A Charge Delivered on the Banks of the River Niger in West Africa

Samuel Ajayi Crowther opens by calling the meeting the first gathering of the bishop and clergy of the mission. He dates the mission from the expedition of 1857, names the stations opened since and the clergy, catechists and readers placed at each, gives the numbers baptized, and then turns to how the gospel should first be preached and to what he sees as the chief obstacles.

It is a bishop’s own report on his diocese two years after his consecration, and evidence, in his own words, of how he understood and directed the work.