In January 1935, in a major speech, Hambro emphasised absolute values - 'something that transcends parties', 'lays aside wasteful strife' and 'lets us come quietly and modestly together' so that 'the country is led towards better conditions of work and a more spacious understanding between people on the opposite of old party divides which are now crumbling'.21 He met a genuine response from a leading Labour Member, who was later elected to serve under him as Vice-President of the Parliament. Hambro, moreover, refused to hit back when a little later the leader of the Labour Party, Johan Nygaardsvold, made fun of the Oxford Group; and when, in March, Nygaardsvold became Prime Minister he remarked that 'a great deal of what Mr Hambro said today was a bouquet to the new Labour Government, even if there were a few thorns, by which I will try not to be pricked, among the flowers'.22

King Haakon received Buchman and thanked him for what he had done for the students, as well as, according to Buchman, expressing surprise at the reconciliation between Mellbye and Hambro. The King also told Dean Fjellbu of Trondheim Cathedral - the Westminster Abbey of Norway - that he was delighted at the new note of authority in the preaching in the churches and on the radio.23* Four professors of Oslo University wrote to the Oxford Group, 'Your visit will be a deciding factor for the history of Norway. You have come at the strategic moment with the right answer.'24

(* King Haakon told the Dean that he had thanked Buchman but suggested that he urge his followers to he 'careful in any confessions made in public'. The King twice visited the Oxford Group headquarters in London during the Second World War.)

By March 1935 widespread interest among farmers and industrial workers led to further large meetings in the biggest halls in Oslo. In the City Hall, Buchman addressed one of them: 'Five months ago we started in this hall. Think of the wonder-working power of God in those five months . .. Before I landed in Norway it came to me constantly in my quiet times, "Norway ablaze for Christ".' Then he spoke of the two stages that still lay ahead of them - spiritual revolution and renaissance. 'I believe that Norway will take this message to other countries. I believe the revolution will be a renaissance,' he concluded.25

Certainly, something very like a renaissance was to take place in the Norwegian Church in the following years. For a quarter of a century it had been deeply divided between Liberals and Conservatives, who tended towards a fundamentalist theology. 'The conflict became personal and bitter,' writes Einar Molland, the Norwegian church historian, 'and the cleft widened . . . The tension between the conservative and liberal wings rose to its greatest heights in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and the general tone of theological argument, became, if possible, even more bitter.'26 On one occasion when Bishop Berggrav, as Bishop of Tromsø, called a meeting of all his clergy, such a rumpus broke out that he tried to restore order by crying, 'Stop! We are all Christian brothers!' 'No! No! No!' shouted half his clergy.27 The leader of the Conservatives, Professor Hallesby, sometimes practically forbade his followers to have any contact with the opposing faction, and, when Berggrav was appointed Bishop of Oslo, Hallesby 'wrote in the press that he could not welcome him until he abandoned his liberal past'.28

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