rains are set free: the poor dry lands seem to wrestle
against the one thing that they need. Before the clouds burst there will
come days--weeks, perhaps, off and on--of fierce sirocco, hurling them
back as they try to gather. Sometimes they seem on the point of
breaking, and a few drops may get through the heavy air, then back go
the clouds, leaving the brassy glare undimmed. On the fight goes, and
gets only harder and harder, till suddenly the victory is won. The south
wind drops, or shifts to the west, and the clouds, laden now with their
treasure, mass themselves in the east; then the wind wheels to the east
and gets behind them, and in an hour or less, unresisted, they are
overhead; unresisted, the windows of heaven are opened, and the rain
comes down in floods with a joyful splash, drenching the earth to its
depths, and calling to life every hidden potentiality.

A fight like that lies before us in the lands of Islam. It has begun
even now; for we have seen again and again the clouds gather and swept
back, leaving a few drops at best, and these often quickly dried. They
are not yet full of rain, so they do not empty themselves upon the
earth.

And it is not from this side that they can be stored: it is not the
thirsty earth that can fill them. They travel from afar, where ocean,
river, and lake can breathe their vapors upward, swept unseen by the
wind that bloweth where it listeth, to the parched places. We need you,
in the far-off, Spirit-watered lands to store the showers. You may be
but a roadside pool, but your prayer-breath may go up to be gathered in
God's clouds and break in His "plentiful rain." When the clouds are full
He will still the sirocco blast of evil that fights it back, and it will
come down with the sudden swift ease that marks the setting in of the
rains here, year by year.

Do we believe that each heaven-sent prayer brings the cloud-burst
nearer? That one last cry of faith, somewhere, will set it free? Do we
act as if we believed it? Shall we give ourselves to hasten it?

And when it comes, we shall see the latent possibilities awake, and the
latent powers assert themselves, and the people of Moslem countries, men
and women, show what they can be and do for Him and in His kingdom. For,
thank God, they are not dead lands, they are "only dry."

VII

LIGHT IN DARKEST MOROCCO

The factors in a Moorish woman's life are largely those of her Moslem
sisters everywhere; excepting as ex