Garth George: Timeless words of wisdom a welcome New Year's gift

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Today, as the saying goes, is the first day of the rest of our lives. Trite? Yes. Hackneyed? Certainly. But, as with most such adages, it is unarguably true.

Since this is also the first day of a brand new year, on which the record of the days of our lives is still to be written, it perhaps takes on an added pertinence.

As this year stretches before us - 12 months, 52 weeks, 366 days, 8784 hours, 527,040 minutes - we can, as usual, be sure only of only three things: that God exists, that there will be death and that there will be taxes.

The further I progress into the seventh decade of my pilgrimage on this Earth, the more grateful I am that I have been chosen to know that God exists, that he is indeed the creator and sustainer of the universe and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that he is in his heaven and the world is unfolding as it should.

So to start the New Year off on the right foot, let me share with you an unexpected New Year's present - an editorial published in the Christmas Eve edition of the Wall Street Journal - brought to me on Christmas Day by a relative from overseas.

It was written in 1949 by the late Vermont Royster, a former Journal editor, and has, astonishingly, been published in that newspaper every year since. Under the heading "In Hoc Anno Domini" (In This Year of the Lord), Royster wrote:

WHEN Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one 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 the persecution of men who dared 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 darkness 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 man 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 the 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 lands and 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."

Because it is based in eternal truth, this essay is as timely and relevant today as it was when Royster penned it. As we step forward with confidence into this year of our Lord 2004, let us strive, one day at a time, to remember Paul's words, too.

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