Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 11
THE RENAISSANCE OF ISLAM I I of them carry out their religious duties properly and few of them restrain themselves from indulgence in illicit pursuits. I was sur- prised at their manner oflife. I found that most of them were eager to collect money lawfully or unlawfully and all their efforts in this brief life were directed towards the world. I found few of them who, out of regard for the Divine Majesty, cultivated the higher moral values like meekness, nobility, chastity, lowliness, sym- pathy, purity. I found most of them afflicted with arrogance, misconduct, neglect of religious values and all types of evil morals. As the wisdom of God Almighty had decreed that I should have experi- ence of all types of people, I had to keep company with those of every kind. All that time I passed in great constraint and unease [Kitabul Barriyyah, pp. 179-80, footnote]. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad has given an account of his life at Qadian after his return from Sialkot in which he has observed: When I returned to my father I became occupied with the manage- ment of our lands but the greater part of my time was devoted to the study of the Holy Quran and of the commentaries on it and of the traditions of the Holy Prophet. Often I would read out portions from those books to my father who was mostly melan- choly on account of the failure of his efforts to recover a part of his patrimony. He had spent 70,000 rupees in the prosecution of those cases, but the result was failure. We had lost those villages since a long time and their recovery was a chimera. On account of this failure my father was always plunged in grief and observing his condition, I was enabled to carry out a pure change in my own life. The bitter life led by my father taught me to value a clean life free from all worldly impurities. My father owned a few villages and was in receipt of a stipend from the British Government and also enjoyed a pension for his service but all this was as nothing compared with what he had been accustomed to in his younger days. That is why he was always melancholy and often said that had he striven for the faith as much as he had striven for the world he would have been a saint. His last days were saddened by the thought that he would face his Maker empty handed. He often regretted that he had wasted his