examples can be found of men who have long endured the climate and
have seen the good work grow upon their hands. But the results, as a
whole, have been discouraging. Christianity has found a precarious
footing along the shores of the continent while, as yet, in the vast
interior the missionaries are compelled to follow at a tardy pace the
footsteps of the explorers. Africa is yet unevangelized.

The causes of this are not far to seek. The white missionaries from
Europe and America succumb under the fatal malaria, or are deterred
by the unreasoning and deadly hostility of the natives. The
missionaries are a foreign people, with different color, features and
habits. They are known to the natives as coming from nations that
have plundered and enslaved them. They come as a superior race,
unable to meet the natives on the basis of a common brotherhood. A
gulf yawns between them. The Christianization of Africa needs a new
impulse from some other quarter.

On the other hand, and in sharp contrast with all this, is the rapid
progress of Mohammedanism in Africa. This progress has been noted by
the modern explorers, but has been recently brought more distinctly
to the attention of Europe and America. Dean R. Bosworth Smith, in
the _Nineteenth Century_ for December, 1887, thus states the extent
to which Mohammedanism covers Africa: "It is hardly too much to say
that one-half of the whole of Africa is already dominated by Islam,
while, of the remaining half, one-quarter is leavened, and another is
threatened, by it. Such is the amazing, the portentous problem which
Christianity and civilization have to face in Africa, and to which
neither of them seems as yet half awake."

The causes of this rapid spread over Africa are easily discernible.