George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

280 GEORGE WHITEFIELD
to interest for you. It was to relieve an excellent Christian,
who, by living very hard and working near twenty hours out of
four-and-twenty, had brought himself very low. He has a wife
and four children, and was above two guineas in debt. I gave
one for myself and one for you. We shall have good interest
for our money in another world.'
This year his mind was much relieved about Georgia,
because the introduction of slaves was at length permitted by
the Government. The pertinacity of those who wanted to
make money out of their fellow-men out-wearied the better
feelings and holier principles of those who saw in the trade a
violation of human rights, a political and social curse ; and free
scope was given for the capture of Negroes in Africa and for
their introduction into America. Whitefield's remarks upon
his new acquisition are too strange, as coming from one who
had just helped the poor indebted Christian, to be omitted.
They cause a sigh of regret that he never appears to have met
his contemporary, that beautiful character, John Woolman, the
American Quaker, who certainly would have talked and prayed
him into a different state of mind.
' Thanks be to God,' he says, 'that the time for favouring that colony
seems to be come. I think now is the season for us to exert our utmost
for the good of the poor Ethiopians. We are told that even they are soon
to stretch out their hands to God. And who knows but their being settled
in Georgia may be overruled for this great end ? As for the lawfulness of
keeping slaves I have no doubt, since I hear of some that were bought with
Abraham's money, and some that were born in his house. And I cannot
help thinking that some of those servants mentioned by the apostles in their
epistles were or had been slaves. It is plain that the Gibeonites were \ J
doomed to perpetual slavery, and though liberty is a sweet thing to such as
are born free, yet to those who never knew the sweets of it, slavery perhaps
may not be so irksome. However this be, it is plain to a demonstration
that hot countries cannot be cultivated without Negroes. What a flourish-
ing country might Georgia have been, had the use of them been permitted
years ago ! How many white people have been destroyed for want of