“One young woman had what I would call the whirling exercise…. It far exceeded anything of the kind I ever saw. I was told that she had had the jirks nearly 3 years…. Afterwards I remonstrated with some of them and cautioned them.”
“The phenomenon of…suddenly falling or sinking down, under religious exercises, has not been uncommon in times of great excitement…. But the bodily agitation called the jerks is a very different affection….”
“In those remarkable bodily affections, called the jerks, which appeared in religious meetings some years ago, the nervous irregularity was commonly produced by the sight of other persons thus affected; and if in some instances without the sight, yet by having the imagination strongly impressed by hearing of such things….”
“[T]he bodily exercise, and the disorders to which it gave rise were of unspeakable injury to the church in that day….”
“The Rev. John Lyle…witnessed a recurrence of one species of that strange bodily exercise once so common in Kentucky….”
“I am sure she will never forget the ‘Holy Roller’ meetings she attended while here…. In their meetings they shout, dance, jerk, roll on the floor, jump wildly, or lie in a trance as if dead. These, they claim, are different ways of showing that the ‘power’ is on them….”
