rful suggestions, particularly with those of a hysterical
disposition. And behind this particular revival there were the
traditions of other revivals, all of which had created a heritage as
coercive as any purely social tradition. A crowd of people in a state of
eager expectancy, exposed to the assaults of a preacher skilled in
rousing their emotion to fever pitch, is naturally ready to see and hear
things that none would see and hear in their normal moments. No better
field for the study of crowd psychology, particularly at the point at
which it merges into the abnormal, could be imagined than the ordinary
revival.

In America these revival out breaks seem to assume a much more
extravagant form than with us. Mr. Stanley Hall, for example, thus
describes a Kentucky camp meeting in which the prevailing term of
spiritual manifestation was that of 'jerking.' Quoting from an
eye-witness, he says:--

"The crowd swarmed all night round the preacher, singing, shouting,
laughing, some plunging wildly over stumps and benches into the forest,
shouting 'Lost, lost!' others leaping and bounding about like live fish
out of water; others rolling over and over on the ground for hours;
others lying on the ground and talking when they could not move; and yet
others beating the ground with their heels. As the excitement increased,
it grew more morbid and took the form of 'jerkings,' or in others the
holy laugh. The jerks began with the head, which was thrown violently
from side to side so rapidly that the features were blurred and the
hair almost seemed to snap, and when the sufferer struck an obstacle and
fell he would bounce about like a ball. Saplings were sometimes cut
breast high for the people to jerk by. In one place the earth about the
roots of one of them was kicked about as though by the feet of a horse
stamping flies. One sufferer mounted his horse to ride away when the
jerks threw him to the earth, whence he rose a Christian. A lad, who
feigned illness to stay away, was dragged there by the spirit and his
head dashed against the wall till he had to pray. A sceptic who cursed
and swore was crushed by a falling tree. Men fancied themselves dogs,
and gathered round a tree barking and 'treeing the devil.' They saw
visions and dreamed dreams, and as the revival waned, it left a crop of
nervous and hysterical disorders in its wake."[155]

We have nothing quite so extreme as this in British revivals, but the
home phenomena are no