Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam — Page 11
11 today, when religion has become an empty phrase and truth is, as it were, dead. At the present time, with respect to their attitude towards religion, men may be divided into three classes. First, those who deny the need of religion and either repudiate God altogether, or believe in Him just as they believe in rivers and mountains, for this belief does not in any way affect their daily lives. If they were to decide that there is no God, their mode of life would undergo no change whatever, for their belief in God has nothing to do with their acts and conduct. Such people have sometimes gone so far as to declare that they cannot surrender their independence even to God and that they cannot damage their self-respect by praying to, and humbling themselves before, Him. The second class of people are those who believe in God and His attributes, but they are in the predica- ment of a thirsty man who has lost his way among the sand-hills of the desert, and who for miles and miles does not meet with a single drop of water. The more he searches for it, the fiercer becomes his thirst and the greater his agony, but his wanderings profit him not; he runs from one deluding mirage to another, but each time his disappointment augments his pain, and in the search of water he wanders farther away from it, till he arrives at the gates of death. The third class of men are content with their lot and are satisfied with their condition, not because they believe that they have satisfied all their natural yearn- ings, but because they have lost courage and have