The foregoing facts afford convincing evidence that the church in this region is rendering poor service--how poor the reader may judge from the following description of the religious and ecclesiastical conditions found by Mr. Gill in his personal investigation on the ground. For the most part the farm people of these Eighteen Counties are very religious. This is attested not merely by the large number of churches, but also by the frequency of well-attended revival services, held in spring, summer, autumn, and winter. (In Pike County, for example, no less than 1,500 revival services were held in thirty years, or an average of 50 each year.) Yet a normal, wholesome religion, bearing as its fruit better living and all-round human development, and cherished and propagated by sane and sober-minded people, is rarely known. The main function of a church, according to the popular conception, is to hold these protracted meetings, to stir up religious emotion, and, under its influence, to bring to pass certain psychological experiences. The idea seems to be dominant in nearly all the denominations and churches that the presence of the Deity is made known mainly, if not solely, through states of intense emotion which may be stimulated in religious assemblies. Such emotion is held to be not only a manifestation of the Deity's presence, but also a proof of His existence. No man is held to be religious or saved from evil destiny unless he has had such experience. It becomes, therefore, the business of the preacher of the church to create conditions favorable to the experiencing of these emotions. Officials of denominations to which more than two-thirds of the churches belong encourage or permit the promotion of a religion of the excessively emotional type, which encourages rolling upon the floor by men, women, and children, and going into trances, while some things which have happened in the regular services of a church in one of the largest denominations 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.