The trade of "trepanning" the unfortunates and transporting them and selling their term of service was not by several degrees as bad as the African slave-trade; but it was of the same sort, and the deadly horrors of its "middle passage" were hardly less.
In one way and another the German immigration had grown by the middle of the eighteenth century to great dimensions.

In the year 1749 twelve thousand Germans landed at the port of Philadelphia.

In general they were as sheep having no shepherd.

Their deplorable religious condition was owing less to poverty than to diversity of sects.[188:1] In many places the number of sects rendered concerted action impossible, and the people remained destitute of religious instruction.
The famine of the word was sorely felt.

In 1733 three great Lutheran congregations in Pennsylvania, numbering five hundred families each, sent messengers with an imploring petition to their coreligionists at London and Halle, representing their "state of the greatest destitution." "Our own means" (they say) "are utterly insufficient to effect the necessary relief, unless God in his mercy may send us help from abroad.