The "convicted" ones fell into fits by dozens,
and were carried out into the churchyard, where
they were laid down struggling, kicking, and
shouting; and in this state remained, with a
group of frenzied proselytes singing psalms
around them, until so exhausted by their
convulsive exertions that they, happily, were no
longer capable of sound or motion. From this
dormant condition they were subsequently roused;
and then being, as they considered themselves,
comfortably sanctified, they went about to aid
others in their spiritual combats. Nor was this
all. There were others going about exclaiming
that they were in paradise; others (not so
fortunate) were leaping about and screaming
"Hi! me see de debil—me see de debil!
Hell fire! Smoke! Now him come and go jook
me wid him pitchfork! Wah! wah!" One
was "bound by chains in hell;" another "had
got a table in heaven."

Scenes of the same kind were enacted in other
churches; but no single instance of like
madness, we are informed, occurred among the
congregation of the Rev. Robert Lynch: a
praiseworthy young clergyman of the Church of
England stationed in the same parish (St.
Elizabeth's), and who simply, but firmly, announced,
at first, that he would immediately give any
person into custody who should disturb the
service, and would infallibly send that person to
finish his or her noisy devotions in the station-house.

To such a pitch was this blasphemous madness
carried, that one man, who had the impious
audacity to style himself Christ, went wildly roaming
and roaring about the country, accompanied
by twelve other negroes, who represented our
blessed Lord's apostles! One carried a cross,
with which he belaboured the shoulders of all
who came within his reach, in order to bruise
their hardened hearts through their tender
bodies; and a poor woman who, either from
fright or fantasy, had fallen down in a fit, was
tied up by these fellows to a cross, all night in
the rain, in order "to have her sins thoroughly
washed away!"

It is said that some of the clergy did not
sufficiently discourage these scandalous proceedings;
or rather the whimsical manifestations which
preceded them. Be that as it may, very many
ministers of more than one denomination kept
the people in a perpetual state of nervous
excitement by meetings in doors and out, in
private houses and public houses, sacred and
profane, including even the police station! An
irregularity which certainly the magistracy might
and ought to have interfered with.

By these misguided and mischievous persons
the people were stimulated and urged to the
practice of making dangerous and horrible
disclosures, impiously regarded as a holy act of
confession. It is impossible to detail with
decency, what these vile revelations and
declarations (for in many instances they were alloyed
with the most vindictive falsehood) consisted
of. It may be imagined what sort of confessions
would be uttered by a race of ignorant
creatures, under such circumstances. Sins were
revealed of the most hideous character, and
heinous crimes involving vice in all its
complications. Nor were the penitents satisfied
with freely making public confessions of the
faults and enormities which they themselves
had been guilty of; they confessed for other
people too: betraying all by name who had shared
in their iniquities, or, in other words, whom
they were instigated by spite, jealousy, and
madness, to injure. This phase of the movement
brought it, in its then form, to a culminating
point. Members of all classes were staggered.
Husband was set against wife, and wife against
husband; distrust and heart-burnings were
planted in the breasts of lovers hitherto fond
and confiding; parents were bowed down with
shame and sorrow by the denounced scandal of
their daughters whose virtue had been till then
unblamed! Even little children went about
as if insane, singing, chattering a jargon they
called a prayer, chastising older children, and
telling all the bad things they knew of their
parents! At last came the dreaded reaction.
The actors as well as the abettors in these
disgraceful scenes began to feel the mischief
they had worked. Sins minutely described
and earnestly avowed, were boldly denied by
fast relapsing penitents; impeachments of
others were retracted with oaths, curses, and
imprecations on the perjured heads of the
impeachers and retractors. In the mean time,
society suffered in all its healthy every-day
branches. Trade was at a stand-still;
shops were closed, lest they also should be
"converted" into dens of enthusiastic thieves;
the planter, short of labour at all times, was
in some parts unable to gather in his crops;
the people having destroyed their property,
neglected their grounds, earned nothing by their
labour, and rambled about literally "seeking
what they might devour," feeding on oranges,
half clothed and half starved. Some returned
now and then to the influence of their morbid
fanaticism, one bawling out that he saw "our
Saviour sitting on a stump, with red eyes!"
Another, blasphemously described the sensation
of his hoarse hunger, by exclaiming that the
Holy Ghost had got into his throat like a lump,
and was choking him! Many were fighting,
swearing, and stealing, in a dreadful fight
against starvation. Yet there are those who
still persist in maintaining that all this outrageous
mass of idleness, falsehood, disorder, and
ungodly life, is a fulfilment of Scripture!

It had been hoped that the bygone year had
closed upon this frightful order of things. But
according to the intelligence which arrived by
the last packet, these hopes seem to have been
blighted. It is feared that the work of the
black reviver is not half done yet.
Experiencing, however, the dangerous risk of letting
loose penitential tongues, and opening the foul
mouths of the converted, the regulators of this
movement have tried the opposite tack and tied
up speech altogether. Meetings of the same
description as before are held by night and by