Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam — Page 117
117 Government looked upon him with suspicion, the people were hostile to him. Christians, Hindus and the very Muslims whose faith he championed, were all opposed to him, the last most bitterly of all. His claim was novel and unexpected. The Muslims were expecting a warrior Mahdi, and a Messiah who should descend from the skies. This man claimed to be not a warrior but a peaceful and peace-making Mahd i and taught that the Mahdi and Messiah were one and the same person who was not to come from the skies but was to appear from the earth, and strangest of all, that he himself was the person who was both Mahdi and Messiah, a person who possessed no distinctive mark of learning, rank or honour. Further, travelling to distant countries requires money, and this man had at the time a following of forty or fifty persons, all of whom, with the exception of one or two who were in comparatively easy circumstances, were extremely poor, earning on an average less than five shillings a week, out of which they had to provide for all the needs of their families and themselves. For in these circumstances, living six thousand miles away from England, in a country which formed part of the British Empire and which was at that time in a condition of extreme political degradation, in a province which was regarded as the least intellectual and most backward in India situated at a distance of several hundred miles from the ocean, being resident of a village which is even today eleven miles from the nearest railway station and which was at that time served only twice a week by the post, the postmaster being also the village schoolmaster,