A Present to Kings — Page 44
( 44 ) the Holy Prophet is reported to have said that the Promised. Messiah will be buried in the same grave with him; because it is incredible that the grave of the Holy Prophet will actually be opened at any future time in order to receive the Messiah. . This would be such a piece of sacrilege as could not be endured by any Mussalman, and so long as there was one true. Muslim living, he would never suffer the grave of the Holy. Prophet to be opened before his eyes. It thus being quite unthinkable that the grave of the Holy Prophet should at any time be opened to receive the body of the Messiah, the tradi tion can only signify that the Promised Messiah would be so much like the Holy Prophet as to be vouchsafed a place by his then like the b side. Moreever, the word where human souls are (kabr) also means the place kept after death, as we find in the -The Wo make him die and after ثم ماته نا قبره Holy Quran wards We put him in the kabar. " In this verse the word can nowise be understood in the commonly accepted sense of grave, because there are millions of men who are never buried but are burnt instead. The word therefore means, that he is kept in a place where souls are kept after death; and this is the 'kabr,' which, it is said, will enlarge itself in the case of believers and narrow itself in the case of of unbelievers. . Thus, it is evident from the tradition that the Promised Messiah will be a perfect image of the Holy Prophet by virtue of his complete obedience to him. The prevailing disorders of the time also require the advent of a person who might be a perfect counterpart of the Holy Prophet, because the quelling of the present disorders is beyond the power of an ordinary man. The rank of a person charged with a duty is proportioned to the importance of the duty. The age, therefore, requires the advent of a person of the highest calibre to allay its distempers, because of Islam there has now been left nothing but the name, true faith has vanished, and of the Quran only the words have been preserved, but the sense is in imminent danger of being obliterated. The present condition of Islam is in fact similar. Hola of