Life of Ahmad — Page 571
as RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION 571 Ahmad as not to offend and provoke the people by his vigorous and forceful writings. In his book The Life of Christ Dean Farrar says: 'Woe to the prophet who dares to run counter to the religionism of his day—to disturb its self- complacence, to denounce its hypocrisy, to expose the false traditions on which it rests! He will find "the church" a more bitter and a more unscrupulous enemy even than the world. And this was what Jesus had done. He had convicted them of false professions, unaccompanied by action; he had depicted the responsibility of the office of the priests and Pharisees, and had indicated a terrible retribution for its profligate abuse; he had indicated alike the punishment which would ensue upon a rejection of his invitations, and the impossibility of deceiving the eye of his Heavenly Father by a nominal and pretended acceptance. Lying lip-service, faithless rebellion, blind presumption, such were the sins which he had striven to bring home to their consciences. And this was but a superficial outline of the heart-searching power with which his words had been to them like a sword of the spirit, piercing even to the dividing of the joints and the marrow. But to bad men nothing is so maddening as the exhibition of their own self-deception. ' This is exactly what had happened with Ahmad as , the Promised Messiah. The Pandits, the mullahs and the