Whitefield's letter to Wesley, in 1751, is a clear defense of slavery in the colonies. He quotes Abraham, who had slaves "bought with his money" and "born in his house." The same argument was employed in later years. Whitefield added to his approval of the slave trade the fact that he became himself a slaveholder. At the time of his death, in 1770, he was the owner of seventy-five slaves, who were connected with his Orphan House plantation, near Savannah, Ga. It is not surprising that God should have swept the whole concern, by fire and flood, from the face of the earth. "Let it be noted," says Mr. Tyerman, "that besides all his other honors John Wesley, the poor, persecuted Methodist, was one of the first advocates on behalf of the enthralled African that England had, and that, sixty years before slavery was abolished in the dominions of Great Britain, he denounced the thing in the strongest terms it was possible to employ." Mr. Wesley's _Thoughts on Slavery_, an octavo of fifty-three pages, issued in 1774, did more to awaken England to the horrors of the African slave trade than any other work on the subject. The writer says, "No more severe arraignment of slavery than this was ever written." This American scourge, through the influence of Wesley's early American preachers, who caught their inspiration from his _Thoughts_, felt the force of his burning words until that form of slavery, which he declared to be "the vilest that ever saw the sun," was a thing of the past. For two hundred and more years it drifted down, gradually, like other forms of barbarism, into the clear light of a better civilization, to be finally put to death by the Gospel of Methodism. It is true that _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ did much, but Wesley's _Thoughts_ prepared the way for this wonderful book. Mr. Wesley must ever be known as the man through whose influence slavery found a grave, from which Heaven forbid it should ever have a resurrection! TEMPERANCE. In regard to the temperance reform Mr. Wesley was as fully pronounced as on the subject of slavery. Liquor drinking was practiced by all classes, from the archbishop to the meanest street scavenger. Ministers by the hundred drank to intoxication, and in their drunken sprees would head mobs in their assaults on Wesley and his helpers. Wesley thundered away at liquor selling and drinking like a modern prohibitionist. Take the following from one of his sermons as an example: