s
cannot properly be described in print. The leaders of a religious cult
commonly called Holy Rollers seem to be most efficient in this direction.
The character of their services and activities produce the results
desired, according to the traditions accepted and proclaimed for
generations by ignorant preachers to a nonprogressive people.

A Holy Roller movement was started in Pike County in the year 1902. It has
steadily been gaining ground ever since, and has never been more
flourishing than now. It is the livest sect in this and neighboring
counties. Its meetings are large and full of enthusiasm. Except the
churches of this cult, very few are now left in the western half of Pike
County which show any activity whatever. In one district of 150 square
miles (in which there are 1,200 children enrolled in the schools and in
all 1,600 young people from the ages of six to twenty) no churches were
holding services in 1917 except those of the Holy Rollers.

The seasons of protracted Holy Roller meetings often last for several
weeks. Frequently they begin each day at 10.00 A. M. and continue until
2.00 A. M. the next day, with intermissions for meals. These meetings are
characterized by much singing, with music well adapted to rythmic motions
of the body, by dancing and clapping the hands, sometimes by shouting and
joyous screaming, rolling upon the floor, tumbling together of men and
women in heaps, trances, while at least one of their preachers has
exercised hypnotic power over some of his followers and has put them
through stunts in no way differing from those of the professional
hypnotist showman who, in times past, for the price of admission, has
amused and astonished his audience with exhibitions of his skill.

In one village where Mr. Gill attended a church belonging to this
movement, it was the only religious organization holding services or
showing any signs of life. Although at this service the building was full
to its capacity, as is usual with meetings of this kind, the church not
only had no Sunday school, but its leaders kept the children away from one
which a missionary of the American Sunday School Union was trying to start
in the neighborhood. Three-fourths of the parents of the fifty pupils in
the local school were adherents of this cult, yet its leaders opposed
having better day schools. The school principal, under the direction of
the County School Superintendent, tried to hold literary meetings for
intel