CanÌƒon City record. [volume] (CanÌƒon City, Colo.) 1883-192?, 1900-04-19

Anahaptism of the old horrible kind
that ragged in the sixteenth century
has broken out anew in one of the
ancient stamping grounds, and two
tamlets. Appeltern and Maasbommel
in the Netherland province of Gueld-
eTn. have just been placed under mar
tial law to keep the people from muir
dering each other under pretense OF
following scriptural commands. Be
sides these places are so near Castle
Het Loo, the Queens residence, that
the authorities feared the fanatics
might take it into their heads to try
and reform her majesty.
The sect ia headed by wealthy pea
SAINT named Scherf and comprises fifty
well-to-6o families. For the last five
or six weeks these have held the other
inhabitants, 200 families more, in alb
ject terror.
In the first days of March Scherf
gave out that he had had revelation
in which the Almighty commanded
him to offer all baptized children be-
low the age of understanding 'for
burnt offerings" upon the tops of .he
nearby Veluwe hills. just as Abraham
was commanded by the Lord to offer
Isaac on a mountain.
To show that he believed in his own
teachings he promised to sacrifice his
five small children first, then six be-
longing to widow named Zevenaer
were to be offered, those of other mem
bers of the sect to follow successfully
Scherf also encouraged the brethren
t,N
heretics. That is, those who didn't be-
lieve in anabaptism, and hide them
until their turn for sacrifice would
come
The murderous proceedings were to
be opened by grand driving out of
the devir' at Scherf's house, near the
village of Appeltern, on Friday,
March 8.
Scherf is an Unbalanced man, and,
like most zealots, endowed with vio-
lent, stormy eloquence. He has played
the inspired for year and seems to be
entirely unconscious of the fact that
his rawlings are merely the offspring
of his disordered Imagination. Start
ing with the idea that he had divine
commission to fulfill he at last declar-
ed himself the Messiah, to whom the
Lord had given a bodyguard of a mil
lion angels to protect him This freak,
like many others which he processes,
comedies with the imaginations of one
of the first Dutch anabaptists, the ia
nous John Mattiesen. of Haarlem, who
started the bloody anabaptist carnival
in Munster, Westphalia, in 1929. and,
believing himself inviolable, sailed
forth alone and naked to overthrow a
beleaguering army of ten thousand.
He was quickly cut to pieces, of course,
but his followers continued to believe
IN his nonsense nevertheless. And. as
in Mattiesen's case, the contagious
madness emanating from the words of
Scherf spread and the numbers of
sectarians increased with their perse-
cution by the local clerical authorf-
ties. the pastors of the two villages
who labored hard to stem the tide of
fanaticism. In the beginning Scherf
led his adherents through the fields.
preaching sermons and singing hymns
on Sundays only. OF late the men and
women dropped all manual labor and
devoted themselves entirely to religi-
GUS exercises as they understand them.
They pretend to have revelations con-
cerning the establishment of the king
dom OF heaven on earth, proclaimed
the community of fortunes and w.
men and the equality of all pure
Christians. Aside from the Bible they
recognize but one book as fit reading
for the children of God. namely John
of Bruges' Treasury of Miracles" the
same which the Council of Basle de-
clared infamous, ordering that the au-
thor be punished on earth even after
death, by having his bones dug up and
tirned under the gallows. This is a
cry rare work, obtainable only in a
ew libraries. 1t seems, however, that
copy was among Scherf's family