Fazl-e-Umar — Page 117
Fazle Umar 117 Rahmatullah addressed the gathering to sway it in favour of the rebel view. “God’s wrath!” he declared with well simulated fervour, “a few designing men are out to ruin the Community by raising a stripling to the Khilafat. ” The “stripling” in question too, heard this remark and was greatly mystified by it, never dreaming that he himself was being referred to. The doors open into the mosque from the house of the Promised Messiah [as]. In one of the rooms behind these doors Mian Mahmud, in an agony of suspense over the crisis, was pacing up and down, praying to God to guide the delegates to the right decision and the right attitude of mind. He, evidently, did not know at the time, as he came to know later, that these decorous gentlemen never tired of contemptuously alluding to him as a “stripling”. Thus the dissentients had explained every aspect of the question to the congregation before Huzur’s arrival. 76 Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih I [ra] arrived to lead the Morning Prayer service and in the course of it he recited the eighty-fifth chapter of the Holy Qur’an. He was deeply moved when he recited the verse, “Those who have involved the believing men and the believing women in doubt and confusion, and do not repent, will surely suffer the chastisement of hell and the chastisement of burning. ” (Ch. 85:V. 11). He repeated this verse two or three times in tones that betrayed grief and sorrow and the heart of every worshipper was filled with the fear of God. In spite of the utmost efforts to control, such loud sobs and moans involuntarily escaped many worshippers that per- haps, never had a mother wept more bitterly over the death of an only son. Save the few recalcitrant spirits that were there, all felt a softening of the heart and a renewal of faith and a complete absolution from selfish thoughts. 77 The consultative body, approximately two hundred and fifty persons, was sum- moned to meet on the sunlit roof of the mosque. When they had all arrived Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih came and stood in that portion which had been constructed under