SURE FOUNDATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXII, Issue 257, 29 September 1942, Page 4

SURE FOUNDATION

! FOR SHAKEN NATION TRUE CHRISTIAN ORDER WELLINGTON, Sept. 29. The fourth and final broadcast public meeting in the series organised during the past month as part of the National Campaign for Christian Order was held in the Opera House last evening, when the principal speaker was Rev. Dr J. J. North, of Auckland, the subject of his address being “Chaos or Christian Order.” Dr North began by reminding his listeners about the parable of the optimistic mouse which fell into a bowl of cream and paddled round until it churned the cream into butter and so gained a temporary foothold. The world had also “fallen in,” he said. It was in a mess, and well-meaning people paddled around trying to create some sort of foundation on which a shivering civilisation might continue its uneasy life for a time. But something more than temporary expedients was needed, and the churches were in action in the present campaign because they felt they could offer a foundation of rock to the sorely shaken nation In ancient Rome, when war broke out, it was the custom for a priest to throw open the gates of the Temple of Mars, hurl a spear, and cry aloud, “Mars, awake!” But this, continued Dr North, was unnecessary pageantry, for the fact was that Mars never slept. Men everywhere fought one another, and had always done so, because man’s nature was disturbed at its centre and there was conflict and contradiction in his heart. As a pagan philosopher had put it, man’s misery was to see and approve the better, but to do tho worst. “The issue lies between the right we know and the wrong we do, between God and tho devil. . . . And tho issue in any given case is not clear-cut. Pure right does not face pure wrong. The two are tangled. A thick fog lies upon the battlefield. No doubt the principles of the Atlantic Charter are right. No doubt the practices and principles of the Axis are as false as hell. If we practised our principles, then ‘a little one would chase a thousand.’ It is because wo give lip service to the better while we yield yeoman service to the worse that the pass is sold. No victory is safe—not Waterloo, not Versailles — while the central quarrel is vn* appeased. While man salutes God as the eternal right, and mocks Him by adhesion to His opposites, wars in a crescendo of horror will continue.” And briefly, it might be said that eternal right involved self-sacrifice and service in a co-operative and depend'ent world, whereas eternal wrong meant self-centredncss, witli its defiance both of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God. POWER OF MORAL LAW.

No oniph a? ts too great, could be placed upon the power which moral law exerted over human lifo, said Dr. North. 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. Tho presence of the will of God was betokened in the workings of conscience. A 7 ictor 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. The Fplendour 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 arc carried far. .... This is the rook foundation on which tho new order must be built. “We cannot claim Christ, for the AJlies He claims the Allies and the Axis for Himself. Doubts about the issue of this war arc based on our divided allegiance. Thcro 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 those last is the object of this campaign. If that can be done, and sufficiently done, the future is secure.”