CHRISTIAN ORDER CAMPAIGN

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23755, 29 September 1942, Page 4

CHRISTIAN ORDER CAMPAIGN

FINAL ADDRESS OF SERIES The churches were in action in the present campaign because they felt they could offer a foundation of rock to the sorely-shaken nation, said the principal of the Baptist College, Auckland, the Rev. Dr. J. J. North, when he spoke on "Chaos or Christian Order” at the final public meeting of the series organised as part of the National Campaign for Christian Order. ' The meeting was ’held in the Wellington Opera House last evening. Dr. North said that no emphasis too great could be placed upon the power which moral law exerted over human life. All history showed this. The effect of flouting moral law was the same as flouting physical or natural law in, say, the construction of a bridge. It led to collapse. The presence of the will of God w.as betokened in the workings of conscience. Victor Hugo had explained Napoleon’s fall by saying, "He quarrelled with conscience,” and the same epitaph would' •be written by history over Hitler’s dishonoured grave. But, on the - other hand, acts of obedience to the dictates of conscience shone forth with an unearthly splendour. “When the captain of a Star boat that traded in these parts gave his lifebelt to a shivering Italian prisoner, when another captain steered his armed merchantman against a German battleship to shield his convoy, and went down to a glorious death, when Captain Oates went out into the Antarctic blizzard—then the world held its breath,” said Dr. North. “The splendour of the moral law to which man owes obedience was revealed. There is a power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness, and those who yield to its sway are carried far. This is the rock foundation on which the new order must be built. “We cannot claim Christ for the Allies. He claims the Allies and the Axis for Himself. Doubts about the issue of this war are based on our divided allegiance. There are rotters in the community, human vultures battening on the blood of the brave, there are go-getters, decent and selfish, who shed no blood of sacrifice, and there are those who live by the law of love. To multiply these last is the object of this campaign. If that can be done, and sufficiently done, the future is secure.”