people in their homes, sometimes to talk. But
with the men they seldom came in contact. Never with an educated Moor. He
would despise women in general, despise Christianity past words, and
decline to argue on such a point with a man.

People are apt to forget that Mohammedanism is a faith to which many
millions of earnest and intelligent men and women have pinned their
salvation. To talk and argue with these--it is almost a truism to say--a
missionary must be "up" in that subject which they have at their
finger-tips--namely, their religion. This means that he or she must have
a complete knowledge of the Kor[=a]n; must know the traditions relating
to Mohammed and his companions; must be able to converse about the
divinity and the innumerable saints of Islam; must have read various
religious treatises; and, above and beyond all, must understand to the
smallest point the habits of the Mohammedan himself, know his life, be
able to follow his thoughts, understand his actions, and be in sympathy
with his recreations as well as with his work, otherwise the missionary
treads on the Mohammedan's toes fifty times a day, and provokes
amusement, mingled with contempt, of which resentment is born.

Needless to say, few missionaries in Morocco, except at the end of their
life's work, possess these qualifications. Only a limited number know the
Arabic language: they speak it colloquially of course, but the immense
difficulties, which a thorough knowledge of it entails, debar most of
them from satisfactory study. After years upon years of hard work, an
Arabian scholar frankly avowed to me that he had but skimmed the surface
of the depths of the Arabic language.

As far as the old idea of missionary work goes--of preaching to an
attentive throng of Mohammedans and baptizing converts--Morocco ranks
nowhere. The missionary who comes out to El Moghreb does incalculable
good in curing the hereditary disease and taint with which an Eastern
nation is rife, and many influence the surrounding people by the example
of a good life and contact with a civilized mind: he or she is to be
profoundly admired for the determination with which one end and one aim
are held in view from first to last, and to the furtherance of which the
whole of life is made subservient; and yet the shadows of disappointment
must darken that missionary's path sometimes, unless he or she is a
philosopher. For we met with none who could point us out a single
convert, openly