ABSTRACT
Most of Africa was yet to be explored when the nineteenth century began. David Livingstone's objective, as he famously declared in 1857, was to go back to Africa to make an open path for commerce and Christianity. The Gambia, where Moister had served, was the most westerly of the Wesleyan missions in Africa. Islam was a minority religion in The Gambia in the first half of the century but as the years went by the numbers of Muslims rose steeply while Christianity spread very slowly. In 1893 the Gold Coast Synod went so far as to insist on the Christian rite of marriage as a condition of membership and persuaded the government to license many chapels for marriage and increases the number of registrars. John Kilner, when as a Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS) Secretary he visited South Africa in 1880, was scathing about the Wesleyans educational provision.
