Life of Ahmad — Page 285
as PREACHES UNTO EAST AND WEST 285 blessings of the Faith as it shares today the good things of the world. No doubt in the vision it was he himself who was delivering the speech, but as a Prophet is represented by his followers, particularly by his successors (Khulafa), the vision meant that he or one of his representatives or successors would proceed to England to call men to Islam, and indicated that Islam and Ahmadiyyat would be preached from a pulpit or a stage and that men would accept it and be blessed. All this has happened according to the vision. His own son and successor visited London in 1924. The fulfilment of this vision is not a mere coincidence. The importance of an event can only be measured when all the circumstances attending it are known. Now consider the circumstances under which this vision was published and in which the man who published it was placed. When the vision was published the Christian religion was so powerful that it overawed Muslims. Not only did European and Christian writers prophesy the complete annihilation of Islam by Christianity in the course of a century, but Muslim writers also had begun indirectly to admit that this might be so. Some Muslims, under the guise of religious reform, started a movement for a mutual understanding between Islam and Christianity on the basis of the assumption that both were true and of the necessity of avoiding collision between them, for these men feared that Islam could not withstand Christianity. Others had