The only Christian state which existed in Africa before the beginning of European colonization was Abyssinia, which is to some degree dependent on the Coptic Church in Egypt, and is in communion with the Greek Church. Christianity is said to have been introduced here in the 4th century. The Abyssinians have usually resented the arrival of Roman Catholic missionaries, and have not shown much greater encouragement to emissaries from Protestant Churches. Abyssinian Christianity is, as might be imagined, so degraded and mixed up with fetishism that it is difficult to recognise it as a branch of the Christian faith which is the religion of so much of Europe and America. Russia in the latter part of the 19th century was much concerned at the spiritual darkness prevailing in Abyssinia, and endeavoured to send thither missionaries from the Greek Church, the domain of which she identifies with her own empire. But these have been propagandists of a singularly military type—wolves in sheep’s clothing, if one may commit oneself to rather a strong metaphor—and hardly to be classed with the unarmed emissaries of Christianity, who, on behalf of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches of Europe and America, have striven usually with single-minded motives, almost always with deep personal unselfishness, ever with zeal, sometimes with indiscretion, and not unfrequently with bitter disappointments and cruel sufferings to evangelize Africa. The ultimate effect of their work on the history of Africa will prove to be far-reaching, important, and (I believe) highly beneficial. ----- Footnote 134: For the detailed history of the Portuguese, Italian, Flemish, and French Catholic missionaries in the Kongo kingdom see my book, _George Grenfell and the Congo_. Footnote 135: Gonçalo de Silveira; killed somewhere to the south-west of Tete about 1565. Footnote 136: At that time the Arab viceroy of Zanzibar was only known as ‘Sayyid’ (Lord); not as Sultan. Footnote 137: The Portuguese Church had produced the first Roman Catholic negro bishop, in the 16th century. He was Bishop of the Congo, was a member of the royal family of Kongo, and was educated at Lisbon and Rome. Samuel Crowther was an Egba slave-boy from Lagos, who by education acquired the intellect and outlook of a European. He was an upright, sensible man who wrote valuable works on African philology, and did much towards founding British Nigeria and exploring the Niger and the Benue. Footnote 138: It quitted the Cameroons altogether soon after the establishment of the German colony, the German Government having expropriated most of its establishments. Footnote 139: