Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 193, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1919 — Page 3 Advertisements Column 4 [ADVERTISEMENT]

FAITH IN CHRIST BROUGHT DEATH TO HALF MILLION. Never in the long history of Christian persecutions has there been one which approached the torture and virtual murder of 500,000 followers of Christ on the burning plains south of Armenia during the two years following a fateful day in 1915. Never did a Christian people, tried by a ghastly ordeal of fire, thirst, hunger, fatigue and worse horrors, conceived in the devilish brain of the infamous Turk, go more unflinchingly to meet its Miaker. The bloody arena of Nero, the painful wanderings of the Pilgrims, the terrors of the Spanish Inquisition—history’s most poignant examples of staunch martyrdom for the cajise of the cross—sink into insignificance beside this persecution of Christianity, as set forth in “Auction of Soulls.” Here was half a million peole, within the Shadow of Mt. Ararat, laboring peacefully, following fervently arid with devout reverence the teachings of the Bible. They were the oldest Christian nation, situated not many miles from the ancient village in which the Safvior was borri. They were contented, industrious, thrifty and devout. The church was their shrine, and all the acts of their life were done in the

grace of God. Then into (this heaven upon earth crept the sinister, fanatically pagan linger of the Turk. Afire with the hatred of Christianity, which had been burning for centuries, inspired (by a miad religion based on cruelty and lust, he heeded only the support of (the unprincipled Hun to loose his long pent (barbaric animalism. Never in the middle ages did the Mohammedan sweep down upon the Ohristion with more abandon. Never did the pagans of western Europe descend upon the followers of the cross more fiercely. Girls were torn from their mothers. The defiling Turkish fingers upon their trembling flesh, they (were asked: “Will you renounce Christianity? Will you accept Mohammed?” - • Eyes turned to heaven they answered, “No!”—and were dashed to the ground, sentenced to infamies which cannot he spoken, to the outrages of the harem, to the burning shame of the slave market. Babies, baptised in Jesus, too young to comprehend the fanatical, “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet!” were hurled against trees or walls, killed (before the eyes of their fainting mothers. > Wives united iby the writ of God to Christian men were dragged away, offered the Mohammedan faith, and given to the lust of the conqueror or to bis sword as "they answered, “No!” Ordained ministers of Jesus Christ were stood up in public places. “.Repeat: ‘There is no God 'but Allah!’ ” they were told. “There is one God, and his son is Jesus Christ, my Savior!” came the steadfast answers. Their fingernails were torn from their hands. And so it continued. Ever the Turkish demand that Allah he accepted in the place of God, that Mohammed sUpercede Christ, And, as often, the Armenian refusal tc yield a Christian soul. Girls were ravished, branded, whipped, sold as slaves, even crucified. Mothers were torn from their children, their blood spilled upon the burning desert Fathers were brutally bereft o# fcheii families, burned, dismembered. And all for the sake of Christianity against the unspeakable religion with which the Hun had allied himself. Veotfly the ravishment of Armenia has been the supreme trial of all Christianity. Consequently a motion j picture inspired with the high purpose of recording exactly and reverently this startling crime against the church and against the Christian world must have a place of first interest in the minds of intelligent and progressive Christians. The above to be seen in the * Auction of Souls” at the Princess theatre Monday afternoon and eventing, August 18.—Advt, y