Hungarian Church Press, 1950 (2. évfolyam, 4-13. szám)

1950-07-15 / 12-13. szám

I

turning points of this world's history, a spiritual church of revival and renewal, out of the decaying body of a people's church £f dead institutions. This could not have taken place without that great change in the wprld's history, and though it has not issued from this, "but has been brought about by God's Spirit, ft is the spirit of gratitude which the Christian congregations should feel for this grciat historic change and its consequences in the last five years, as that human opportunity which, by God's will, has opened up the way of inner renewal for the church.

We must give thanks, first of all, for that great wonder of God that we still live as the Hungarian Reformed Church, in her congregations. This is not what one may take for granted, for this has come about in spite of all that we thought and imagined of this change and of this time. If gratitude is lacking from our rememberance, then we must also recall those fears and even nightmares which then beset our vision and which, in spite of the foots to the contrary,should besot the anticipation of our future. Yet if we are God's grateful children, we must fiz’st of all realize, that these' fears and anxieties wore caused, and can only be caused now too, by our restless conscience. It was the lack pc weakness of our love toward God and our fellowmen that caused these fears, and our dispbedienoe to the command of social justice that troubled our conscience. Thus we had plenty of reason to doubt the future of such a church as ours was, in her old condition, Furthermore, if one is still in this fear, it is the evidence that he still is who he was before, and that he failed to avail himself of God's time of grace, since "there is no i'ear in love; but perfect love casteth out fearjbecause fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love* We love him, because he loved us first * If a mozi say,

I love God, and hatoth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can ho love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God, love his brother also" /i.John 4:18-21/ It is in a truly grateful rememberance that we realize that, in spite of all bur fears, we may live now, because God intends to revivify and change our church into a living church of love. To effect this change,_God provides, in the great social change and in the events of our time, a lesson to which we were,owing to our spiritual captivity in time past, not susceptible and so tre were not free to recognize the truth and to serve it obediently.

In accepting this wonderful blessing of God gratefully, we realize that the new democratic and social order is really a deliverance, for our church, from that social yoke which the Hungarian Reformed Church had to bear before the war. We must recognize, with ever clearer vision and ever deeper gratitude that our work anc'. stewordship was really put in fetters and wem down by that bourgeois system which tried to make us extract and recognize cl and tolerated only such moral preaching from the Gospel which suited its taste, while it scorned, branded or even persecuted the true testimony of faith, that

Hungarian Church Press