More than one half of the population of Maryland were slaves, and to these oppressed and cruelly treated fellow-creatures the planters owed their riches and their luxuries. Details of Whitefield’s labours in the colony do not exist. He simply states: “Everywhere almost, the door is opened for preaching; great numbers flock to hear; and the power of an ascended Saviour attends the word. I have preached with abundant success.”[157] And, again, in a letter to Wesley, dated, “Queen Ann’s County, Maryland, October 14, 1746,” full of buoyancy, he writes:―― “If you ask, how it is with me? I answer, ‘Happy in Jesus, the Lord my righteousness.’ If you ask, what I am doing? I answer, ‘Ranging and hunting in the American woods after poor sinners.’ If you ask, with what success? I would answer, ‘My labours were never more acceptable; and the door, for fifteen hundred miles together, is quite open for preaching the everlasting gospel.’ Congregations are large, and the work is going on, just as it began and went on in England. “Notwithstanding the declining state of Georgia, the Orphan House is in a better situation than ever; and, in a year or two, I trust, it will support itself. I am going there to spend some part of the winter, and to begin a foundation for literature.”[158] Soon after this, Whitefield sent off his wife and a young lady through “the woods,” to Georgia; and, on November 8, he himself started for Virginia. The first settlers in Virginia were almost all members of the Church of England. Episcopacy was established by law.[159] A small number of Presbyterians from Scotland, and a smaller number of Dissenters from England, were scattered through the colony; but until about the time of Whitefield’s first visit, in 1740, there was no ecclesiastical organization different from the Established Church of the mother-country. The state of religion in the province was deplorable. The Rev. Samuel Davies,[160] so justly famed for his sermons and pulpit oratory, wrote, in 1751:―― “Religion, in most parts of the colony of Virginia, has been, and still is, in a very low state: a surprising negligence in attending public worship, and an equally surprising unconcernedness in those that attend; vices of various kinds triumphant, and even a form of godliness not common.” Such a state of things was the natural result of an unfaithful ministry. Shortly before the year 1740, Samuel Morris began to read, to his neighbours, Luther on the Galatians, and several pieces of honest Bunyan, but the effects produced were not great. In 1743, a young Scotchman brought to Virginia a volume of Whitefield’s sermons, which Morris read to his cottage congregations on week-days, as well as Sundays. He writes:――