"My Amzi," returned the priest, "how can you be warmed except you come to the fire? Remember the man with the withered hand. Did he not stretch it out in faith? My friend, like him, act! Reach out your heart to God. He will not fail you. Look not upon yourself. Look upon God, who is, indeed, closer to you than you can imagine. Put your hand in his, behold his love manifested to us in the coming of his dear Son, and feel that that love is to-day the same, proceeding from the Father in whom is 'no variableness, neither shadow of turning.'" Amzi sighed. "Yusuf," he said, "it appears all dark, impenetrable, to me. A wall of adamant seems to stand between me and God. Pray for me, friend. In this matter I fear I am heartless." In spite of this assertion, there was genuine concern in the tone, and the priest's face flushed in the glad light of hope. "Amzi," he exclaimed, "my hope for you increases. Even now, you begin to realize your own self: it remains for you to realize God's self. Know God--would I could burn that upon your heart! All else would be made plain." Amzi sighed again. For a time he sat in silence, then he said: "I have been reading of the tabernacle, and of the sacrifices therein." "Typical of the death of Christ," returned Yusuf. "A constant emblem of that mind which was, and is to-day, ready to suffer, that we may understand its infinite love." "Strange, strange!" said Amzi, musingly. Then after a long silence: "Yusuf, have you ever noted the resemblance of the Caaba to the reputed appearance of the tabernacle?" "The resemblance struck me from the first glance--the courtyard, the temple itself, and the curtain (or 'Kiswah') corresponding to the veil of the tabernacle. This same Caaba may trace its origin in some dim way to the ancient tabernacle, of which, in this land, the significance must have become lost in the centuries during which the Ishmaelitish race forgot the true worship of God." "And what think you of the course which affairs are now taking in Arabia?" asked Amzi. "You believe in the supervision of God; why, then, does he permit such outbreaks as the present one is proving to be?"