that by Himself, declining to condemn the accused woman, our Lord also did in effect blot out those curses which He had already written against her in the dust when He made the floor of the sanctuary His book.” Now Dean Bergen said it better than anyone before or after, and very faithfully, in terms of scripture.

At every point, they could convict. They were the complaining witnesses. Thus, they had placed themselves in the stead of the husband. Were they guilty? The law against any guilty witness who himself was guilty of the crime, or like-crime was the same penalty. And our Lord plainly invoked the death penalty. He said unto them, he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. In other words, she was guilty of a crime, which according to God’s Word is punishable by death. Very well. Proceed. But if you are guilty, then you too deserve to die. And when they heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, they went out one by one beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. All left, convicted. The charges having been made by the scribes and Pharisees in the stead of the husband, they were in his stead, and the law had the same force against them. To remain as witnesses therefore, as complaining witnesses and witnesses, was to invite the death penalty against themselves and they left.

When Jesus had lifted up Himself and saw none but the woman, He said unto her, “Woman, where are those thine accusers. Hath no man condemned thee?” Jesus at every point in His ministry refused to play the role of a judge. In this case, they were forcing Him and He turned the tables on them. He held a hearing and He denied their validity as witnesses, affirmed their guilt by their own action. She said, “No man, Lord.”

Now two points, as we saw. The Pharisees were at war with our Lord. At one point, by denying the doctrine of regeneration, of rebirth. How can a man be born again? This was Nicodemus’ p{?}. The other, by replacing the law with the traditions of men. At the second point, our Lord had affirmed the law against them, at the first point, but they did not stay to witness it. The woman was evidence of regeneration. Notice her word, ‘Lord,’ ({?}). The scribes and Pharisees had said ‘Master,’ that is teacher, rabbi. She called him Lord. She recognized in him, because the Holy Spirit had worked in her heart to bring her to regeneration, the very Son of God, because the title can also mean God; God, the Lord. Thus, the law was in her affirmed and the doctrine of regeneration evidenced in the life of this woman.

And Jesus said unto her, “Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.” Our Lord was not the one to use such language with an unregenerate man. Search the Gospels. Does He ever tell a man or woman who is clearly wicked, such as the Pharisees to sin no more? By no means. He was not one to cast pearls before swine, nor one to ask an unregenerate man who could only sin to sin no more. That would have been absurd. But here was a woman who in this episode had been moved by the Holy Spirit, had been born again, and so He said, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus forgave her. How?

Now at this point it is important for us to realize that there are two kinds of forgiveness in the Bible. There is religious forgiveness, that forgiveness which is affected by regeneration and through the saving power of Jesus Christ, our sins are blotted out. We are made new creatures in Christ, or as Christians we come to Him and we find forgiveness. This kind of forgiveness is only possible to the regenerate. There is also civil forgiveness, that is, if a man has stolen $100 and he refunds that $100, plus paying the penalty of another $100 or stolen a sheep and restored that, plus 4, he has made restitution. In terms of the civil law, he is forgiven. Now, the charges against the woman were dropped. This did not mean if she were married and her husband wanted to file for a divorce under the civil law; that was ended. Our Lord did not rule with respect to what might transpire subsequently in terms of the courts. For the moment at least, the civil charges against her were dropped. The Pharisees had no stomach for it. The forgiveness was religious.

By redemption through Jesus Christ, he sins were blotted out. Jesus had affirmed the death penalty, but the witnesses had disappeared. There was thus at least for the moment, no legal case against the woman. Legally, Jesus as one before whom a forced hearing had been held, could not therefore maintain a case, but a moral case existed. That was blotted out through her regeneration. And so our Lord sent her forth with a commandment, “Go and sin no more.”

Thus, Phariseeism was condemned. The offense of the Pharisees and their inability at any point to grasp God’s way was exposed. The Pharisees were wrong, therefore, not just at one point but at every point. The root being unclean, the root being a bad root, the fruits thereof were also bad. Since they denied totally the doctrine of rebirth, regeneration, they could have no sound doctrine of sanctification. Having denied God’s power in salvation, they denied God’s Law in sanctification. And they, who prided themselves on their righteousness, left Jesus in this episode convicted by their own conscience. This therefore was the most telling defeat of all those suffered by the enemies of our Lord.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy Word, and we thank Thee that Jesus Christ, who confounded the scribes and Pharisees of old and laid bare their wickedness and convicted them out of their own actions is the same today, yesterday, forever. And we thank Thee, our God, that in His own time, He will convict all workers of iniquity, all who deny His Word, His saving power, all who have captured the high places in the Church, and deny our Lord. We thank Thee, our God, that Thou art He who doest prevail, that Thy Word is Truth and Heaven and earth can pass away, but Thy Word cannot pass away, nor can it fail, nor shall it return unto Thee void, but shall accomplish that which Thou hast purposed. Strengthen us, oh Lord, by Thy Word and by Thy Spirit and bless us unto Thy praise and glory, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience] From the experience of the Pharisees and other … {?} … they had not had … {?}

[Rushdoony] They had not what?

[Audience] They had not had a {?} correct…

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They were unregenerate men. They were Humanists to the core. There’s an interesting little book. There are many defects in it, Phariseeism and Christianity by Hugo Odeberg. And at many points, he defends the Pharisees, but I think his defense adds to their condemnation, because he says of the Pharisees, that the love of mankind is the supreme norm. In other words, they were Humanists. That’s why man’s word and man’s self-salvation was more important to them than regeneration and the Word of God and the Law of God. The love of mankind was for them the highest test of religion.

Well, you can see how modern that is. That is still the essence of modernism and unbelief, the love of mankind, placing man in the high place, in the seat of authority.

Yes.

[Audience] {?} the law back then they wouldn’t {?} be required {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. It would have depended on the courts. The lower courts could have been dominated by Pharisees and/or Sadducees, depending on the particular court. The Sanhedrin was dominated by the Sadducees to a considerable degree because they were cooperating with Rome, and Rom generally stacked the deck.

Yes.

[Audience] When you .. {?} bitter, ah,

[Rushdoony] Bitter water…

[Audience] That was not a Law of God…

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Was that….

[Rushdoony] Yes. In Numbers 5.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, except you see, in this case it required the supernatural intervention of God to make that work. In other words, ah, perhaps you were absent when we dealt with Trials by Ordeal, Trials by Ordeal require nature to judge the person. In other words, in Trials by Ordeal, if you are tied up and thrown into the lake, and you drown, you’re guilty. If you float, you’re innocent.

Now in the Trial by Ordeal, it required a supernatural intervention by God to manifest guilt. In other words, not nature, but God acted. So it was the one thing that was comparable to the Ordeal and it was directly opposite; it required the supernatural intervention of God.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Um-hm.

Yes.

[Audience] How is modern psychiatry … {?} the Pharisees?

[Rushdoony] Yes, modern psychiatry has no place for the doctrine of rebirth. The doctrine of rebirth nowhere appears except in the Bible. Now some will deny that and say that the pagan mystery religions had doctrines of rebirth; that is true. But their doctrine of rebirth was not a spiritual and a moral rebirth. It was mystical and physical, that is, it was closely tied in with feeling and that sort of thing which is an entirely different thing. You went through rebirth in order to be physically better off, to be healed of sicknesses, to get rid of problems, but not to be a new person in the Lord. This is exclusively to be found in the Word of God. The mystery religions and the doctrine of rebirth had nothing in common with biblical faith.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. The whole premise of Freudianism is that you learn to live with your sense of guilt and to realize that you’re not guilty, that it’s just a primordial hang-over, that there is no such thing as sin, only guilt. And guilt represents an ancestral heritage, not a reality. So the essence of healing is to realize that you’re not really guilty.

Now, this kind of mumbo-jumbo is what has been the essence of some of the ancient mystery cults and their idea of rebirth. You play a game with yourself, so you’re reborn by denying that what was there was really there.

Now, Julius Caesar was a religious figure, incidentally, and he offered a religious program of salvation for Rome. And it was summed up in one word: clementia (mercy, forgiveness). Rome had been caught in a long struggle in which both sides had been guilty of all kinds of corruption, dishonesty, murder, everything. And so his answer to healing the civil war was, let’s have forgiveness and we’ll have a rebirth. But it was a forgiveness which didn’t change man; it didn’t have the grace of God and the regenerating power of God. So it was a forgiveness that just was going to whitewash everybody. And the very men whom Caesar forgave (he was worse than they were, though), were the ones who killed him.

Yes?

[Audience] I’ve heard you say that {?} … for different parts of …. {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The essence of it is to deny the reality of sin and guilt and to become overly sensitive to your feelings, which—and other people’s feelings, most of which are that you pamper, precisely those things which the Bible would tell you represent guilt and sin in you. You coddle them.

Yes.

[Audience] There are some evangelical {?} today.. {?} that deny predestination.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and this is why most of them are drifting away from the doctrine of being born again. The very churches which 10- 15-years ago and some today are stressing ‘ye must be born again,’ are also the ones who are beginning to drift from this doctrine because when you begin to deny predestination, you are denying that God is sovereign. And if God is not sovereign, then man ultimately is sovereign and man saves himself. As a result, they drift. And this is what happened to the Pharisees. You see, Phariseeism was a long time in developing and the minute they began to affirm that man was free to choose and decide for God or for Satan, they ultimately ended up by denying the power of the Holy Spirit and by denying the regeneration. They had to, because man was made sovereign, so the one followed logically from the other.

And this is why St. Paul, who said he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees was the one who stressed the most heavily the sovereignty of God and His predestinating power, because he knew this was the heart of the offense.

Yes.

[Audience] I read the .. {?} invariably the… {?} and he was… [?} some of the {?} from the Talmud

[Rushdoony] Well, I don’t know where you could find any evidence of that because the Talmud which represents Phariseeism is emphatic on free will. The two-volume study on the Pharisees, which is a classic by Finklestein, regarded by the Jews as authoritative definitely emphasizes this. Odeberg’s little work again emphasizes that free will, a radical doctrine of free will was basic to them. Man was free in the way that we believe God only is free.

[Audience]{?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. As far as their basic religious ideas were concerned, they were in the same camp: Humanists. But the Sadducees denied the hereafter and they took a very liberal attitude toward scripture, the Sadducee said, oh it’s the Word of God, even though they didn’t hold to it, the Sadducees took a very casual attitude and most of the Old Testament they didn’t regard as at all important. They were also great admirers of Greek philosophy and Greek culture, and although this isn’t often stressed in books, Greek gymnasiums and the like had been popular for about a century and a half, two centuries, in Palestine. They were great admirers, even the Pharisees, and they liked to adopt Greek ways. And Greek names were also very common. Thus, you find among the disciples, many of them have two names. One is their Greek name and one is their Hebrew name. Simon and also Peter, and Thomas, also known as Didymus; you see, two names, because a good deal of the time they were using the Greek language, Greek names and the like, for business reasons and for personal preference in many cases. So they were very definitely admirers of Greek culture and Greek society.

The real line of division between the Pharisees and the Sadducees was not over the Greeks; it was over the Romans and the Roman rule. The Sadducees cooperated with Rome, the Pharisees opposed it, but they were alike in rejecting regeneration. They were alike in rejecting the Law of God.

Yes.

[Audience] Is there other writing besides {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, we know for example, when He went to the synagogue at Capernaum He was asked to be the reader for the day and He read from the scriptures and we do know they had elementary schools in every village of Palestine; every village.

They had a very advanced education so that we mustn’t think that they were not well-trained, well-educated people. Every village boy would have studied Hebrew, and have known it thoroughly so that he could read Hebrew and he could read Aramaic and very commonly he could read Greek. So you could expect him to be literate in three languages as a matter of course. None of us can claim that. And if he were somewhat better educated, like St. Paul, he could also be literate in Latin. The idea that these were ignorant fishermen, these disciples, was nonsense. They had a very, very fine education. The schooling in those days was a very advanced sort of schooling because the old idea in Israel which survived through New Testament times was that you had to teach your child the Law (that is the Torah), the Old Testament, and a trade. But anyone who did not teach their child that taught him to be a thief, and the tithe money provided the schools. The Levites conducted the schools in every community.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, we do tend to feel that they were ignorant, they were superstitious, and you’ll find a lot of foolish people saying, well, of course those days ignorant people would be ready to believe almost anything was a miracle, and so on. This is the way the skeptics thought. But the, I think we could actually say that the level of understanding, and education then was remarkably high and that people could have discussed something a little more intelligently than the average man can today.

We tend to over-rate the level of understanding today, and under-rate everything that came before.

Our time is almost up. I’d like to share a few things with you that I think are rather interesting.

I read a little book of Albert J. Knock, and Knock, who died some years ago was a very telling writer and critic, and he had some very interesting comments to make and I thought those on politics and politicians include some very interesting things. These, mind you, come from the 20s and 30s.

And he said in one letter, the simple truth is that our businessmen do not want a government that will not let business alone, they want a government they can use. The old proverb about politics making strange bedfellows is quite wrong. It makes the most natural bedfellows in the world. Crook lies down with crook in any bed that interest offers, swine snoozes with swine in the litter of any pen that interest opens.

Slave-mindedness is a hateful thing, whether it follows Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, what matter. Is not the mass-leader too the most slave-minded of all? The French revolutionist’s saying, ‘I must follow the mob because I lead them,’ ought to be embroidered on every national flag, it strikes me. How right Huxley was about what he called the Coach Dog Theory of political leadership; that is that a leader’s duty is to look sharp for which way the social coach is going and then run in front of it and bark. [Laughter]

I once voted at a presidential election, there being no real issue at stake and neither candidate commanding any respect whatever, I cast my vote for Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. I knew Jeff was dead but I voted on Artemus Ward’s principle that if we can’t have a life man who amounts to anything, by all means, let’s have a first-class corpse. I still think that vote was as effective as any of the millions that have been cast since then.

Bureaucracy is ineradicable as a cancer when once it is well-rooted.

The problem of relief seems still to be a problem, and it will continue to be one until it is solved in a way that nobody will like. No country was ever yet rich enough to feed all its idle people, nor is ours. When Rome began to subsidize its populace, it signed its own death certificate. In our bold start on unemployment relief last year (this gives you an idea when it was written), it was a signal to the undertaker to clear for action.

On every point of conventional morality, all the liberals I have personally known were very trustworthy. They were great fellows for the larger good but it would have to be pretty large, because they would alienate your wife’s affections or steal your watch. But on any point of intellectual integrity, there is not one of them whom I would trust for 10 minutes alone in a room with a red-hot stove, unless the stove were comparatively valueless.

Liberals generally (there may have been exceptions, but I do not know who they were), joined in the agitation for the income tax in utter disregard of the fact that it meant writing the principle of absolutism into the Constitution, nor did they give a moment’s thought to the appalling social effect of an income tax. I never once heard this aspect of the matter discussed.

Liberals were also active in promoting the Democratic movement for the popular election of senators. Originally, you know, they were elected by State legislators. It certainly took no great wisdom to see that these two measures would straight-way ease our political system into collectivism as soon as some {?} some mass-minded, over-gifted man with sagacity should maneuver himself into popular leadership. And in the nature of things, this would not be long. The political liberal is the most dangerous person in the world to be entrusted with power, for no one knows what he will do with it. And the worst of him is that whatever he does, he will persuade himself that it was the divinely appointed thing to be done, as Mr. Wilson at the peace conference.

At any time after 1936, it was evident that a European war would not be unwelcome to the administration at Washington. Largely is the means of diverting public attention from its flock of uncouth economic chickens on their way home to roost. But chiefly as a means of strengthening its maligned grasp upon the country’s political and economic machinery.

The State is the poorest instrument imaginable for improving human society. Society cannot be moralized and improved unless the individual is moralized and improved. Jesus insisted on this.

Well, there is much more, but all very telling. And I was interested this week in reading in the papers of George Mason, one of the founding fathers of this country to find that up until the War of Independence, in Virginia, as well as in every other state, the Biblical Law with regard to taxation prevailed; the poll tax to take care of the courts and the government and the tithe to take care of welfare, of education, of relief, of every other social need. And the way that a property tax got into Virginia, the first state into which it came, was as a war-time emergency measure. War-time taxes never have a habit of disappearing. But up until that time, 1776 or 1777, the biblical form of taxation was exclusively used. It did persist in many other parts of the country for some time after that.

Let us bow our heads for the benediction.

And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.