History of the M.E. Church, Vol. IV - Media Sabda Org

hates the nefarious practice. In this we are congenial in sentiment. Our possessions are in Ohio state,
where the air is not contaminated with slavery. I travel this year in Kentucky. A few days past I wrote
a bill of emancipation to have six set at liberty. The man promised me to have it recorded as soon
as possible. I anticipate the time when God shall deliver his Church from oppression." Such may be
said to have been the general sentiment of the western itinerants of these days of primitive purity and
power. In 1816 the Tennessee Conference, assembled at Bethlehem, affirmed, "We most sincerely
declare that, in our opinion, slavery is a moral evil." It regretted the civil laws which restricted its
ability to act against the evil, "and remove the curse from the Church of God," and passed resolutions
against it. At its preceding session it expelled from the Church Joseph Bryant for buying a Negro. [16]
The numerical growth of western Methodism in these years would be incredible did we not
remember that emigration was now sweeping like an inundation down the western slopes of the
Alleghenies, and bearing along thousands of eastern Methodists to the new ultramontane circuits.
The camp-meeting, now almost everywhere in vogue, kept nearly all the settled parts of the valley
of the Mississippi in religious excitement, and afforded thousands after thousands of additions to the
Churches. But these great forest gatherings, apparently supplying a necessity of the country, were
at last found to be attended with serious evils. The prolonged and intense excitement which
accompanied them produced a singular physical effect, known through the West as the "Jerks." They
became epidemic from Michigan to Louisiana. The great "revival," which, beginning in 1800, lasted
for some years, and pervaded the entire country, was at last quite generally characterized by this
"physical phenomenon." We have seen, by Finley's account, the extraordinary scenes of the "Cane
Ridge camp-meeting," where twenty thousand people were gathered, and hundreds smitten to the
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ground at one time. In another work I have discussed this curious subject, and suggested its
probable scientific solution. I have shown that the "Jerks" were rapid contortions, which seemed
always to be the effect, direct or indirect, of religious causes, yet affected not only religious, but often
the most irreligious minds. Violent opposers were sometimes seized by them; men with imprecations
upon their lips were suddenly smitten with them. Drunkards, attempting to drown the effect by
liquors, could not hold the bottle to their lips; their convulsed arms would drop it, or shiver it against
the surrounding trees. Horsemen, charging in upon camp-meetings to disperse them, were arrested
by the strange affection at the very boundaries of the worshipping circles, sometimes struck from
their saddles as if by a flash of lightning, and were the more violently shaken the more they
endeavored to resist the inexplicable power. "If they would not strive against it, but pray in good
earnest, the jerking would usually abate," says Cartwright, who has seen more than five hundred
persons "jerking" at one time in his large congregations. The bonnets, caps, and combs of women
would fly off; and so violent were the motions of their heads that "their long hair cracked almost as
loudly as a wagoner's whip." Thoughtful men became alarmed at these signs, especially when they
saw them spreading over most of the new states and territories. Infidels and scorners could hardly
dare to oppose them, for they themselves were often seized by the mysterious affection, while their
arguments or jests were but half uttered, and drunken revilers were smitten by it when alluding to
it in their carousals in bar-rooms. Many were the theories proposed for its explanation among
Presbyterians and Methodists, by whose joint agency it began. Some supposed it to be a demoniacal
effect designed to disparage religion; others believed it to be a demonstration of the Spirit of God,
and promoted it; others pronounced it a morbid physical affection, a species of catalepsy, and no
argument for or against religion, but the result of extreme excitement, and therefore justifying more
moderate measures; while still others, unable to explain it, believed that, whether in itself good or