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IN HOC ANNO DOMINI
When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole
of the known world lay in bondage. There was on state, and it was
Rome. There was on master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.
Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was
long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society,
for the centurions saw that it was so.
But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression,
for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was
the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax
from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry
treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people.
There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There
were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What
was a man for but to serve Caesar?
There was persecution of men who dared to think differently, who
heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was
enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for
those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all,
there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the
strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?
Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from
Galilee saying, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's
and unto God the things that are God's."
And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new
Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but
his God. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." And he sent this
gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the
earth.
So the light came into the world and the men who lived in dark-
ness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man
would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.
But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth
did set men free, although the men of darkness were offended and
they tried to put out the light. The voice said, "Haste ye,
Walk while you have he light, lest darkness come upon you, for he
that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.
Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward
Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other
Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was
nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their
birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.
Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the
land sand there would be a burning of books and men would think only
of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed
only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to
pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in
the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the
darkness.
And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren,
the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in
each of the years of his Lord:
Stand fast therefore in the liberty
wherewith Christ has made us free
and be not entangled again with the
yoke of bondage.
This editorial was written in 1949 by Vermont Royster, now editor
emeritus of the Wall Street Journal, and has been published
annually since.