A great four-volume history presenting in comprehensive perspective, within the limits of a single narrative, the various attempts to plant and develop Christianity in Africa. The method of presentation is chronological rather than regional, taking the whole story forward stage by stage rather than dealing completely with one region at a time. As Groves shows in his continental survey, Christianity is now in the midst of its third great attempt to occupy Africa.

Volume II (1840-1878) covers the years in which the Christian faith - following the trail-blazing of Livingstone and Stanley in Central Africa and the Congo respectively - leaped ahead and became one of the formative factors in African life.