Show PANATICISMINDCRIMINMJTY DREADFUL RELIGIOUS RITES OP CERTAIN EUROpEAN SECTS Strange Practices Which Are Advocated Advo-cated In Order to Insure a Happy Hereafter to Humanity Amenican Journal of SocIology The result of an analysis of a seriei of legal actions involving persecution of crime supposably committed under the spelt of fanatical religious beliefs serve to illustrate this point Thus the Convulsionists a sect existing in Pans about 1760 were wont to crucify merit bers of their order In emulation of the crucifixion of Jesus in the belsf that the souls of the surviving members would be saved by the sacrifice of their follows In 1811 the Paeseheliaas an Austrian sect murdered a man his wife and their daughter under the delusion de-lusion that the trio who refused to go with thefaratlcs irene possessea of the devil On the following day they crucified cru-cified one of their own number n glrr of IS years who bad suffered herself for the death in imitation of tbo death of Jesus in order to save the souls of her fellow believers In 1525 the leader of the Pietistic circle its Switzerland after having dispatched her sister who gave her life as a means of saving the souls of her relatives rela-tives was crucified by her followers at her own command in order that she might die rise again after three days and restore to life the sIster whom she had slain In 1865 two mothers ad henents of the Holy Men slew their sick children balieving them to be vie tims of demoniacal possession In 1875 a Hungarian miller belonging to the Nazarenes killed his son as an of fening for his own sins alter the fashion fash-ion of Abraham Its 1870 lit Irkutseb Russia one of the Schismatics coni vinced himself by prayer and fasting and much scripture reading that to save his soul he must be crucifled4 Accordingly he attempted seiferuci fixion and succeeded so far as the dr curnstances of the case would petnit3 In 1550 in the government of Penn Russia a peasant killed his child as an offering for sin and buried the body in an ant hill Likewise in the gorera meat of Vladimir another peasant j killed both his children in due Abra hzunio form and while the babies blec1 under the fathers knife the devout mother celebrated the sertice by reading read-ing aloud selected portions of the twen tysecond chapter of Genesis In ISII In the government of Tamboff Russia a peasant convinced that to save his soul a man must have a sits to repent of killed a neighbor with an axe in or den to satisfy this highly lmperatlv condition It is apart of the creed of the Wsji derers a Russian sect that Antithrist rules in high places there and that acI cordingly good mere must have naughs to do with governmental affairs of any sort In confOrmity with this belief r man murdered in various ingenious4 ways twentyfive men women aneW children including his own wife aml babies in order to free them from th danger of losingtlieir ssuls by suffering the contaminating contact of the got enament census taker This occurret in 1S97 The Deniers another quite interesting Russian sect believe that evil taints all earthly good and that the only escape is death In 1825 sIxty 4 of these men strong in the faith after having murdered their wives and children chil-dren permitted themselves to be put to death one by one by their leader The Scourgers who also form a widespread and influential sect in Rue sin in obedience to the behests of their saviors are In the habit of indulging indulg-ing In human sacrifice cannibalistic 4 feasts erotic dances and other lewd procedures as an yxtremely efficacious method of keeping the hand of evil from off their immortal souls So the Muekers of Kcenigrberg and the eel trbrants of the black mass In Paris at ford further examples of the use of a ritual of erotism coupled with a pnrc tice of the most abandned and obscene behavior to promote the eternal fare of the soul |