The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-08-29
HUMAN SACRIFICES.
RELIGIOUS FANATICS
 WHO BELIEVE IY THEM.

Many Peculiar seets In the old World
 Particularly fin Russia, Whose Mem-
 bers KiII and Cruelty That Salvation
 May be Attained.
 That human sacrifices have been made even in the nineteenth century, and by protesting Christians. too, is brought out by the American Journal os Sociology in a striking article:
 The convulsionists, sect existing in Paris about 1TOO. were wont to cruelty members of their order, in emulation of the crucifixion of the Saviour, in the be- lief that the souls of the surviving members would be saved by the sacri- fees of their fellows. In 1877 the Pas chelians," an Austrian sect. murdered a
 man, his wife and daughter under the delusion that the trio, who refused to go with the fanatics. were possessed of the devil. On the following day they crucified one of their own number. girl of nineteen years, who had suffered herself for the death, in imitation Of the death of the Saviour, in order to save the souls of her fellow believers.
 In 1923 the leader of Pietistic circle in Switzerland, after having dispatched her sister, who gave her life as a means of saving the souls of her relatives, was crucified by her followers at her own command in order that she might die, ,.fc fY, of aau and rnstnra to life the sister she had slain. In 1865 two mothers, adherents of the Holy Men, slew their sick children, believ- ing them to be victims of demoniacal possession. In 1875 Hungarian miller, belonging to the 'Nazarenes," killed his son as an offering for his own sins after the fashion of Abraham. In 1870, in IT, kutsk, Russia, one of the "Schismatics" convinced himself by prayer and fast ing and much Scripture reading that to save his soul he must be crucified. Ac- cordingly he attempted self crucifixion and succeeded so far as the circum- stances of the case would permit. In 1880, in the government of Perm, Russia, peasant killed his child as an offering for sin and buried the body in an ant hill. Likewise, in the govern ment of Vladimir, another peasant killed both his children in due Abra- hamic form, and while the babies bled under the fathers knife the devout mother celebrated the service by read | ing aloud selected portions of the awen- ty-second chapter of Genesis. In 1854, | in the government of Tambov, Russia, a peasant, convinced that to save his
 soul a man must have sin to repent
 of, killed neighbor with an axe in or l der to satisfy this highly imperative condition.
 | It is part of the creed of the Wan derers," a Russian sect, that anti Christ rules in high places there and that accordingly good men must have rnaught to do with governmental affairs of any sort. Tn conformity with this belief a man murdered in various in- genious ways twenty-five men, women and children, including his own wife and babies, in order to free them from the danger of losing their souls by suf- fering the contaminating contact of the government census taker. This oc- cured in 1897.
 The "Deniers," another quite interest ing Russian sect, believe that evil taints all earthly good and that the only es- cape is death. In 1925 sixty of these men, strong in the faith, after having murdered their wives and children, per- mitted themselves to be put to death, one by one, by their leaders. The "Scourgers, who also form g. wide spread and influential sect in Russia, in obedience to the behests of their ''sa- viors,' are in the habit of indulging in human sacrifices, cannibalistic feasts, erotic dances and other 1ewd proee- dures as an extremely efficacious meth cd of keeping the hand of evil from off their immortal souls. So the Muck ers'' of Konisberg and the celebrants of the black mass in Paris afford further eamples of the use Of a ritual of ero- tism, coupled with practice of the most abandoned and obscene behavior, to promote the eternal welfare of the soul.