[12] Bent, _Ruined Cities of Mashonaland_, 18. [13] _Ibid._, 37. [14] Bent, _Ruined Cities of Mashonaland_, 113. [15] _Ibid._, 292. [16] Frobenius, _Voice of Africa_, 180. [17] _Ibid._, 360. [18] _Ibid._, 388. [19] Roth, _Great Benin_, 86. [20] _Ibid._, 82. [21] Roth, _Great Benin_, 128. [22] _Ibid._, 129. [23] _Ibid._, 217. [24] Lugard, _A Tropical Dependency_. [25] Ripley, _Races of Europe_. [26] Lugard, _A Tropical Dependency_. METHODISM AND THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES The first converted Negro Methodist was baptized by John Wesley. November 29, 1758, he wrote in his diary: "I rode to Wandsworth, and baptized two Negroes belonging to Mr. Gilbert, a gentleman lately from Antigua. One of these was deeply convinced of sin; the other is rejoicing in God, her savior, and is the first African Christian I have known. But shall not God, in his own time, have these heathen also for his inheritance?"[1] Eight years later (1766) the first Methodist congregation of five met in the private house of Philip Embury, in New York. One of that number was Betty, a Negro servant girl. In 1816, fifty years after that first service in New York, the Methodists in the United States numbered 214,235 communicants. Of these 171,931 were white and 42,304, or nearly one-fourth, were Negroes. Two interesting facts are, that of these 42,304 Negro members, 30,000 or nearly three-fourths were in the South, and gathered principally from the slave population.[2] These figures indicate the faithfulness of early Methodism to the Negro, whether bond or free. These words and spirit of Freeborn Garrettson only illustrate those of Coke, Asbury, and their associates. Under divine guidance, Garrettson had freed his slaves. He says: "I often set apart times to preach to the blacks, ... and precious moments have I had, while many of their sable faces were bedewed with tears, their withered hands of faith stretched out, and their precious souls made white in the blood of the Lamb."[3]