s known as "the jerks." This malady "began in the head
and spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown from side to
side so swiftly that the features would be blotted out and the hair made
to snap. When the body was affected the sufferer was hurled over
hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed on the ground, to
bounce about like a ball." The eccentric Lorenzo Dow, whose freaks of
eloquence and humor are remembered by many now living, speaks from his
own observation on the subject:

"I have passed a meeting-house where I observed the
undergrowth had been cut for a camp-meeting, and from fifty to
a hundred saplings were left breast-high on purpose for
persons who were 'jerked' to hold on to. I observed where they
had held on they had kicked up the earth as a horse stamping
flies.... I believe it does not affect those naturalists who
wish to get it to philosophize about it; and rarely those who
are the most pious; but the lukewarm, lazy professor is
subject to it. The wicked fear it and are subject to it; but
the persecutors are more subject to it than any, and they have
sometimes cursed and sworn and damned it while
jerking."[240:1]

There is nothing improbable in the claim that phenomena like these,
strange, weird, startling, "were so much like miracles that they had the
same effect as miracles on unbelievers." They helped break up the
apathetic torpor of the church and summon the multitudes into the
wilderness to hear the preaching of repentance and the remission of
sins. But they had some lamentable results. Those who, like many among
the Methodists,[241:1] found in them the direct work of the Holy Spirit,
were thereby started along the perilous incline toward enthusiasm and
fanaticism. Those, on the other hand, repelled by the grotesqueness and
extravagance of these manifestations, who were led to distrust or
condemn the good work with which they were associated, fell into a
graver error. This was the error into which, to its cost, the
Presbyterian Church was by and by drawn in dealing with questions that
emerged from these agitations. The revival gave rise to two new sects,
both of them marked by the fervor of spirit that characterized the time,
and both of them finding their principal habitat in the same western
region. The Cumberland Presbyterians, now grown to large numbers and
deserved influence and dignity in the fellowship of Amer