Salvation and Godly Rule

Forgiveness of Sins

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Forgiveness of Sins

Genre: Speech

Track: 34

Dictation Name: RR136S34

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Let us worship God. Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before Him all the earth. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy hast made us thy people, and who dost daily surround us with thy mercies and blessings. We come into thy presence mindful of our need. We need thee every hour. Thou art He who dost undergird and strengthen us, and who dost in all things, make all things work together for good unto us, in thee, and so our God, in this faith and in this confidence we come to thee, mindful that our tomorrows, all come from thee. Bless us, prosper us, protect and defend us, and cause thy face to shine upon us. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our reading is from the Gospel according to St. Matthew 6:9-15: “Forgiveness of Sins.” We’ve been studying the Doctrine of Salvation and the Doctrine of the Ungodly, whose idea of salvation leads straight to Hell, and now we shall analyze the significance of the biblical doctrine as in effect it leads out of Hell on earth into a new life in Christ. “The Forgiveness of Sins.” Matthew 5:9-15. “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Without forgiveness of sins, Hell would be the basic and ultimate state of all men. The torment of the burden of sin and guilt would make the life of all men Hell on earth. One of the characteristics of guilty men is that they endlessly rehearse the past. This is a habit all of us have whenever we make a mistake, even a harmless one. If we do something say, in public, that is a faux paux, we endlessly rehearse the situation in our minds and try to vindicate or justify ourselves, or somehow reorder reality. This is only a small thing compared to what guilty men do. Guilty men are endlessly reliving the past. They are past-oriented. They are unable to cope with the present, let alone the future. This is why, when a civilization become guilt-ridden, it is unable to cope with the present and the future. The guilt-ridden look for scapegoats, someone to blame for their guilt.

We referred a few weeks ago to the poet, Lord Byron. Lord Byron was a man endowed with every kind of privilege. He was of the nobility of a particularly distinguished family, outstandingly attractive, very popular among men and women. In fact, he had a problem as far as women were concerned in that everywhere he went, women were throwing themselves at him. He was such a popular and romantic figure. He had every kind of advantage in terms of physical possessions, a very attractive wife, and yet he was a guilt-ridden man because of his conduct and he looked endlessly for scapegoats. He had one disadvantage; a clubfoot. It was not a serious one, it didn’t handicap him seriously. As a matter of fact, it tended to add to his appeal among many people, but it is surprising how Byron cultivated a hostility to God and man, feeling that he was the most underprivileged, most abused, most put upon person. He blamed Heaven and earth. He blamed his parents for everything in his life, and for his sin. He was a Freudian before Freud, and I mean that seriously. He blamed his wife, although she came late into his life. He blamed his very devout Scotch nurse, who was a Calvinist, and claimed that she had given him a guilt complex about everything, although there is very little evidence that he paid much attention to her. He was an injustice collector. His foot was a minor handicap. In some ways, it was an asset, because there were so many people who felt sorry for him for that, especially women, that the romantic hero has added tremendously to his appeal, and there were other people around him, just as good looking, who wished they were club-footed like Lord Byron so that they would get the sympathy of all the attractive women in the court, but that crippling was small, compared to the crippling force in his mind of guilt.

At this point, Freud was a very astute and very observant man, because Freud recognized that the real power of religion, and he was hostile to religion, and by religion, Freud basically mean Old Testament religion and Christianity. The real power of religion Freud recognized was that it alone offered a solution to the tremendous burden of guilt, and he declared that it would make no difference what scientists did in the way of trying to disprove God. As long as men felt guilty, and as he said, all men do, they’re going to look for a savior and they’re going to turn to God, and so he said, the only way we can destroy religion, and Freud was bitterly hostile to religion, the main thrust of his work as I point out in my study of Freud, was not sex but it was hostility to religion, and he said, If we make the problem of guilt a scientific one and provide a scientific answer to guilt, then we can eliminate religion, and so Freud posited that the feeling of guilt was a product of man’s evolutionary past, not a product of any sin against any imagined God. When man was half-ape and lived in packs, the fathers would drive out the sons when they reached a certain age, and finally, the sons would gang up on the fathers and kill them, and eat them, possessed the mothers and the daughters. So, the basis of guilt, he said is this ancient primordial urge of every man, which he said is the will to live. The will to live, he defined as the urge to patricide, to cannibalism, and to incest, and so he said man has this guilt feeling. So all we have to do is to enable people to understand that this guilt is not real, but it’s an inheritance of their animal past, and then we solve their problems. And so the essence of psychoanalysis is to get people to see what they feel guilty about and that it amounts to nothing, and yet in spite of this, it is telling that Freud recognized the hunger of man for the forgiveness of sins.

{?} John, in a magazine in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has written, “After publication of the Future of an Illusion, Freud wrote that he had great understanding of the words, ‘Your sins are forgiven you. Arise and walk.’ He wondered what would happen if the patient were to ask, ‘How do you know if my sins were forgiven.’ Freud could not simply answer, ‘I am the son of God. I forgive you.’ He would have to say, ‘I, Professor Sigmund Freud, forgive you your sins,’ which he admitted would not work very well. This letter concludes with a remarkable paragraph. ‘I do not know if you have guessed the secret bond between lay Analysis and Illusion, two of his books. In the first one, I want to protect analysis against physicians and the other against priests. I would like to hand it over to a profession which does not yet exist, a group of worldly physicians of the soul who do not need to be physicians and who should not be allowed to be priests.’”

Well, Freud was right, he recognized the problem, that in spite of his explanations, what men wanted was someone who could say to them, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. Arise, take up thy bed and walk.” He also knew that he could not do this, that it required someone who could speak as very God of very God, and then go to Freud rather than to Christ, because they and Freud both know the real need for forgiveness of sins, that they do not want forgiveness of sins from Jesus Christ because it requires repentance. Lord Byron knew what his sins were. He did not like the sense of guilt, especially with regard to his incest with his half-sister, but he had no desire to forsake the sin, and so he raged against society for having taught him that certain things were wrong and against God for having so established it. He was sorry only that he felt guilty, not that he had sinned.

When a man finds forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, then he knows that the past and its offences have been blotted out by Jesus Christ, that the old man is dead in Christ and he is now a new creation, and therefore, he can be present and future-oriented. God, in his sovereign mercy, takes that past and blots out that guilt and the judgment against him, and makes all things work together for good for him now. Moreover, our Lord then teaches us that instead of seeing sin in our past and heredity, and in environment, we must see it essentially in ourselves, here and now, and gives us the power to cope with it. Byron saw others as the problem. It is the mark of the Christian when he deals with sin that he sees it in himself. The sinner sees it in others, and at the same time, plays God, seeks to reorder reality and morality in terms of his will.

To find forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ means that Christ now deals, not only with our past, but with our present and with our future, and this, the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, makes clear. The fifth petitions reads, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” This means far more than the fact that we sin daily and are daily in need of grace. True, though that is emphatically, the larger catechism of the Westminster standards says in Question 194, “What do we pray for the in the fifth petition? In the fifth petition, which is ‘Forgive us debts as we forgive our debtors,’ acknowledging that we and all others are guilty both of original and actual sin, and thereby become debtors to the justice of God, and that neither we nor any other creature can make the least satisfaction for that debt. We pray for ourselves and others that God, of His free grace would, through the obedience and satisfaction of Christ, apprehended and applied by faith, acquit us in his beloved, continue his favor and grace to us, pardon our daily failings, and fill us with peace and joy in giving us daily more and more assurance of forgiveness, which we are the rather embolden to ask and encouraged to expect when we have this testimony in ourselves, that we, from the heart, forgive others their offenses.”

Forgiveness of sins removes the burden of past sins, as we have seen, through the atoning work and satisfaction of God’s justice by Jesus Christ. As Paul said in Romans 5:15, “By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous, even as by one all were brought under the curse, so by one we are removed from the curse.” Forgiveness has a present reference, Paul tells us. It fills us with peace and joy, and gives us increasing assurance of forgiveness. The more we grow in grace, the stronger is our assurance of forgiveness. St. Paul, in Romans 15:13 says, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.”

Now, St. Paul there emphasizes that peace and joy are the products of forgiveness, but also hope. Twice the word “hope” is used. The God of hope. We are begotten again, he says, elsewhere, into a living, a lively hope, and God makes us to abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost, so that we live, not in fear, not in guilt, but in hope. There is a present and a future reference. Not only in the fact of hope, but the imperative to forgive others their offenses, and we are commanded to pray with this in mind. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Now, at this point, there is a very interesting and very crucial fact. Our Lord, in the Lord’s Prayer, uses the word “debt.” Then, in verses 14 and 15, He uses the word “trespasses.” “For if we forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” At this point, there are two versions of the Lord’s Prayer. Many people render the prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” and one of the problems you have when you get people of diverse religious backgrounds, church backgrounds, together, for example, Presbyterians and Episcopalians is that some are saying trespasses and others, debtors, and there is a little bit of confusion at this point.

Now what is correct? Now, very strictly and literally, the Greek word here in Matthew 6:12, in the Lord’s Prayer, is “opheiletes,” and it means “one who owes anything to another primarily with regard to money, so it means debtor, very literally, and yet our Lord then turns around and uses the word “trespasses” in what follows. Now, very definitely, He wanted us to understand debtors, in part, in terms of the word trespasses. This is the reason why those who use the trespasses version of the Lord’s Prayer have adopted it, because they held, many generations ago, our Lord very clearly wanted us to understand debts, in terms of trespasses, offenses against us as a kind of a debt. They are very right in that, very definitely, our Lord intended to convey that meaning. If He wanted us to understand that the meaning of debt there is trespasses, why then didn’t He use the word trespasses or the Greek word for it, in the prayer instead of then using it as a word of explanation? The point is a very important one. The word forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, to every one of his listeners immediately echoed an Old Testament requirement; the Law of Jubilee.

Now, the Law of Jubilee, in Leviticus 25:26 and in other passages, we have in part, on our liberty bell. “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof.” What was this proclamation of liberty? The forgiveness of debts. The Year of Jubilee was the forty-ninth and fiftieth year, the fiftieth year properly, but it was really two years because the forty-ninth was a Sabbath year and it was also celebrated as a year of release. So that in every century, there were four years, and the years forty-nine and fifty and the years ninety-nine and one hundred, which were years or redemption, there was a cancellation of all debts. Now, there was a cancellation every seventh year, as a sabbatical year, but it was much more thorough on the Jubilee. There was a repossession, then of all forfeited lands, the end of all servitude for all bond servants and for slaves. It was the great year of release, the cancellation of all servitude, of all bondage, both monetary and otherwise.

What our Lord had in mind, therefore, was this. When God forgives us our sins in Jesus Christ, we then become citizens of the new creation, the world of the Jubilee. We have entered into the Jubilee time. We have liberty from sin, freedom from guilt. We are now no longer slaves, but we have the glorious liberty of the sons of God. We are now commissioned by our Lord to fulfill the other requirement of the Jubilee, the repossession of the earth in his name.

Now, by saying “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” our Lord meant to indicate that the forgiveness of sins both by God and by man is basic to the Jubilee, basic to the new creation, basic to the kingdom of God, basic to the church, basic to godly society. Other men are brought into the Jubilee by God’s regenerating act as they are converted. Our duty is to extend that same forgiveness so that all become citizens of God’s kingdom, heirs of the Jubilee, and that we do not become guilty of denying the Jubilee release to those whom God has ordained thereto.

There is another aspect of forgiveness, and the word debt again brings it out. It’s very easy to say, forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins or the trespasses of others, if all it is is words, and today, the word forgiveness has been reduces, as we shall see on other occasions, to a feeling. It means literally, it’s a juridical, a legal term, in the Bible, charges dropped because satisfaction has been rendered.

Now, it’s very tempting for men to reduce forgiveness just to a feeling, but when our Lord says “forgive us our debts,” and requires us to say it, “as we forgive our debtors,” that puts it on a cash basis, doesn’t it? Now that’s the imagery, deliberately. A little more difficult to forgive somebody a $100 debt, than it is to forgive them something that never hurt us. There were so many people who were ready to forgive Sirhan Sirhan for murdering Kennedy. It was amazing how many prominent figures were spouting forgiveness. They were not the ones who were shot, nor was it their husband, or son, or brother who was shot, but they were full of forgiveness, and the world is full of this cheap forgiveness, which is meaningless, and you see, when forgiveness is meaningless, offenses also are carried on as though they were meaningless. We’ve cheapened actions.

In the Old Testament time, when the law of Jubilee and the law of the Sabbatical year prevailed, men did not go readily into debt, nor commit those acts that would create bondage, nor would you readily make a loan. Things were much more provident. People acted more providently, more cautiously, more carefully. Now, this is a very significant fact. You see, then, forgiveness cost something. Now, when it costs nothing in the minds of most people, people are readier to offend, then the whole thing is cheapened.

During the past century and a half, one of the problems that we have had is that as a democratization has taken place, it has brought certain real advantages, but it also has cheapened authority, and cheapened dignity. There is less respect of people, one for another. As a result, people are more ready to be critical and to take advantage, one of another, and to be disrespectful because words are cheap, forgiveness is cheap, everything is done on a cheapened basis because, well, forgiveness is nothing now, and as a result, human relations have been badly mangled. If you go back to the Colonial Period, it is extremely rare that you find a pastor who left a church because of personal problems within the church. That is, personality conflicts, tension between one group of people and another. Jonathan Edwards had to on one occasion, and it stands out because it was so unusual. Of course, there was a theological problem behind that personal problem, so strictly, it was not the kind of thing that happens today. Today, the biggest reason for pastoral transfers is that they simply get exhausted. Exhausted because of the critical attitudes of people one towards another, towards themselves, towards other church officers, the constant conflict of all kinds of personal problems.

Now, why didn’t this take place in bygone generations? Well, at that time, forgiveness required more and actions were regarded as more serious, and today, with the cheapening of relations and the radical democratization of them, everybody is a judge over everybody else. Now, I quoted Freud earlier with regard to the need for forgiveness of sins. Freud was, in my opinion, one of the worst influences on our age, but one of the most honest atheists we’ve seen for untold generations, so that, while my book is perhaps as critical a work of him as has ever been written, there was a certain integrity about Freud. He never made any bones about what he was doing. His purpose was to undermine biblical faith, but it is interesting the degree to which Freud and his wife reflected the background of very devout, ultra-conservative, old fashioned Jewish parents, and the biblical training. As a matter of fact, one of the interesting things about Freud is that he had been taught to read Hebrew, reading the Old Testament, but he was so hostile to it, he wouldn’t even admit that he knew how to read Hebrew, but he could read it very readily. The affect of that knowledge never left him.

When he died, after tremendous suffering because of a cancer in his throat and jaw, his wife, Martha Freud, wrote a letter to Dr. Ludwig Fizwanger{?}, who wrote expressing his sorrow, and she said, “How good, dear doctor, that you knew him when he was still in the prime of his life, for in the end, he suffered terribly. So that even those who would most liked to keep him forever had to wish for his release, and yet how terribly difficult it is to have to do without him, to continue to live without so much kindness and wisdom beside me. It is small comfort for me to know that in the fifty-three years of our married life, not one angry word fell between us, and that I always it as much as possible to remove from his path the misery of every day life. Now my life has lost all content and meaning.”

Now, is this kind of thing unusual? Definitely not. In most middle class circles it was quite routine. I recall some years ago a woman whose dates were approximately 1860-1940, remarking that in her youth and in her middle years, in middle class society, if a husband and wife once or twice in their marriage, had angry words, it was a shocking thing and it meant that the marriage was virtually on the rocks. Normally, there was too much respect and forbearance in the relationship for that to be possible, and she remarked that that was one of the greatest changes in life from her youth and middle years to the twentieth century, the 1920’s and 1930’s, that everybody was so vocal in expressing every kind of discontent and dissatisfaction and criticism. She remarked further that it wasn’t that those things didn’t happen when she was younger, but it was the mark of the lowest class of society to disagree publically, or argue with one another privately, and it was regarded as very disreputable.

Today, the feeling is “out with everything.” Out with everything, and the result is a cheapening of life. The result is when forgiveness has been cheapened to words, everybody is unforgiving really, because everybody parades every little grievance, every little criticism, and there is more and more isolation of people because of their inability to live one with another. The fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer is thus urgently necessary. It doesn’t ask us to overlook heresy and flagrant sin, but it does ask us to be the people of grace, who because we have been forgiven, are able to extend forgiveness to others. It does require us to be the people of the Jubilee, and to manifest the joy, the freedom, and the release of the Jubilee in our daily life, and one with another. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that through Jesus Christ, we have been made the people of the jubilee, that we live now in Jubilee times with our debts forgiven, with freedom from slavery to sin and guilt, and the prospect now and in eternity of being possessors of all things, in heaven and on earth. Make us therefore, our Father, ever filled with thy spirit that we may forgive as we have been forgiven, and that having received grace, we may manifest grace, that we may ever abound in thy grace and forgiveness and ever manifest the freedom and the joy of the Jubilee. In Jesus name. Amen.

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

[Audience] {?}go around forgiving everybody when they ask for forgiveness {?}

[Rushdoony] A very good question. The question is, do we forgive everybody if they ask for our forgiveness.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh no, definitely not. No, no. That’s, in effect, saying you’re condoned in your offense, so that there has to be repentance and a change of heart. Now, this may not always mean a formal statement, “Please forgive me,” although that is very helpful and it is an act of humility that certainly is conducive to a spirit of grace, but someone who, well, for example, the illustration I used some time ago from the papers, of this pair of hoodlums who robbed a congregation in Flint, Michigan, and the pastor said, “We forgive you.” Now, that was not godly forgiveness. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, either way, it doesn’t affect the meaning much, and that of course, is a requirement, that the kingdom of God rule here, and that we have been summoned to make this the Jubilee world. You’d have to say that the Lord’s Prayer is a very post-millennial prayer. That’s why the {?} dispensationalists will not permit its use. If there are no other questions, our time is late and there are a couple of things I’d like to share with you.

One of them has to do with a reference or two I made to Theodora and how much she accomplished all by herself. We so often, in this day and age, appreciate the significance of the individual and what the individual can do. Theodora was the daughter of an animal trainer in the arena at Rome who died when his three daughters were still very young girls, I think about five, seven, and ten. Theodora was, I believe, the five year old, or seven year old. She was not the oldest. This was tragedy for the family. It meant that the girls, years before they were in teens, were forced into prostitution, and into every kind of perversion. Some years later, she became a Christian. She wound up as the wife of Justinian, who was the nephew of the emperor, and then as the empress. All our modern legal structure is due to Justinian and Theodora, and particularly our family law, the biblical law with regard to the family was made a part of the law of Christendom. Now, there is a war against Theodora’s work today, but here was one woman who, with faith and determination, reversed the course of an empire, and it is interesting that at one point, when there was rebellion against the work of her husband, Justinian, and Justinian and Belisarius, their general, with a very limited number of soldiers, five or six hundred, were cooped up on the palace grounds and the rest of the empire was in the hands of the opposition, who were controlling the capitol. They prepared to escape by ship, with a ship anchored nearby, and when they were ready to board, Theodora said, “Ye who puts on the purple, dies with the purple,” and she refused to leave. Well, none of the men dared to leave at that point, and they figured they’d better stand and fight, and when they did, the opposition was so startled to think that a handful would fight under those circumstances, that they won, repossessed everything, and then the law was given subsequently.

Well, it’s interesting that some years later, when Belisarius, the general, was an old man, or elderly, for those days; he was almost sixty, a similar thing happened. The invasion of the Huns against Byzantium, or Constantinople, and I’d like to read a passage of that because I think it’s important for us now a days to remember that people can do things.

“They had a long period of peace, they didn’t have an army, didn’t have anything except a few troops stationed under younger commanders. Belisarius had long since been retired. There was no army anywhere near the capitol or on the line of approach of the Huns. Belisarius had accepted, as he had done for thirty years, an order to be carried out. The veteran commander could not, of course, muster an army in a day. The last militia had been lost out on the long war{?}. Then, too, the city armies had been stripped of reserve weapons. Going out of the palace, he paid no attention to the nervous crowd of patricians who formed in a sort of a line in obedience to the emperor’s son. Instead, he told announcers to run through the streets, calling, “Belisarius is going out to the standards. He asks for all who have served under him.” Such veterans were to meet at once in the Strategium Square. In addition, all horses were to be seized from courts and liters, and even from the inviolate stables of Hippodrome chariots. Belisarius wanted swords from the houses, spears from the theaters, every bit of armor hung in the halls, especially the helmets with the plumes of his old cometatus. Above all, he wanted casting weapons, javelins, and bows, planks from the shipyards, poles, axes, sailors and peasants from the countryside, he wanted all of those. Although close to sixty years of age, he still made a fine figure in helmet and cuirass under the faded red mantle. When he rode to the Strategium, he had the standards with him. From the alleys, men hurried after him, shedding cobblers aprons, and {?} shoulder pads.

Out of the taverns they staggered, the old veterans, their heads dripping from rinsing in water pots. They galloped in on stolen horses. Belisarius hardly remembered many of their faces, and the veterans identified themselves by familiar names. By the pits of Darus, the ten mile mark and the Milvian Frige, names of old battles. Walking among them, he sorted them out, talking with them casually, telling them that this business of driving off Huns needed the old army. There was a palate and massive merchant who held his head still with his hand on the shoulder of an anxious boy. “Illustrious,” this one called out, hearing his leader’s voice. “Votus, flank man of the first (deliriums?).” Studying the old soldier’s face, Belisarius passed his hand before the other man’s eyes and noticed that they did not move. Judging the man, Votus, the old veteran be blind, he shook his head at the officers following him, and responded quickly to Votus, “Then you are the Votus who was wounded coming out of the aqueduct at {?}. Wait here. I want you to tell the recruits about that.” He seemed to be making a jest of his rounds among the biscuit-eaters [that was the name for his troops]. Quick to catch his mood, they flung back jokes. “The biscuits are maggoty. Master this chariot steed will go nowhere but around a post. If we frighten the Huns, we’ll never catch them. Have we cooks or will we eat out of the Khan’s pots?” To his officers, he explained that he desired implements to make both fire and noise. One of them, who still had his uniform in tact, hazarded to guess that they would face odds of five to one, as a tri-cameron. “No,” Belisarius said, “This will be like the Euphrates crossing, where we threw javelins and chased hares.” At no time would he speak of tactics of plans. Apparently, he was preparing for a new kind of game with 7,000 Huns joining in the sport. In reality, he understood the hopelessness of mustering in a force to make any stand against the Huns, and he encouraged his motley command to think it would do something novel and unexpected. So, by costumes and jests, he put together the semblance of an army.

By the next day, he had three hundred of his veterans armed and mounted well enough to resemble a regiment. Five hundred more had horses, spears, and swords, and were capable of riding after him. About as many more on foot could use javelins, and bows, and might carry out orders. The sturdier peasants and seamen were given axes and clappers made out of boards with anything left over. Although nothing but a mob, these last might be taken for soldiers at a distance. At the head of his new force, the first citizen rode out of the golden gate by the shores of Marmora. He did not waste thought on any attempt to hold the triple city wall with civilians. The land wall stretched all of four and a half miles to the harbor. With flutes playing, he went out to meet the Huns in open country. Beyond the first milestone, he had his following make camp and barricade themselves in with branches and beams at the village of {Chettus?}. Some clear fields extended around the village to wooded land through which the highway ran. At night, he had a great number of fire lighted and saw to it that his new cohorts kept moving around the first as long as the light lasted. He did not post scouts outside the camp until the first daylight.

Belisarius of {Chettus?} had only one advantage. Knowing the Huns from long experience, he believed that they might turn and race away at surprise. Their instinct drove them like animals at the scent of danger. Since his semblance of an army could not stand firm against either the arrows or the charge of the horsemen of the {step?}, he intended to set a false trap for them. It would have to be a very makeshift trap. By then, he was certain the scouts had arrived from the Huns to look over his exhibition camp, but he could not be certain what the sharp eyes of the Nomads had noticed or what conclusions they had reached. Actually, the scouts returned to {Zaburgan?} Hun of the {Kitragur?} with a report that a small and weak Roman army waited encamped on the highroad. The Hun chieftain sent a third of his column ahead to clear the road.

After daybreak, Belisarius sent his missile throwers in two groups to either side of the road within the woods. “Whatever you do after the first shafts are thrown,” he warned the officers of the two detachments, “make a noise and keep moving.” With his advance parties screened by the tree growth, Belisarius set his stage in front of the village, moving out his three hundred biscuit-eaters leisurely, keeping the other riders behind with the mob in the rear. Seen from the forest road, this array would resemble the first lines of a greater force. In any event, it would catch the eye of the foremost riders coming along the road. That happened as he had hoped.

The advanced detachment of Huns in their dark, leather and maile, came on cautiously, waiting for the remainder of the column. The Roman cavalry, at a halt, offered no visible menace, and the whole scene appeared to puzzle and rouse the Huns who had become contemptuous of Roman soldiery. Then, the sudden discharge of javelins and arrows from the brush on either side drove the flank riders down into the road. In some confusion, the Huns took to their bows. Around them, the woods rang with exalted shouting. Belisarius choose this minute to charge with his three hundred dependables. Behind them, other horsemen galloped, stirring up dust, while the rabble sounded its wooden clappers and trumpets. The Hippodrome racing steeds, mad with excitement, turned into the wood as if rounding the {Spinah?}. There was a moment when anything might have happened. The veterans, once in motion, drove in their charge while the Huns, trying instinctively to circle round, were caught in the tree growth and scarred by the Roman javelins. The forest seemed to become a trap, with the enemy triumphant.

The Huns turned to race back along the road and lost heavily in doing so. The veterans pursued at the best speed of their cart and chariot horses. Belisarius’ luck, they called it. The flight of his advance column disturbed the {Kitragur?} Khan, who suspected a trap in the presence of a trained Roman army, which he had no desire to meet. Hastily, he evacuated his camp and retreated to the north. Luck had played no part whatever in it. A battle is like an epidemic of fear. At some moment somewhere, a few men who happened to be less afraid than the others facing them, with weapons will push forward, and the others will turn and run to safety. Two days before, a hundred thousand men in Constantinople had been so afraid that most of them were searching for boats to escape across the {Bospherus?}. Belisarius had mocked them, and jested and hinted until the multitude had begun to think of other matters than running from the city.

Then he had gambled on the courage of three hundred overage soldiers in armor, pressed in a narrow way against a thousand savage tribesmen. There had been no fate about that. The three hundred had pushed ahead, the Huns had turned to seek safety, and once they started to retreat, the Huns kept on going.”

Now, the world of men is still the same. But these were men of faith, and men who could make a joke of the uneven odds and win. I don’t think the world is any different today. It still takes men of faith. 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.

Oh, one last announcement. Those of you who would like tapes of the Sennholz seminar, they will be available and Dave {?} is right here to provide them for you for $7 for the entire afternoon and evening. So, please see him.

End of tape