Hungarian Church Press, 1949 (1. évfolyam, 4-13. szám)
1949-10-16 / 13. szám
No 13.- 8 -they shall beat their swords to plowshares and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." /Micah 4:3/ But all those warnings were in vain, the difference between the ooor and the rich, the free and the suppressed, the small and the great nations steadily increased. Mankind had to trod a long and toilsome way until the dreams of the prophets could come true, that man may cease* to be the 'nemy of man, that one nation may not be the tyran of the other. But all what the prophets of Judea were dreaming about were not in vain: We too fight and work for the very same end, that is why v/e cherish their memories in our books of history, and that is why we .regard their history our history." In connection with the expansion of the Roman empire we can read the following: "Expansion and conquest failed to mean profit and right to everybody. During warfares the free peasants of Italy became poor and their lands went over into the property of usurers and big landowners. The number of the poor of the city and the villages greatly increased, and consequently inner hostility became greater and greater. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head." /Matthew 8:20/ The dissatisfaction of the slaves and the poor broke into a mighty armed rebellion in the first century B.C. From the city of Capua as far as Rome six thousand crosses were erected and 6000 rebelHous^slaves and peasants crucified on them. However, the defeat of the rebellion of slaves failed to solve the very trouble responsible for it. Thus the doctrines of Christianity fell upon a fertile ground, the suppressed and the poor recognized in them their own ideas and endeavours. Christianity began to spread rapidly among the inhabitants of the Roman Empire and the Empire" itself gave the possibility to spread the new faith. In the huge mass of the people of different tongues, different origin, different ""colour, different*social standing there was something common that filled all of them. This was the desire after a better and more human life. The new doctrine that originally sprang from the land of the Jews, crossed the narrow national boundaries, it expanded the Messianic teachings of the prophets and this teaching appealed equally to every nation, to "the Roman, to the Greek, to the Jew and to the free and to th** bond, to the white and to the coloured alike. It proclaimed that, the institution of slavery is not an eternal law and neither suffering nor misery, suppression and the power of the privileged are eternal, but transitory end passing. That is why a new ana more iust order must take its place. Of course, the masters and the privileged of the old regime did not like that new doctrine whose adherents already proclaimed that the old system of slavery is doomed to destruction. Another reason why the new doctrine did not please them was, that most adherents of Christianity ranged of HungarianoChurch Press
