Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 110
110 AHMADIYY AT the early. years of this century. His attitude towards Islam might be gathered from the following incident recorded in the Life and Letters of George Alfred Lefroy by H. H. Montgo- mery (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1920), where it is said: Archbishop Bensen made a speech at the annual meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in St Jamest s Hall on 16 June 1892 in the course of which he said: 'We ~now what the sins of Mohammadenism aret but do we not know what the sins of Europe and London are?. . . Mohammadenism does form high character. No one can go into a Mohammaden place of worship without being struck with the evidence of sincerity, gravity, absorbedness and solemnity in the worshippers. ' Commenting on this Lefroy said: 'It must be with the extremest deference that I venture to dissent from the views of his Grace. ' Bishop Lefroy knew Hebrew, Arabic and Persian and could speak with great facility in Urdu. He was fond of public speaking and often addressed meetings in the spirit of an evangelist. He was appointed Bishop of Lahore in 1899. During the spring and early summer of 1900 the Bishop delivered public addresses at differe~t places in Lahore on the thesis that Jesus alone, out of all the prophets, was sinless and compared him with the other prophets, especially with the Holy Prophet of Islam, to the disadvantage of all the other prophets. When Ahmad heard of these lectures, he wrote and pub- lished two leaflets on 25 May 1900 for distribution at the Bishop"s lecture which was due to be delivered the same afternoon. This was done and at the end of his address the Bishop was asked to comment on the subject matter of the leaflets. The Bishop excused himself on the plea that the points raised in the leaflets were new to him and that he had come to know of. them for the first time. The leaflets dealt with the subjects on which the Bishop had spoken on earlier occasions. At the end of the second leaflet, Ahmad wrote that. if the Bishop of Lahore was in earnest and was really in-