ABSTRACT
Being now perhaps in a somewhat more open frame of mind with regard to the work of Islam in West Africa, we may attempt to investigate the methods of Islam and the methods of Christianity in their relationship to the Negro. In this manner we may hope to come to still closer quarters with the subject, and by so doing arrive at a tolerably clear impression of its various phases. Why does Africa, which was, as has been truly said, “the nursing mother of Christianity,” remain impervious to the teachings of the highest religion ? Why does Christianity, which has laboured for so many centuries in Western Africa, make no appreciable advance in that country ? The failure may, I think, be ascribed to four main causes: first, the refusal to admit that the circumstances which regulate certain natural laws vary with climatic considerations and racial idiosyncrasies; secondly, the tendency which Christianity, as taught in West Africa, has to denationalise; thirdly, the incompatibility between the ideals of Christ and modern conceptions of Christianity; fourthly, the political action of Christian Powers.
