A Present to His Royal Highness - The Prince of Wales — Page 65
65 On this occasion the Christian missionaries gathered together a number of the blind and the lame in order to present them to him and to ask him to heal them if he was indeed the Messiah, thinking thus to put shame on him. But on seeing them he said to the missionaries: “It is your books that speak of the blind being restored to sight and the lame being made to walk, and they also say that if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall heal the sick with the touch of your hands. It is well that you yourselves have brought these men together; now heal them therefore, to prove your faith. ” Woe unto these people that they failed to understand from that which had been written concerning the prophets and even Jesus himself that the Scriptures often speak metaphorically; for if that were not so, then what mean ye when ye say that Jesus cast out devils and evil spirits? Similarly, the Christians once devised another plan to bring confusion on him and asked him to read a writing enclosed in an envelope. He replied that he was willing to do so, if a number of Christian missionaries should give him an undertaking in writing that if he succeeded in doing it they would all accept Islam. On this they held their peace. Thus he journeyed to many places to preach the Truth and was persecuted by the priests. They reviled him and threw stones at him, and attacked the house in which he was staying and sometimes they followed him for long distances hoping to find an opportunity to destroy him. But God brought all their machinations to naught. The more his enemies strove against him, the more emphatically he declared that God had promised to guard