Crisscrossing the Virginia and North Carolina backcountry during the early years of his career as an itinerant minister, Joseph Thomas preached to audiences that occasionally included jerkers. Contextual information appears in square brackets. Click here for the full text of his classic autobiography, The Life of the Pilgrim (1817).
I now [fall 1808] was generally known by the name of the boy preacher and from motives of curiosity, &c. congregations were generally large, which made the cross of Christ heavy on me; but my delight was in the Lord, and my joy was full in trying to be useful to perishing sinners, and in promoting the cause of my great Master. From thence I directed my course through Prince Edward and Charlotte Counties preaching almost every day and sometimes twice and three times in a day; where I met with some opposition from a Methodist preacher, and again from a Baptist preacher, who said I ought to go home and stay there till I had read and studied Dr. Gill’s Body of Divinity. I observed to the congregation that I had read Dr. Gill, and found the dry bones and skeleton of a body, but could find no meat, nor nourishment in it to feed my soul, and that I thought Christ’s body of divinity was the best for me to read and study, which I was doing every day, from which I received much strength and consolation. In Chany Chapel and the neighborhood round, I held several meetings, where some few professors were stirred up to rejoice, and two or three were awakened to the knowledge of their sins, one of whom was shortly afterwards converted. In this part of the country I met with, several very friendly preachers who professed to belong to the union of Christ’s Church, who advised me to travel a circuitous route, that I might visit the same places every few weeks, to which I agreed. I then went on in the upper part of Charlotte County; on Big-Fallen I had some precious and glorious meetings. Here while preaching a young woman was taken with the jirks, which was the first of the exercise I had seen in Virginia, and the people being mostly strangers to the like were much alarmed at the operation, as she was frequently jirked from her seat and thrown involuntarily over the floor and across the benches in different directions. From 1 o’clock she continued in that state till late in the night, during which time the meeting did not entirely break, but some dispersed and told the strange news, which presently filled the house with new spectators and hearers, some of whom were powerfully operated upon by the spirit of God. Some were convinced of sin, some prayed for mercy and some shouted praise to God. This was the beginning of a good revival in this neighborhood….
On Sunday [December 3, 1808] I preached to a large congregation at the Lead Works [in Wythe County, Virginia]. Here some of the people think they are rich and are extremely proud, haughty and wicked. Some behaved improperly in meeting, and I reproved them sharply, which created offence, and some hard threatenings. In this meeting two persons took the jirks; some seemed happy; some serious and some were very careless….
Source
Joseph Thomas, The Life of the Pilgrim, Joseph Thomas, Containing an Accurate Account of His Trials, Travels, and Gospel Labours (Winchester, Va.: J. Foster, 1817), 44–45, 50, 73–74.
