The Monitor-register., 1896-07-31
The Armenian Massacres.

| [From Lady Horny somersets annual
| address.
The crescent of the Turkish MOSQUE
has become the scimitar of the bloody.
handed, Turkish soldiers. Henceforth
that crescent stands forth in the eyes ol
| all nations as impossible to olense as the
hand of Lady Macbeth, while the cross.
cleaning on ten Thousand church spires,
sheds forth the mild effulgence of a
beacon that means deliverance wherever
its heavenly rays extend. Never were
these two symbols of dying and an
ever living cause set over against each
other in contrast so vivid and sipnifi.
cant as now. The martyrdoms of the
first century in Jerusalem have been
suffered again at Sassoun. The hills and
valleys of Iudea are hardly more sacred
than the blood saturated hills and yallevs
OF Armenia-that sacred, hapless, heroic
land, whose mortal agony has lifted it go
nigh that there is not on the globe to day
another country so loved or so lamented.
What was the cry of the Armenians ?
That they cherished in their brave and
loyal hearts the gospel of peace on earth
and good will to men; that the Bible was
their most sacred possession; thsr the
home life had one central figure rather
than group of women despoiled of their
choicest heritage,-the lifelong fidelity of
one man to whom their own had been
faithfully pledged. This was the stone
OF their stumbling, the rock of their
offence in the fierce eyes of their Moslem
foe.
Three figures stand forth on the lurid
canvas of this history. The priest who
had sustained and comforted his little
flock, gathered with him in a cave on the
hillside, but was too old to flee when the
Turks searched out their covert. He was
afterwards found bayoneted, mutilated.
and his reverend gray hairs half conceal
ing the red sign of the cross that had
been cut on his forehead-indelible mark
of the undying hate that the followers of
Mahommed cherish for the disciples of
the Galilean.
Another is the scene when Shakkeb
the sister in law of Krikor. the famed
Armenian leader. herself woman well
known for her high character, courage
and wealth, took her little boy in her
arms. and being pursued by the savage
soidiery' flung herself down a precipice,
beneath which she was found dead by
faithful friends who came to seek her
place of fnartyrdom, and as they simp]v
said, 1--WE buried her and the little one in
remembrance of the hospitality we had
so often enjoyed in her happy home."
The third is young wife and mother
but eighteen years of age, who, hunted
like partridge on the hillside, ran with
her little three-Bear old boy in her arms.
until she was overtaken by the Turkisb
troops, and her boy slain before her eyes.
his little form being tossed on their
Dayonets from one soldier to another. and
as she turned to fly they began to desnoil
nor OF her clothing. when, to their sur
prise, they found on her a belt filed with
gold coins, and during their quarrel over
tne distribution of this booty, she slipped
away and concealed herself among the
fastness OF the rocks, whore she was
afterward Joined by her husband and tho
two escaped.
For what did they die = the good
priest, the brave lady, the hunted litt,a
mothers child? They died that the oos
pei which raises woman up, and with ber
lifts toward heaven the world. MIGHT
have free course to run and be elorified
They died that the untramme,,ed
equipoised, beneficent, consecrated ,ifa %
Engiand's pnrest womanhood might
slowly come to women in their own
beautiful and pleasant land. For tbav
knew as we do that even as the proorass
OF June day is traced on the earth,s
map by the sunshine, SO the widen;no
way OF free gospel is traced by
woman's happiness and manhood,s
exaltation. For them already Christian;tv
had done much for us 1t has done more
to them its tender dawn had come to ns
its noontide splendor.
1t is fitting that an English woman,s
voice should be lifted up for the Armenian |
women. in every airoIa of H,,,