Page:Mennonite Handbook of Information 1925.djvu/123

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OF INFORMATION
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many difficulties that were met was that the original was written in a language that had long since become obsolete, and that there was no dictionary available to get the true meaning of many words used in the original text.

Notwithstanding the many difficulties that were met in making the translation, it is evident that this is by far the most authentic version of the history of Christian martyrs of the past, and by which the present generation may know of the testimony of their forefathers, which they gave even to the extremity of great bodily suffering and death. It is one of the few books extant by which believers of today may live and abide in the company of the apostles and martyrs of the centuries of world history gone by.

Some of our people have laid this book aside long before its perusal had been finished, because of the harrowing and heart-rending accounts of torture and suffering that are given; but aside from the Bible itself there is possibly no other book that should serve more as a stimulant and a means of fortitude to the persecuted and oppressed Mennonites of to-day.

"The Church and Sunday School Hymnal," was arranged by a committee composed of Eli S. Hallman, D. D. Miller, and J. S. Shoemaker. The first edition of this work was printed in 1902 by Ruebush-Kieffer Company, Dayton, Virginia. A Supplement was added in 1911. It is still in common use in our congregations.

"The Gospel Witness," was founded at Scottdale, Pennsylvania, in 1905 by the Gospel Witness