FROM THE INSIDE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 126, 30 May 1942, Page 5

FROM THE INSIDE

HEART'S DOOR OPENS

CHRISTIAN ORDER CAMPAIGN

There is a story about Holman Hunt, who painted the famous picture, "The Light of the World." It is a painting of Christ in a garden at midnight. In His left hand he is holding a lantern and with His right hand knocking on a heavily panelled door. On the day this painting was unveiled, a group of art critics was present. "Mr. Hunt," said one, "you haven't finished your work."

"It is finished," the artist replied. "But there is no handle on that door."

"That," said the artist, "is the door to the human heart—it can be opened only from the inside." It is perhaps in something of this spirit that the National Council of Churches in New Zealand decided, when drawing up plans for the present campaign for Christian Order that the first three months of the campaign should be spent in intensive preparation within the participating churches, rather than in an immediate approach to the public. After the campaign had been publicly announced in March the churches have gone, as it were, into winter quarters—but not to hibernate.

Up and down New Zealand at present there is a stir of busy preparation among clergy and laymen of all denominations—a coming and going of official representatives, committees meeting, pamphlets and publicity being prepared, large and small groups discussing and arguing about the basis of Christian action in reconstructing the social order on Christian principles. "The war," as one parson said recently, "is a Hell-sent opportunity for the Church," but the Church has realised that if it is to be in a position to take that opportunity it must first do all it can to set its own house in order, and clarify its own ideas, in order to be able to make a united appeal to the outside public in the spring of this year.