Life of Ahmad — Page 31
as WORLD PREPARATIONS 31 Liverpool and Glasgow in 1815. The first railway line was opened in Great Britain in 1825. Electric telegraphy came into use in 1820 and communication between the various parts of the globe was thus very much accelerated. The first magneto- electric machine was devised in 1832. The discovery of anaesthetics was made in 1846 and the value of antiseptics in the treatment of wounds was recognised in 1867. Pasteur’s investigations into the germ theory of infectious diseases were begun about 1850 and the malaria protozoon and the tubercle bacillus were isolated in 1880. Electric lighting became commercially possible in 1879 and the telephone was invented in 1876. The X- ray was discovered in 1895. The minds of the people were also turned towards the coming event. The followers of all religions seemed to expect the Promised Reformer. The Muslims expected, according to the prophecies contained in their scriptures, the appearance of the Mahdi and the Messiah. Their expectations, like the expectations of the Jews at the advent of Jesus as were strange and fantastic. They expected somebody who would come in the guise of a temporal king, a bloody warrior who would kill all infidels by waging a holy war and thus bring about the promised millennium. In 1831 William Miller of America began to lecture, arguing that the two thousand three hundred days mentioned in Daniel 8:14 meant 2,300 years, that these years began with Ezra’s as going up to Jerusalem