Over his lifetime, Barton Stone witnessed the many bodily “exercises” of frontier revivals. In his 1847 autobiography, he described the forms that religious ecstasy took. A condensed excerpt:

The falling exercise was very common among all classes, the saints and sinners of every age and every grade, from the philosopher to the clown. The subject of this exercise would, generally, with a piercing scream, fall like a log on the floor, earth, or mud, and appear as dead.

At a meeting, two gay young ladies, sisters, both fell, with a shriek of distress, and lay for more than an hour apparently in a lifeless state. At length they began to exhibit symptoms of life, by crying fervently for mercy, and then relapsed into the same death-like state, with an awful gloom on their countenances. After awhile, the gloom on the face of one was succeeded by a heavenly smile, and she cried out, “Precious Jesus!” and rose up and spoke of the love of God.

Sometimes the subject of the jerks would ...

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