Ahmadiyya Movement — Page 14
14 has been created in order simply to maintain himself in comfort. If the individual has no purpose in his creation, then mutual help cannot be considered as the purpose of life. Besides, we would have to suppose that all righteous men whatever country they may have appeared in—Syria, Arabia, Persia, India or Chi- na—were, God forbid the thought, liars and impostors. All of them taught that they had been entrusted by God with the spiri- tual guidance of mankind, and yet they could not have been so entrusted, either because God has no power to provide for the guidance of mankind, or because man has not been created with the object of attaining to communion with Him. But, does our reason permit us to entertain the idea that those who were the originators of all that is good and righteous and pure, who were perfect specimens of truth and holiness, who effected moral revolutions in the world and implanted the love of righteousness and purity in the hearts of men, were the greatest liars and im- postors that the world has produced, and that they called men to their own impostures? Or, can we believe that men to whom Credit is due for the whole intellectual, moral and spiritual ad- vancement of mankind, and who have left an impress on the minds of men, which the passage of centuries has failed to ob- literate, were out of their minds and believed in the creation of their own fancies as things that had life and being in the Un- iverse? If this is not so—and, most certainly, it is not so— there is no escape from the conclusion that there must exist in the world some religion which can lead man to God. If all the ex- isting religions have become corrupt, a new religion must be revealed for the guidance of mankind, and if there still exists in the world a religion which can lead man to God, but which cannot fulfil its purpose, as man would not pay heed to it, a Reformer must be raised to direct man’s attention to it and bring mankind to Him. I conceive and I am sure this must be the view of all sensible men that there is no difference between the total disappearance of truth and its being so enveloped in doubt as to be unfit to serve as a guidance for mankind. The latter contin-