The Fifth Commandment

The Limitations of Man’s Authority

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 9

Track: 33

Dictation Name: RR130S33

Date: 1960s-70s

Deuteronomy 25:1-3, “The Limitations of Man’s Authority.”

[Deuteronomy 25:1-3] “1If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.

2 And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number.

3 Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.”

We have been dealing in the Fifth Commandment not only with the family, but the problem of authority in general. Authority begins in the life of man in his childhood. He meets authority in the person of his father and mother, so that the Bible grounds the doctrine of authority in general under the commandment, ‘honor thy father and thy mother.’

Now the problem with authority is basic to the nature of any and every society. If the doctrine of authority is shattered, a society collapses; or else if it does not collapse, it is held together only by total terror. Now these are the alternatives. You either have a doctrine of authority that holds a society together, or if that doctrine of authority is broken, you have to have total terror to keep it together.

Now it is interesting to look back and see how deep the sense of authority was a few generations ago. In my book, Intellectual Schizophrenia, I touch on this matter with respect to New York City and a statement by Clifton Fadiman in his plea for basic education. And I pointed out that Clifton Fadiman’s plea for basic education rested on his false assumption that we could have just what we did have when he was a boy. He went to school in one of the slum schools in New York. But at that time, the authority of the school over the children was so great that during his four years in high school, the one tremendous incident that created a furor in the school was when somebody’s rubbers were stolen. That was a shocking event. Now today there is scarcely a day in the slum schools of New York when a vast number of articles are not stolen and it is treated as nothing. When that kind of authority existed in a school, in a slum area, it was possible to teach things that cannot be aught there today. There was authority. Today in those schools, there is anarchy. The only way you could bring back any kind of teaching would be through total terror. Now this is exactly what you have under Communism. They shattered the old religious authority.

In the old Russia, there was a tremendous amount of authority with a very limited number of police. The total number of police and secret police in the old czarist Russia was less than you find today in just one or two major cities of the Soviet Union. Today total terror is the only way whereby the Soviet Union is able to maintain authority. Now those are your alternatives: a doctrine of authority or total terror. And authority is a religious matter.

The God, or ultimate power of any system is also the authority and the law-giver of that system. All authority is in essence religious authority. The nature of that authority depends on the nature of the religion. If the religion is biblical, then authority rests on the triune God. If the religion is Humanism, then authority is in every man and you have anarchy. And this is our problem today. We have a false doctrine of authority, a Humanistic doctrine of authority, so that every man is his own law and it is as in the days of the judges when scripture tells us, “in those days, there was no King in Israel,” that is, God was not King over Israel. “And every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Every man was his own authority and his own source of law. All authority is by nature religious.

Adam and Eve were religious in their obedience to God and they were religious in their disobedience. They shifted religions. They shifted from the worship of God to the worship of themselves, because this was the satanic temptation: ye shall be as gods, every man his own god, knowing (determining) good and evil for yourself. Their disobedience to God was therefore a religious decision, an obedience to their own will. When a child defies its parents, it says I don’t want to and I won’t do it. I; it is my will that shall be done. And he replaces parental authority with his own will. He chooses himself as against his parents and their authority. If the child obeys only through fear, not through a respect for authority, it is still a religious obedience in that power (punishment) becomes the motive force in his life.

Now true authority is rightful power. It is dominion. It is jurisdiction. Men respond to acknowledged authority. They resent obeying authorities that they do not recognize as such. Without a valid doctrine of authority, no order stands. So that no matter how much one may appeal to sentiment or to feeling, it will not hold. There has to be an authority behind one’s words.

Now a few months ago, when we touched on this same problem from another perspective, I cited the collapse in Ancient Egypt of parental authority and the appeal to sentiment. Let us turn to Ancient Egypt again and read from an ancient document, the instructions of a father to his son (and I quote). “Double the food which thou givest thy mother.” (This is when she is a widow and the care is left to the son.) “Double the food which thou givest thy mother. Carry her as she carried thee. She had a heavy load in thee but she did not leave it to me. After thou wert borne she was still burdened with thee. Her breast was in thy mouth for three years. And though thy filth was disgusting, her heart was not disgusted. When thou takest a wife, remember how thy mother gave birth to thee and her raising thee as well. Do not let thy wife blame thee nor cause that she raise her hands to the god.” Now another quotation from the words of T{?} of the fourth dynasty on a similar subject. “If thou art a man of standing, thou shouldest found a household and loved thy wife at home which is fitting. Fill her belly and clothe her back. Ointment is the prescription for her body. Make her heart glad, for she is a profitable field for her lord.”

Now these two citations are very lovely. There’s no getting around that. But notice their appeal. It is to sentiment, to feeling entirely. There is no law behind it. There was no longer any real religious authority or civil authority to undergird the home. And if a man didn’t feel like supporting his mother then so much the worse for her! And if a man felt like throwing his wife out then so much the worse for her! Justice had nothing to do with it. Law had nothing to do with it. Authority was not behind it. so in these documents and other documents of the age, the only thing a man could do as he instructed his son was to try to appeal to his feelings. And any appeal to feeling is futile.

In terms of feeling, man’s feelings change from day-to-day. And I’ve heard many a man say with respect to his widowed mother, “I feel sorry for her…..but…” Other feelings are stronger in him than his pity for his mother. There can be therefore no appeal to sentiment that will bind men. It is futile. There is either a religious doctrine of authority which binds men in terms of a religious doctrine of law or a man is not bound.

Now in scripture, we are told power belongeth to God. God removeth kings and setteth up kings. The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever He will. There is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Now this was once the doctrine of all Western society; in Europe, as well as in this country. In Early America, in early Constitutional America all power was derived from God. Now it is derived from the people. We have had a religious and a legal revolution. And this is what our problem is. Power has moved from God to the people and so there is a legal revolution.

And this same revolution is everywhere on the face of the earth. For example, Queen Elizabeth II, her in her Christmas message said, “The essential message of Christmas is still that we all belong to the great brotherhood of man. If we truly believe that the brotherhood of man has a value for the world’s future then we shall seek to support those international organizations which foster understanding between people and nations.” Not Christ, but the brotherhood of man. And this is why on Christmas day, the radio and television programs, as they spoke about the meaning of Christmas, saw it as the birth of world brotherhood, as fulfilled in the U.N. And this was stressed by a variety of religious and civil leaders. In other words, we have a different religion and a different doctrine of authority.

But in the biblical doctrine, the powers that be are ordained by God and therefore all authority in every sphere is subordinate authority under God, subject to His Word. The biblical doctrine of authority means therefore:

First, that all authority is subject to the prior obedience to God and His Word, for we ought to obey God rather than men. Thus, while we are commanded over and over again in scripture to be obedient to all authority, in the home, in the school, in life at large, in church and state, yet we can never obey any authority when it commands that which is contrary to God’s Word.

Second, all authority on earth being under God and not God itself is by nature and necessity limited authority. Now this brings us to our text which is of central importance to understanding Biblical Law. We have seen that according to Biblical Law there must be no professional class of criminals, no incorrigible delinquents (capital punishment eliminates them). Then restitution takes care of all major offenses. But our scripture, Deuteronomy 25:1-3 declares that when there are minor differences and disagreements and offenses between men, then they are to come to judgment, that the judges may judge them. Then they shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked. And he who is sentenced is to receive corporal punishment; to be beaten. But the beating is to be a maximum of 40 stripes with a rod—no more. And why? That thy brother should -- lest thy brother should seem vile unto thee. This can also be translated, perhaps better translated into modern English, lest thy brother should seem light or be made light unto thee or be degraded in thy sight. In other words, here’s a very important fact. Here is a judgment and a man is sentenced to, let us say to 10 stripes or to 20 or to 40, the maximum; no more. If there is more, he’s going to be degraded. He is not degraded otherwise. He is not to be regarded as light or low or vile in thy sight. A very interesting fact. We’ll return to it in a moment.

There is a strict limitation, therefore, of the authority of the law here, of the judges. A maximum of 40 stripes lest it put a distance between the governors and the people, between the one who is vindicated in the trial and the one who is condemned. There’s not to be a distance between them. The one is not to be degraded. Moreover, at the time of the punishment, we find later on in the practice of Israel, the law was to be read first. So the custom was, very early in the life of the nation, that certain scriptures were read. And whatever else was read, always two verses were read, Deuteronomy 28:58, 59, “If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, the Lord thy God, then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues and of long continuance and of sore sickness and of long continuance.” A very interesting declaration. What was the purpose of the stripes as they were administered to the man? That the judgment of God, not on the individual alone, but on the whole of society be avoided. And what was involved in this sentence? Two things: not only that the guilty man be punished, but that he be not punished to the point that there be a breech between himself and the innocent one, between himself and the judges, between himself and all the rest of society.

Thus, an interesting fact appears here. The purpose of the law is in part to purge the society of wickedness, of evil, of wrongdoing, but also to unite society so that those who are alive are not to be divided, but to be united. In other words, if there is to be a division, the division is between life and death. The professional criminals. The incorrigibles are to be executed! But then the law is to unite the others, and therefore there must not be anything too severe a punishment that would put a division between those who are alive because those who are alive are not professional criminals. They are not depraved men. They are sinful, erring men who have for the moment, in a particular situation, acted wickedly. And so as they are beaten publically, or as they are compelled to make restitution for something, they are then restored to full standing with others and are to be seen in that light among men, so that there is a wholeness in society. There is health. Their record is cleansed. Thus, the function of the law is on the one hand to kill those who must be cut off, in other words, to do surgery, to eliminate the infected part of the body politic. But then, apart from that, to heal. Just as a sore finger, an infected finger is cleansed; it is not cut off, so the sick member, as it were, is restored.

But today, when we are destroying Biblical Law in the sense that we deny that any are to be cut off, we are infecting the whole body politic and we are not allowing the law to have its healing function because we deny it its killing function.

Then next, the law asserts the supremacy of the written law-word of God. Man’s authority is under God. It is limited, as we have seen, whereas God’s authority is unlimited. No man cannot interpret this limited authority in terms of his wants and wishes. The will of God is declared in His law-word. The form of the civil authority or government may vary, but whatever it be, it must be under the Word of God.

In Deuteronomy 17, we are given that provision. Is the nation going to be a commonwealth or a republic under judges or governors? Or is it to be a monarchy? In either case, Deuteronomy 17 makes clear, it is to be under the Word of God, whether it be judges or whether it be kings, they are to be limited at all times and they are to operate at all times under the Word of God. And the purpose is to put away evil from Israel or to purge it from the land.

Now it is interesting when it deals with the authority of the king (Deuteronomy 17), it declares he is to be of the covenant people. In other words, he is to be a man of faith. Next it says he is not to multiply horses nor wives, nor gold and silver unto himself; very significant, not to multiply horses. Horses in ancient times were used for offensive warfare. In other words, his purpose is to prepare for defensive warfare. He’s not to be an imperialist. He’s not to multiply wives. In other words, he’s to be monogamous, not to practice polygamy. Nor gold and silver unto himself, in other words, his purpose as ruler is to seek the prosperity of the people, not his own wealth. Moreover, he is to have, read and study the Word of God, all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes to do them. Moreover, the purpose of his study is not only to further God’s law order, but also that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren because he is a fellow subject of God. His authority is strictly limited. It is under God.

Jesus Christ of course, as the true King came to fulfill God’s law –word and to establish God’s dominion. “Lo, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, oh my God. Yea, thy law is written in my heart.”

Then, finally, with respect to the limitations of man’s authority, the scripture makes clear in Deuteronomy 21:15-17 that personal whims cannot take precedence over God’s Law even where our property is concerned. The law has to do with inheritance, a favored son, as against a disliked son, a son by one wife as against the son of another wife in a polygamous union. In this case the father cannot pass over the first born as long as the first born is godly. The only legitimate grounds of heirship in other words, are religious. And personal feelings cannot take precedent even where our property is concerned.

Thus, authority is not only a religious concept; it is a totally religious concept. It requires recognition at every point in our lives of God’s absolute law order. The starting point of this recognition is in the family. “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Out of this obedience comes the basic, the fundamental religious training in authority. If the authority of the home is denied it means that man is in revolution against the fabric and the structure of life, against life itself. Therefore, this commandment declares that obedience carries with it the promise of life.

Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank Thee for Thy Word and we thank Thee our Father that Thou hast called us to be the people of Thy Word in Jesus Christ our Lord. We pray, our Father, that Thou wouldst use us to the end that Thy Word again may prevail in the hearts of men, in Thy Church, in civil government, in schools, throughout the length and breadth of our land and of this world. Bless us to this purpose, our Father, in Jesus’ name, amen.

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

Yes...

[Audience] Well, in my {?} … just did the talking {?}

[Rushdoony] I would say that first of all, he should make restitution before he is seated. And in this case, this is not stipulated. He has been seated and told to make restitution and I doubt that there will be any enforcement. First of all, the restitution is not more than a minimal one, and second, the forgiveness precedes the act that is required before forgiveness can be instituted. So I think in this case congress had a sound principle in mind but misapplied it.

Yes…

[Audience] You mentioned about inheritance and the firstborn. Did the firstborn get more than the {?} children?

[Rushdoony] Yes. In inheritance, the firstborn received a double portion. If there were two children, it was divided in three portions. However, he did not receive it unless he were a godly son. With it, he had the responsibility of the care of the parents as well as to look out after his brothers and sisters in crises. So he received more because he had a greater responsibility.

Yes…

[Audience] Well I’m thinking about {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?} Who are the… {?}

[Rushdoony] No. The Edomites have disappeared from history as a people. The {?} Israelites promulgate all kinds of such notions. Just beware of their nonsense.

But the Edomites were the descendants of Esau and they more or less amalgamated with the Jewish people about the time of the, well the 1st century, B.C. Herod was an Edomian or Edomite. They disappear entirely from history after the first two, three centuries A.D. They were absorbed by a few other peoples but mostly disappeared. So the idea of finding them in some of the modern nations is nonsense.

Yes…

[Audience] {?} before… {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Ah, yes, there is, first of all, the various prophecies indicate fully that he is to be of the house of David, then next, the first genealogy in Matthew is the legal (royal) genealogy.

[Audience] as {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The second—however, that genealogy does not always go by blood, it goes by legal inheritance. And biblical scholars who’ve traced it out in terms of related passages in scriptures have pointed out in great detail how there are many cases where it is not the son of but it is a grandson or a great-grandson or a legal heir. So the first genealogy is the legal genealogy of Joseph.

The second genealogy in Luke is the blood genealogy, the actual descent. And it gives Joseph’s name but it is also that of Mary. Both were of the tribe of Judah.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They were related. They were related. They were distant cousins.

Yes..

[Audience] {?} scriptural flaw… {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. We’ll be starting this subject next week. Most people don’t realize that prisons are a fairly modern thing. And it’s a substitute for Biblical Law. They are quite new on the whole. The only thing that existed in ancient times and in modern times until fairly recently was not a formal prison but a ward house where they were kept in ward or in custody pending a trial. Prisons are at the most 200 years old and very extensively a lot younger; in many areas, only a century or so old. And this is one of the reasons why we have a modern problem. But we will begin an analysis of this next Sunday so I don’t want to get into this any further.

Yes..

[Audience] Well I wondered, {?} from {?}

[Rushdoony] Those were different. The dungeon was a place where people were kept for ransom. That was a lawless thing on the part of robber-barons. It was not a part of the established law order. So you see, you have to distinguish between what people did in terms of a lawless act and what was the standing law. So dungeons were places of torture and of keeping prisoners for ransom. For example, Richard the Lionhearted, King of England, was thrown into a dungeon until he could be ransomed because the Austrian monarchy, I believe it was, as he was trying to sneak back to England, almost alone with just a handful of men, figured since there was a tremendous political conflict at the time, here’s a good man to seize and take prisoner until England coughs up so much money to ransom him. And of course, the thing that compounded the problem there was that his brother John had seized the throne in England, which left Richard in the lurch for quite a while. The amazing thing was that Richard, who was something of a scoundrel, was so indulgent of John.

Yes..

[Audience] {?} ….could be the king, and for that reason… {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. It was not a part of the law processes of the day.

[Audience] I see.

[Rushdoony] In other words, if you went by the legal processes of the day rather than by the barbarian practices that were survivals of paganism or were practices whereby they just took vengeance on someone outside the law. You can find instances of that, very definitely; a great many. But the legal practice was otherwise. And there are many, many violations of this, and of course, with the in some of the countries of Medieval Europe, you can find flagrant violations of this, but Christian law order as it was established, not as it was violated, did not entail prison as a legal sentence.

For example, you can find that Gottschalk, one of the very fine theologians of the medieval period spent most of his life in prison because he taught predestination. Now he was never legally sentenced. There was no law process that put him there, it was just that Church authorities didn’t like him teaching that so into a cell in the monastery he went, and he refused to recant and he stayed there.

Yes…

[Audience] {?} country where {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, not some country but in many places. For example, you can take England. Go through the Anglo-Saxon chronicles which means you’re getting back into early English history and you can find periods so lawless when it was virtually impossible for a man to go out after dark. When anyone who was poor or weak was continually victimized by extortion, rape, murder, and you can also find periods when a strong monarch by applying the law rigorously and executing the hoodlums made it so secure in England, as the chronicles state at one point, that a virgin carrying a sack of gold could travel from one end of the kingdom to the other untouched. Now that’s law! That’s order. But you see, it depended very definitely on who was in authority and who chose to enforce it. So it could very sharply, from one decade or from one generation to the other, throughout Europe. You had eras of very, very fine law enforcement and the elimination of the hoodlums. You had other periods when it was fearful.

For example, one of the sad parts of English history, you take England again, was that after every war, you had a large class of professional beggars, the veterans who were crippled. But when Cromwell’s army, a thoroughly Christian army, returned from the wars, the army disappeared overnight after it was discharged. And McCauley in his History of England, comments on it. Not a beggar was to be seen. Every man, no matter how crippled, in terms of his faith, saw to it that he took care of himself, or if he was extremely maimed, his family took care of him, so that the army melted out of sight overnight.

So you see, you can’t go back and say ‘what country?’ but ‘when?’ And when you find that at a time you did have exceptionally fine law and order, it was because you had a Christian ruler or a Christian regime where a Christian law order was enforced. And sometimes, you did have it to an amazing degree. [0:44.16.5]

Yes…

[Audience] Wasn’t there a time that {?} trying to … {?} lawful prisoners.. {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. We’ll come to that, too. Yes. Sometimes a debtor in terms of Biblical Law, eh, that is, a criminal who could not make restitution, did it by becoming a bondservant for a time.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] He was---no, he was in prison pending execution of the sentence, you see. He was to be executed and so they were given a choice, who do you want released from execution, because we usually pardon someone at the time of the Passover—Jesus or Barabbas? Whose execution will be commuted?

Yes…

[Audience] Ah, I’m interested in … {?}

[Rushdoony] The child in school is under the authority of the teachers. If the parents do not like that authority, they can withdraw the child and take the child elsewhere. But as long as the child is there, it is under that authority without any question. The only alternative to obedience is total withdrawal.

[Audience] Well, if children are {?}

[Rushdoony] Exactly. The children cannot be taught disobedience. They must be taught obedience. And if there’s any cause for disobedience in the school, that is, some ground, conscientious ground where they cannot conscientiously, under God obey, they are to withdraw. Now, this is why we believe in Christian education. We believe that the school should be free schools (that is, free of State control and independent) so that the parents can choose them and if they find cause for disagreeing with the school, they simply withdraw. But while they are there, they must be obedient, and obedience must be strictly enjoined.

I think the principle that the Reverend Robert Thoburn, in the Fairfax Christian School, which I think is virtually without equal, employs, is excellent. He has one of the finest schools in the nation and virtually all his children come from nonChristian homes. It is a fixed principle with him, that no child is to be permitted any kind of disobedience, nor can the parents when they bring the children there, disagree with their methodology. If they do, they are to withdraw their child, so that if any parent comes and says, well I don’t like the Christianity you’re teaching my children, or the Conservatism or the kind of economics. He doesn’t argue. He simply goes to the filing cabinet, takes out their transcript and hands them to them and says, you may take the transcript to the school of your choice. And that’s it. As long as they are there, the parents are to back put the authority of the school or to withdraw the children. They are given no alternative. And this to me is the only way. You withdraw on principle or you stay and you obey on principle.

Our time is really past due, but there are a couple of interesting things that I’d like to pass on to you, one from the comic strips of a week ago, Our Boarding House, Major Hoople where I think Major Hoople spouts some very interesting Keynesian economics. Buster asked him, “Major, you claim to be up on high finance. Why are the solid silver coins disappearing? “and Hoople answers, “Just a simple misapplication of Gresham’s Law of Economics, boys.” And he continues, “Um, yes, Gresham found that bad money drives good money out of circulation.” And Buster says, “Like the jingle says, ‘No one saves money that looks a bit funny.’” But Hoople answers, “But of course, these new coins are different. They’re backed by the government.” And the answer, “So was General Custer, Prohibition, and the Pearl Harbor Defense Plan.”

Which I think is a good answer. The rest of it is good too, but that I think was the point.

Then this, from the Conference of the National Committee of Negro Churchmen, which was this time sponsored by the United Presbyterian Church, but has had the cooperation of most church groups. The invocation at this conference went like this in its conclusion. “Unite our hearts, our spirits and our guts in the third world and make it a world of revolution, in the name of Jesus, of Martin, and of Malcolm, we raise our prayer to Thee.” On the last night of the conference, the delegates became angry with a cashier at the St. Louis Gateway Hotel where they were meeting for their conference. They insisted that the cashier and several others of the help had made insulting remarks to them. The whole delegation decided to hold a sit-in in the lobby of the hotel which lasted until 3:30 a.m. And then it concludes, somewhat later, that the United Presbyterian Church, through one of its committees, can put its approval on such outrageous conduct is an indication of how far from scripture the ecumenical movement has drifted. It is no longer Christian.

Then this little bit of humor which I thought was very interesting. Some of you read of the discovery of gold in Beverly Hills not too long ago? Well, the man who discovered it, McLaglen, on his property, didn’t know how to exploit it so he thought he’d rent it out to anyone who came and wanted to work it, on a fee basis. And he didn’t have any takers except a group of hippies. So he let them have a go at it and he remarks, “The engineers told me that one of my problems would be a shortage of water that would be needed for the gold washing operation. I explained that to the hippies and they looked at me blankly and just shrugged.

“Look, man,” one of them said, “We, like we don’t care if the gold we get is dirty.”

I should have known that lack of water is never a problem to a hippie! He explained to the group that they would require certain instruments like mine detectors to pinpoint any metal in the ground.

The boss hippie said, “Don’t need nothing like that. We got the man!” He indicated a wizened little old fellow about 500 years of age, it seemed in a dirty white toga with a bouquet of dandelions circling his bald head. “The man will meditate a bit,” the hippie chief told me, “you know, think golden thoughts. And when he gets the right vibrations, we know he’s {?} in on where the cool yellow stuff is and then the cats here will start digging.”

“You thinking pure golden thoughts, man?” He would ask, and the man would nod his head.

“Think gold and get gold,” the hippie said, “never fails to work.”

Well, I had some misgivings about the whole set-up, but I had to go elsewhere so there wasn’t much I could do about it. I was gone for a week or so and when I got back, I discovered that all the hippies were gone. There was nothing left but a few scattered beads and some wilted flowers.

I soon found out why they left so quickly. It seems ‘the man’ was sitting on one spot for two days thinking golden thoughts when he suddenly got all excited and announced that he had just gotten a flash that this was the place to dig. All the hippies started digging wildly for about an hour, which is probably more work than they had ever done in their whole lives. Then all of a sudden there was a terrific blast and an explosion and they all ran like H- down the hills, never to return.

I was glad to see them go, but I had one terrible time explaining to the County Sanitation Department how one of their sewer pipes exploded on my property! You know, man, if you think pure golden thoughts….!

Well with that, we are adjourned. [Laughter]

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