eration here only in so far as it enjoins them
during their devotional exercises to fall into convulsions, which they
are able to effect in the strangest manner imaginable. By the use of
certain unmeaning words they work themselves up into a state of religious
frenzy, in which they seem to have scarcely any control over their
senses. They then begin to jump with strange gestures, repeating this
exercise with all their might until they are exhausted, so that it not
unfrequently happens that women who, like the Maenades, practise these
religious exercises, are carried away from the midst of them in a state
of syncope, whilst the remaining members of the congregations, for miles
together, on their way home, terrify those whom they meet by the sight of
such demoniacal ravings. There are never more than a few ecstatics, who,
by their example, excite the rest to jump, and these are followed by the
greatest part of the meeting, so that these assemblages of the Jumpers
resemble for hours together the wildest orgies, rather than congregations
met for Christian edification.

In the United States of North America communities of Methodists have
existed for the last sixty years. The reports of credible witnesses of
their assemblages for divine service in the open air (camp meetings), to
which many thousands flock from great distances, surpass, indeed, all
belief; for not only do they there repeat all the insane acts of the
French Convulsionnaires and of the English Jumpers, but the disorder of
their minds and of their nerves attains at these meetings a still greater
height. Women have been seen to miscarry whilst suffering under the
state of ecstasy and violent spasms into which they are thrown, and
others have publicly stripped themselves and jumped into the rivers. They
have swooned away by hundreds, worn out with ravings and fits; and of the
Barkers, who appeared among the Convulsionnaires only here and there, in
single cases of complete aberration of intellect, whole bands are seen
running on all fours, and growling as if they wished to indicate, even by
their outward form, the shocking degradation of their human nature. At
these camp-meetings the children are witnesses of this mad infatuation,
and as their weak nerves are with the greatest facility affected by
sympathy, they, together with their parents, fall into violent fits,
though they know nothing of their import, and many of them retain for
life some severe nervous