The Church, too, began to show an interest and in 1826 Samuel Gobat, a French-speaking Swiss Protestant who had been trained at St Chrischona' s mission in Basle, was sent to Abyssinia by the Church Missionary Society. With the spread of British influence and interests to the farthest corners of the world the Church of England was becoming conscious of the immense possibilities which presented themselves to propagate its own version of Christianity. The Church Missionary Society was founded in 1799 to be followed ten years later by the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, which has come to be known by the initials C.M.J.

Gobat encountered difficulties reaching Abyssinia and spent three years in Egypt awaiting permission to enter the country. Eventually he arrived in Tigrai province and proceeded from there to Gondar, where, according to Eric Payne, (1) 'a real interest was shown by both Amharas and Falashas'. He spent several years in the country and, in 1836, was replaced by Dr Isenberg and Dr Krapf, who worked in Tigrai, where the Jesuits had also set up a mission. The Jesuits, says Payne, persuaded the ruler of the province to banish the C. M. S. missionaries and, while Krapf moved to Shoa province and devoted himself to the Gallas, Isenberg returned to England to compose the first Amharic dictionary and grammar in English. Gobat, meanwhile, was transferred to Malta and in 1846 was appointed the second Anglican bishop in Jerusalem in succession to Michael Solomon Alexander, a converted German-born Jew who had previously been Professor of Hebrew and Rabbinical Literature at King's College, London University. Gobat had early evinced an interest in converting Jews and, at a meeting of the C.M.J. in 1838, he advocated starting missionary activity among the Falashas. Nothing was done at the time but when he was installed in Jerusalem he extended the missionary activities of his see through Egypt and the Sudan to the highlands of Ethiopia. By 1855 public security had been improved under the firm rule of the new emperor Theodore II and Bishop Gobat decided that the time was propitious for recommencing missionary activities

(1) Ethiopian Jews, p. 29.