The Church of St. Sophia.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume IX, Issue 22, 1 April 1919, Page 178

The Church of St. Sophia.

The * ' Church Times ' ' quotes the following strong argument from the Constantinople correspondent of the "Morning Post," for the transference of the great Church of St. Sophia to Christian hands : —

As long as St. Sophia remains with the Turks as the symbol of the victory and of the power of the Mussulman over the Christian the Turk will imagine that he can murder and violate Christians with impunity. St. Sophia should be handed over to the Christian Patriarchs immediately, and the German Embassy, a huge building covered with imperial eagles, should be demolished to convince the Turk that Germany has no longer any power for evil m Turkey.

A correspondent m the "Spectotor," writing on Constantinople, says : —

Which is dearer to the Moslem eye, Jerusalem, with the Mosque of Omar and the Holy Sepulchre, with which radical elements of the faith of Islam are bound up, or Constantinople with St. Sophia, which passed by mere conquest into the hands of the Turks m 1453 ? The Moslems of India have accepted with the most perfect philosophy the transfer of Jerusalem from Turkish to . British rule. A like philosophic tolerance will attend the internationalisation of Constantinople. ... The tiistoiry and traditions of Constantinople are, from the days of Constantine the Great. and his Queen. Helena, bound up -with Christendom, not with Islam.